Australia is set to launch a new gun buyback scheme in response to the Bondi beach attack.
Prime minster Anthony Albanese said it will be the biggest collection of weapons since the Port Arthur massacre nearly three decades ago. He has also unveiled major reform to combat hate speech, division and radicalization following the attack.
BBC reports: Speaking to media on Friday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there are now more than 4 million firearms in Australia – more than at the time of the Port Arthur massacre.
“We know that one of these terrorists held a firearm licence and had six guns, in spite of living in the middle of Sydney’s suburbs… There’s no reason why someone in that situation needed that many guns.
“If you’re going to reduce the number of guns, then a buyback scheme has to be a piece of that puzzle,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett added.
The new scheme will purchase surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms, and will be funded on a 50-50 basis with the states and territories. Hundreds of thousands of firearms will be collected and destroyed, the government estimates.
National cabinet has also agreed to impose limits on the number of firearms held by any one individual, restrict open-ended firearms licensing and the types of guns that are legal and make Australian citizenship a condition of holding a firearm licence.
Work on a national firearms register will be accelerated and firearm regulators will have better access to criminal intelligence.
On Friday, New South Wales Police said they were preparing to release seven men with extremist ideology, but that they would continue to be monitored.
Tactical officers swarmed on the group, who had travelled from Victoria and were known to police there, in dramatic scenes in the suburb of Liverpool on Thursday. Officers found a knife, but no guns or other weapons.
NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told a press conference there is “no confirmed link” between the alleged terrorists and the detained group, but that Bondi Beach was one of several locations the latter was intending to visit.
“Whilst this specific threat posed by the males is unknown, I can say that the potential [for] a violent offence being committed was such that we were not prepared to tolerate the risk,” Commissioner Lanyon said.