Within the wake of the Port Arthur bloodbath in 1996, it took John Howard just some weeks to enact one of many greatest items of gun management reform on the planet.
Given how troublesome it could actually appear to get massive, nation-altering laws via parliament, it may be simple to assume that when it is executed, we’ll be capable to depend on it eternally.
For almost three a long time, these reforms spared Australians from the mass shootings which have turn into so prevalent within the US, and but the horrific assault on Australia’s Jewish group in Bondi, killing 15 individuals and wounding 40 others, confirmed that our legal guidelines weren’t as watertight as we would all wish to imagine.
Because the sound of gunfire echoed throughout Bondi Seashore, the frequency of the gunshots was terrifying. Each shooters had been firing relentlessly, stopping solely sometimes to reload their weapons.
In a single piece of footage of the assault, Sajid Akram, the older of the 2 males, might be seen apparently firing his shotgun eight occasions with out reloading.
A nonetheless from a video reveals two males with weapons on a footbridge at Bondi Seashore. (Instagram)
It might have been extra, however within the cacophony of gunfire it turns into troublesome to discern who was firing.
And but, Akram apparently owned the weapons legally.
Talking on the web site of the taking pictures on Monday, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull additionally expressed shock.
“I learn a report that there was a pump-action shotgun concerned. I assumed pump motion shotguns weren’t obtainable,” Mr Turnbull instructed the media.
“We have to be continually reviewing legal guidelines like this,” he added.
Whereas the shotgun utilized in Bondi was not a pump-action kind, Mr Turnbull has put his finger on the core downside. Gun makers are sometimes altering the designs of firearms, which implies legal guidelines depend on very particular definitions that should be continually reviewed.
In 1996, when then-prime minister John Howard led the cost for strict gun management laws after the Port Arthur bloodbath, the vary of weapons obtainable on the worldwide market was surprisingly completely different to right this moment.
Tens of 1000’s of weapons had been destroyed within the wake of the Port Arthur bloodbath. (Provided)
When it comes to high-capacity, rapid-fire shotguns, there was actually just one kind that was generally utilized by Australian shooters.
Whereas lever-action shotguns had been often depicted in Hollywood motion pictures like Terminator 2, pump-action shotguns had turn into the worldwide normal within the Nineteen Thirties, and had been the first focus of Howard’s laws.
Pump-action shotguns function utilizing a slide mechanism that’s pulled up and down the barrel between rounds to eject the empty cartridge and cargo a brand new shell into the firing chamber. Not solely is it extra dependable and environment friendly, you need not take your hand off the set off between rounds to drag the lever motion.
Within the Nineties, pump-action weapons had been so dominant that when an inventory of buyback values of newly banned weapons was revealed by the New South Wales authorities in 1996, there have been no lever-action shotguns explicitly listed.
Beneath Howard’s management, the federal, state and territory governments wrote laws that allotted every gun kind obtainable in the marketplace right into a class.
Class H was for handguns — pistols, primarily. The first intention of this method was to restrict a gunman’s skill to kill giant numbers of individuals in a brief time period, whereas additionally ensuring that farmers, hunters and sporting shooters had cheap entry to firearms.
Classes A, B, C and D can be for lengthy weapons — rifles and shotguns. Classes A and B would include weapons that may be obtainable to be used by civilians holding an ordinary gun licence.
Class C licences can be tightly restricted and solely obtainable to individuals (primarily farmers) who might show they’d a selected want for rapid-fire shotguns or low-powered rifles.
Weapons obtainable to Class C licence holders can be restricted by their capability — the variety of rounds they might hearth earlier than reloading. Pump-action shotguns with a capability of as much as 5 rounds would sit on this class.
Class D can be probably the most restricted, and include probably the most harmful weapons in the marketplace. These weapons would solely be obtainable to police, the army {and professional} shooters concerned in pest management. Pump-action shotguns with a capability of greater than 5 rounds would sit on this class.
As of this yr, NSW authorities knowledge signifies that fewer than 600 civilians in New South Wales maintain a Class D licence, all of whom work in pest management. There are 15,000 Class C licence holders, nearly all of whom are farmers.
In June 2025, roughly 250,000 individuals in New South Wales held class A and B licences, together with Sajid Akram.
So, the logical query is — if pump motion shotguns with greater than a five-shot capability had been in probably the most restricted class, how was Sajid Akram in a position to legally personal the gun he was utilizing to slaughter harmless individuals in Bondi on December 14?
The reply to that query begins in 2015, when the Nioa firm, Australia’s prime gun importer which is run by son-in-law of maverick impartial Queensland MP Bob Katter, Robert Nioa, introduced it was planning to import 7,000 lever-action shotguns.
Regardless of the antiquated lever-action mechanism, the Turkish-made Adler A110 shotgun had a capability of eight rounds between reloads, which gun management advocates stated made them simply as harmful because the tightly restricted pump-action shotguns.
“The Nioa firm is attempting to carry into Australia a high-capacity firearm that verges on being a pump-action shotgun,” Samantha Lee, chair of Gun Management Australia, stated on the time.
Robert Nioa disagreed, saying that pump-action shotguns fired “at about twice the speed, no less than, of the lever-action shotgun”.
“It operates in a totally completely different method and with the lever motion, it’s essential to take away your hand from the set off with each single shot,” Mr Nioa added.
Importers hoped that the gun can be categorized as a Class A or B firearm alongside low-capacity shotguns.
Following a nationwide controversy over the difficulty, lever-action shotguns had been put into Class B, however provided that they had been restricted to a five-shot capability. The eight-round-capacity weapons Mr Nioa initially wished to import had been put into the tightly restricted Class D.
Whereas pump-action and high-capacity lever-action weapons have been restricted, there are different varieties of mechanisms obtainable.
Round 2018, high-capacity shotguns with a straight-pull mechanism arrived in the marketplace from a variety of corporations with little or no fanfare. As a substitute of a lever or a pump motion, they’ve a deal with on the aspect that have to be pulled backwards.
Straight-pull shotguns fell into both Class A or B in NSW.
Within the days after the taking pictures at Bondi, gun consultants appeared to agree that the weapon taken out of Sajid Akram’s palms by hero bystander Ahmed Al Ahmed was a straight-pull shotgun.
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New South Wales Premier Chris Minns stated on Wednesday that straight-pull shotguns can be put right into a extra restricted class, and that the federal government would examine limiting shotgun journal capability.
On Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese introduced a nationwide buyback scheme geared toward getting newly banned weapons, presumably just like the straight-pull shotgun, out of the palms of civilians.
Whereas getting harmful weapons out of the palms of harmful individuals is prone to have widespread help in Australia, it is unhappy that it takes horrific occasions just like the massacres in Port Arthur and Bondi to get governments to assessment their very own legal guidelines.
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Most Australians aren’t consultants on the various kinds of loading mechanisms obtainable in shotguns. When high-capacity pump-action shotguns had been banned in 1996, it wasn’t the mechanism we had an issue with, it was the gun’s capability to fireplace plenty of shotgun shells quickly.
When information emerged which you could get round that regulation and import high-capacity rapid-fire shotguns by merely altering the mechanism that masses every cartridge into the chamber, they’re justified in asking why they discovered this out now somewhat than earlier than one in all these weapons was utilized in a mass taking pictures.
It seems that we’re in for a flurry of regulation adjustments in coming weeks and months to attempt to forestall the sort of gun from getting used once more in an atrocity like this.
The query is whether or not we stay vigilant in future and ensure new varieties of weapons do not slip via loopholes in these new legal guidelines.
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