In response to the Bondi Beach massacre, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has proposed a nationwide buyback scheme for firearms to “get more guns off our streets.”
Albanese said that the scheme would purchase excess, recently banned, and illegal firearms during a press conference in Canberra on Friday. According to him, the government will propose legislation to assist in financing the scheme and split the cost with the states and territories.
“We expect hundreds of thousands of firearms will be collected and destroyed through this scheme,” he added.
Albanese also said that there would be a national day of mourning in the coming year and a day of contemplation for the victims of the Bondi Beach shooting on Sunday, when flags on all Australian and New South Wales government buildings will fly at half-staff.
In the meantime, hundreds of surfers from Bondi Beach joined a paddle-out on Friday morning, demonstrating their solidarity with the victims of the tragedy and their opposition to hatred and fear.
CNN affiliate 7News reported that lifeguards Jimmy and Rupert, who assisted in the rescue operations, spoke at the event and shared their experiences of trauma and the community’s path toward recovery.
The Australian prime minister said that the National Security Committee has convened six times since the attack to determine the reasons and tactics behind the antisemitic attack.
“Today, we’ve been informed that the office of national intelligence has identified a regular online video feed from ISIS that reinforces that this was an ISIS-inspired attack.
“Further work is being done by the security agencies around motivation and we’ll continue to meet and provide them with whatever support they need at this difficult time,” Albanese said.
Federal police will oversee destroying the firearms under the guns buy-back scheme, while states and territories will be in charge of gathering the weapons and processing compensation to individuals for surrendered firearms.
Albanese described the move as the largest gun buyback since 1996 and said, “The terrible events of Bondi show we need to get more guns off our streets.”
Australia already boasts of the lowest rates of gun homicide and some of the strictest gun laws in the world. After a lone shooter using semiautomatic firearms massacred 35 people at the Port Arthur historic tourist attraction in the inland state of Tasmania over 30 years ago, gun laws were strengthened.
The tragedy prompted the then-government to take action, and two weeks later, strict regulations on who could and could not possess a firearm were formulated. At the time, authorities also implemented a significant buyback and gun amnesty scheme, which eliminated almost 650,000 newly banned weapons from circulation.
Albanese said there are now over four million firearms in the nation, more than there were before the Port Arthur incident.