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HomeRead, Watch, ListenAustralia
OpinionAustralia

Gun control works, so why is public debate focused on antisemitism?

Gun control is the only harm mitigation strategy that works but the Coalition is attacking the government over antisemitism to paper over its difficulties in supporting restrictions on guns.
Leslie Cannold
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Gun control

Australia’s gun laws are overdue for reform (OsakaWayne Studios/Getty)

Published: 15 January 2026

Last updated: 15 January 2026

Last week the Albanese government capitulated to the demands of The Australian, some in the Jewish community, and their Coalition defenders. A Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion is now looming.

I’m ok with that. And would have been ok with no Royal Commission, too. 

Why?

Because anyone following the evidence knows that the outcome to the Bondi tragedy that must be realised is the modernising of Australia’s 30-year-old gun laws. It’s a long-avoided modernisation that, had our political leaders ensured it happened in a timely manner, would have stopped the body count at Bondi being so high.

The rest, including the search for the magical formula that has eluded us for more than a thousand years - how to purge a society of antisemitism - is gravy, at best.

At worst, it could lead to further intolerance of Australia’s democratic freedoms of political communication and expression that were enacted in 1995, 2024 and February 2025.

Legal impositions that included anti-vilification statutes and jail terms for the Nazi salute, and infringements of democratic civil liberties – endorsed by Jewish community leaders and justified by politicians - on the grounds that they would curtail antisemitism but which failed to stop the attack at Bondi Beach.

Gun control as insult

The Albanese government clearly thought it was getting out ahead of the tragedy at Bondi by immediately agreeing to address the obvious cause of the carnage: the possession by violent Muslim extremists of quick-fire weapons.

Unfortunately, the conservative Jewish leadership had other ideas.

Rather than express gratitude at the government’s alacrity at committing to a solution that both fits the problem and would - given this this country’s extensive experience with gun control - most be guaranteed to work, they demanded the Albanese government “deal with” antisemitism.

This non-sequitur took the government some time to understand. In the past, domestic terror events like the Lindt cafe siege and ambush at Wieambilla saw politicians from both sides attend funerals and pledge bipartisan support for serious law reform proposals designed to prevent the tragedy being mourned from ever happening again.

Now, mourners were attending political pep rallies held by former conservative ministers determined to divide, while the actual Coalition leader, Sussan Ley - having initially offered the prime minister and all Commonwealth and State agencies her party’s “full and unconditional support” - retreated to the unhelpful and inaccurate claim that the PM had blood on his hands.

All this despite it being Labor governments, including the current one, that implemented the limitations on civil rights demanded by some Jewish advocacy groups on the grounds they would make us safe.

Gun control works

Gun control is the only harm mitigation strategy that we know can and does work. Not just generally, but here in Australia, where it has saved literally thousands of lives, preventing around 37 homicides and 200 suicide deaths per year.

It works by reducing the number of Australians who can legally keep firearms and bans access completely to weapons that make mass murder easy, including all automatic and most semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.

How did the Akrams get the guns they used to such terrifying effect on December 14? In the wake of the massacre, ABC journalist Matt Bevan was preoccupied with this question, too:

“Video shows the shooter firing two shots in two seconds. He’s firing over and over and over before he’s finally forced to reload. This happened in Australia. I thought - in fact the world thought - that a shotgun capable of firing so many rounds so quickly was banned here...Yet according to NSW police, apparently the gun the shooter had was legal.” 

The reason is that Australia’s world leading gun control laws were never fully implemented. As well, the legislation was written in ways that targeted the weapons that, in 1996, were able to fire rapidly and repeatedly without reloading.

This would not have mattered if our political leaders had kept pace with new developments in gun technology, and kept the legislation updated to ensure these new models were on the restricted or banned list.

But they didn’t, basically because a serious chunk of Coalition voters never supported firearms restrictions and still don’t. This means they threaten to withhold their support for updating the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) which makes some gun control advocates wary. They think - probably correctly - that the long-term success of gun restrictions in Australia requires our unusual bi-partisan consensus on the issue to hold.

Australia’s gun control laws need fixing

Bondi proved that Australia’s gun laws are broken and we can no longer delay fixing them, bipartisan support or not. There is no way that guns able to fire one bullet a second and eight bullets without reloading - which was the capacity of the guns used to kill 15 people and injure another 40 at Bondi - conform to either the spirit and intent of the NFA.

As a member of the Jewish community, I see it as our community’s obligation to use the rare moments that follow a tragedy like the one that’s just befallen us - when unity and shared purpose overcome the petty political divisions of the day - to ensure the nightmare of Bondi never happens again. Not to us or any Australians.

Instead, I fear that sections of the community are either playing wingmen for, or having their fear and grief manipulated by, an Opposition trying to avoid the internal divisions that would arise if they were forced to vote on gun control legislation.

These are internal divisions that, if put to the test, would almost certainly see the Coalition refuse to support updating the legislation, potentially leaving it vulnerable to the charge of abandoning the Jewish community or being cast as antisemitic.

This is why the Coalition has made itself the champions of the Royal Commission. By focussing on an inquiry into antisemitism, Sussan Ley has not just turned the spotlight on an issue where Labor is vulnerable. She has deflected attention away from the fact that the Coalition’s own far-right members are hopelessly out of touch with the vast majority of Australians who support restrictions on guns.

Leslie Cannold writes a Substack column called Unreceived Wisdom

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About the author

Leslie Cannold

Leslie Cannold

Associate Professor Leslie Cannold works at the Victorian Mental Health Tribunal and the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership based at Monash University. She is a former education and ethics columnist at The Age and Sydney Sun Herald. She writes a column on Substack called Unreceived Wisdom.

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