Australia's gun laws riddled with loopholes and workarounds: Experts

After Australia's deadliest mass shooting in 1996, the country rushed in some of the world's toughest gun laws, including mandatory licensing and background checks, as well as registration of every firearm.

- 

But a winding back of those laws, failure to update them with the internet age and growing complacency with background checks may have made it easier for two suspects behind the Dec 14 shooting during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney's Bondi Beach to acquire weapons, gun safety experts said.

Reeling from the attack that killed 15 people, Australia is now questioning the effectiveness of laws that have become a point of national pride. Australia typically has fewer gun deaths per year than the US has in a day, a statistic many Australians credit the gun laws with.

In effect, the laws are a patchwork system run by the eight state and territory police forces, negotiated by the federal government after the 1996 attack in Port Arthur, Tasmania, that killed 35 people.

Tweaks by some states in the years since have relaxed the oversight, enabling people to acquire more weapons with less supervision, the experts said.

According to the authorities, the older shooter at Bondi, named as Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot dead by police, received his gun licence in 2023 and had six legally owned weapons that he and his son allegedly used in the attack.

In 2008, the state of New South Wales removed a mandatory 28-day cooling-off period when a person with one gun wanted more; most states have made similar changes.

"The idea was that for each subsequent gun, the scrutiny should be more intense because it should be more difficult," said Ms Rebecca Peters, a gun control advocate who advised the Australian government on the 1996 law.

"Imagine if he'd had to have a 28-day waiting period for each of those guns. He wouldn't have, because New South Wales has abandoned it," added Mr Peters.

The state government, which has said it will urgently meet to consider new gun laws, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.