2025-12-18
26 分钟In the days
since at least 15 people were murdered in an anti-Semitic massacre on Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday,
Australia has been reckoning with some big questions.
Among them,
how was it possible for this tragedy to happen in a nation that has had to deal with mass shootings in the past and specifically changed its laws to control who can own a firearm?
And why are there now more registered firearms in Australia than there were 30 years ago?
From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman in London.
And I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC.
And today on The Global Story,
why gun control in Australia is more complicated than many people think.
Our show is about where the world and America intersect.
And so as we were thinking about the attack that happened at Bondi Beach over the weekend,
it was sadly hard not to think about the frequency of mass shootings here in the United States.
Australia had a major mass shooting in 1996 and it led to a big change.
Within 12 days, 12 days there was a ban on semi-automatic weapons,
there was a national gun buyback program and hundreds of thousands of guns were handed in and Australians made it illegal to own an unregistered firearm in Australia.
That sort of change just seems inconceivable from my vantage point here in Washington, DC.
There is no federal assault weapons ban here in the US, nor is there a national gun buyback program.
In fact, in the years since that shooting in Australia,
back in the 1990s, there's been a long list of shootings here in America.