The horrific anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Bondi, the most deadly mass shooting since the Port Arthur massacre thirty years ago, makes gun law reform in Australia necessary. Suggestions from former prime minister John Howard and others that gun law reform is just “a distraction” are cynical in the extreme.

Precisely no one is suggesting gun law reform is the only solution in response to the atrocity at Bondi. Clearly, there is much more than can be done to tackle rising antisemitism and hate speech effectively.

It has been interesting to watch many politicians who defended the right to be bigot just a few years ago, now leading the charge to criminalise hate speech. There may also have been intelligence failures that need to be examined. But when a man whose son was investigated by ASIO for links to Islamic State extremists is able to enact mass murder with a stockpile of six legal firearms, it is clear Australia’s gun laws are not working as intended.

Australia is not the United States; gun ownership is not a right, it is a privilege. Australians accept that many people have legitimate reasons for owning guns, like farmers. But most Australians think we should restrict who has guns, how many, why they have them and what kinds of guns they have.

Australia Institute research shows there are now more guns in Australia than ever before. As of 2024, there are more than 4 million guns legally owned by the civilian population. This is 25 per cent more than before the Port Arthur shootings in 1996 when there were around 3 million guns. After the Howard government gun reforms, including the national buyback scheme, the number of legally owned guns in Australia dropped below 2.5 million-the jump from there to 4 million guns in 2024 is a 60 per cent increase.

Australia’s gun control laws have been effective, but they are neither perfect nor complete.

In most of Australia, there is no limit on the number of guns an individual can own. In NSW alone, there are 75 people who own more than 100 guns each, according to NSW police data. Western Australia is the only state to have legislated a cap on the number of guns an individual can own, five for most licensees, and 10 for farmers and competition shooters.

More than 2000 guns are stolen every year in Australia, based on data obtained from police. That’s one every four hours. Based on data the Australia Institute obtained from police in each state and territory, at least 9,000 guns have been stolen since 2020 and over 44,000 since 2000. Theft is the greatest single source of firearms hitting the black market, according to data from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.

Thirty years after the Commonwealth, state and territory governments unanimously supported the National Firearms Agreement, to which they reaffirmed their commitment in 2017, Australia still has no National Firearms Register.

The National Firearms Register would be a “central hub of data from each state and territory, allowing near real-time [firearms] information sharing across the country”. That Australia still has no operational centralised gun registry is an egregious public policy failure, one the Albanese government has sought to rectify, but not quickly enough.

One of the hold ups is that each state and territory has a different system and way of recording licensed gun owners and the firearms they own. In the ACT, records are still largely kept on paper, including ‘the number of licenses granted for firearms dealing, collecting, recreational hunting, vermin control, and sports shooting’.

In many cases, the Australia Institute was forced to obtain the latest firearms data by freedom-of-information requests.

To pretend gun reforms are simply a distraction is to ignore what a massive public policy success Australia’s gun laws have been for the past 30 years. In the wake of the reforms, gun homicides rapidly declined, as did gun-related suicide. Unlike the almost daily carnage we see guns inflict on civilians in the United States, mass shootings have been extremely rare in Australia since 1996. It’s horrifying to even contemplate the potential scale of last Sunday’s attack, had automatic weapons not been banned thirty years ago.

The Prime Minister announced a new national gun buyback schemetargeting surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms on Friday, part of a new commitment from federal, state and territory governments to tighten gun laws across the country.

A day of mourning will also be held on Sunday, December 21, during which Mr Albanese asked all Australians to hold a minute’s silence and light a candle at 6:47pm.

Yes, gun law reforms are only part of a comprehensive response to this terrorist attack. But they are probably the fastest and most straightforward policy response governments can enact that will make Australians safer.

Anti-Semitism, and other racism, is much more difficult to stop. Jewish businesses in Sydney are closing because they worry they can no longer guarantee the safety of their staff. Neo-Nazis have held public rallies in Melbourne and Sydney and a group of neo-Nazis intend to register as a political party ahead of the next election (which the AEC has warned it has no legislative or regulatory power to stop). There has also been a backlash against the Muslim community, with video emerging of the desecration of a Muslim graveyard in Sydney.

The Albanese government has already legislated on hate speech, hate crimes, hate symbols and doxxing, and it just announced further crackdowns on hate speech and radicalisation this week. Concerns from Jewish and other civil society groups that the legal definition of anti-Semitism will conflate anti-Semitism with criticism of the state of Israel show how difficult this is to legislate without eroding civil liberties. Max Kaiser, the executive officer at the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), said, “Our grief should not be used as a political weapon, nor as an excuse to pursue agendas that divide communities,” warning that crackdowns on protests and universities risked creating further division.

If we allow our response to this tragedy to deepen divisions within our community, we will all be less safe. Standing united in our opposition to anti-Semitism and hate is the only way forward. Together.

One thing is certain, the fewer guns in Australia, the safer all Australians will be.

This article originally appeared in The Canberra Times.