Australian gun owners will be offered cash for their firearms in the nation’s largest buyback in nearly 30 years.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the program in response to Sunday’s Bondi massacre, which left 15 people dead.<\/p>\n
One of the two gunmen who carried out the attack legally owned six firearms.<\/p>\n
Albanese said “hundreds of thousands” of guns would be collected and destroyed but did not provide a timeline on the scheme.<\/p>\n
“There are now more than four million firearms in Australia, more than at the time of the Port Arthur massacre nearly 30 years ago,” he told reporters in Canberra on Friday.<\/p>\n
New laws were being developed to clamp down on gun ownership, with governments planning to reduce the number of firearms a person can legally own.<\/p>\n
There will also be tougher limits on the kinds of weapons legally available.<\/p>\n
Under the buyback scheme, which would target the newly banned firearms, states and territories will be responsible for collecting the guns and paying owners to surrender them.<\/p>\n
Federal police will then destroy the guns.<\/p>\n
Matilda, 10, was among 15 people killed in the attack during Hanukkah celebrations on Sunday. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
The scheme will be similar to the buyback introduced by then-prime minister John Howard following the Port Arthur mass shooting in Tasmania which killed 35 people.<\/p>\n
“Australians are rightly proud of our gun laws … we’re not home to the constant carnage we see in some countries,” Albanese said.<\/p>\n
Albanese said change was needed because of the Bondi attack, and other incidents in Queensland and Victoria where sovereign citizens had fatally shot police officers.<\/p>\n
“The terrible events at Bondi show we need to get more guns off our streets,” Albanese said.<\/p>\n
A national day of reflection would also be held to honour the victims of the Bondi massacre.<\/p>\n
Albanese said Sunday would be a day to remember the 15 lives lost in the attacks and stand in solidarity with the Jewish community, with flags to fly at half mast.<\/p>\n
The day will mark one week since two Islamic State-inspired gunmen carried out the attack on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach.<\/p>\n
“We invite people across Australia to light a candle at 6.47pm exactly one week since the attack unfolded as a quiet act of remembrance with family, friends or loved ones,” Albanese said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian gun owners will be offered cash for their firearms in the nation’s largest buyback in nearly 30…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-191525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}