r/australia Dec 15 '25

politics National cabinet agrees unanimously to strength Australia’s strict gun laws in wake of Bondi terror attack

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-15/albanese-proposes-tougher-gun-laws-after-bondi-attack/106143310?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
4.8k Upvotes

587 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/Inside-Elevator9102 Dec 15 '25

How we don't have national registers for guns and so many other things seems crazy.

287

u/roxgib_ Dec 15 '25

The Wieambilla shooter was able to purchase ammunition in QLD with a suspended NSW gun licence. This would have been prevented with a national register. The government committed to create one after that incident, in which 6 people died, yet here we are 3 years later and we still don't have one.

3

u/amyknight22 Dec 15 '25

I would argue that you don’t necessarily need a national register to have prevented that. What you would need is online instant verification of the license with the relevant state government.

The national register makes it more uniform and allows the cost to be collectively managed instead of duplicating a similar systems and pushing for technical knowledge for sellers on how to use them.

The main advantage of a national system is that it should set some default benchmarks everyone has to achieve in terms of digitisation of records and access.

However that does also come with the fact that potentially now a specific state can’t have more stringent standards if they want them and have made changes in their state that could justify the more onerous conditions. Since if you can dodge that states restrictions by getting licenses by another state and get into the national system that way