On August 16, Australian Prime Minister Albenes and New South Wales Premier Chris Minns announced that the state would launch the country's largest gun buyback program in nearly 30 years starting from November 2.
According to the plan announced by the New South Wales government, the first phase will primarily involve the repurchase of weapons that cannot be legally held anymore due to gun reclassification or exceeding the new upper limits on the number of weapons held. Rifle and centerfire rifles will be compensated at $1,000 per piece (approximately 4,770 yuan), semi-automatic pistols and double-barreled shotguns at $850 per piece, and other firearms at $450 to $650 per piece. The second phase, which will begin in early 2027, will deal with some high-value firearms, with compensation reaching up to $10,000 per piece.
New South Wales government estimates that the new regulations may affect up to 274,000 registered firearms, which is about a quarter of the total number in the state. The federal and New South Wales governments will jointly bear the cost of repurchasing these firearms, and the firearms will be destroyed by the government.
The direct cause of this incident was the shooting at Boodie Beach on December 14, 2025. Two shooters fired at people participating in Hanukkah celebrations, resulting in 15 deaths. The police believe that the two suspects are father and son, and they are influenced by extremist ideas of the “Islamic State”.
What really shocked Australian politics was not just the scale of the attack, but the fact that the powerful firearms used by the gunman were obtained through legal channels. This means that the problem is not simply the “illegal guns getting into the streets,” but rather the failure of the existing system to prevent high-risk individuals from having access to legal firearms.
Such a political shock easily reminds Australians of the tragic events in Port Arthur in 1996. On April 28th of that year, a gunman used a semi-automatic weapon to kill 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania. After the tragedy, Prime Minister John Howard urged states to adopt the National Gun Agreement, which restricted the use of semi-automatic rifles and certain shotguns. This agreement also standardized requirements for firearms licenses, registration, and safe storage. As a result, about 650,000 guns were taken back by the government through buybacks.
This set of reforms later became a classic case in international gun control. The risk of gun-related deaths in Australia has significantly decreased, and mass shootings have become extremely rare. However, 30 years later, the Bundy Beach attack reminded Australia that the reforms of 1996 addressed the most dangerous types of guns at that time, but did not permanently solve the problems of an increasing number of guns and the identification of risks.
According to data from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, there are currently 4.1137 million firearms registered nationwide, distributed among approximately 929,700 licensed holders. The total number of firearms even exceeds that period following the Arthur Port tragedy. Among states, New South Wales has 1.1587 million firearms, making it the state with the highest number of firearms in Australia.
However, this does not mean that the gun control reforms of 1996 were a complete failure. Research from the University of Sydney shows that between 1997 and 2020, the proportion of Australians with guns in their homes nearly halved, and the proportion of families with guns also decreased significantly. What really changed was that the number of people with guns decreased, but those who remained had on average more guns. As a result, Australia’s risk level shifted from “guns becoming more common in households” to “guns being concentrated among a small number of licensed holders”.
This also explains why this round of reforms no longer focus solely on the type of guns, but begin to limit their number and require more stringent scrutiny of those who hold them. New South Wales now stipulates that a general license holder may own a maximum of 4 guns, while farmers and professional shooters can have up to 10 guns. The validity period of gun licenses has been reduced from 5 years to 2 years, allowing police to use criminal intelligence more effectively in reviewing applicants.
However, unlike in 1996 when states quickly reached a consensus, this so-called “national buyback” has not actually been implemented nationwide. New South Wales is the first state to implement it, while Queensland and Victoria have refused to participate. Other regions are still in negotiations. Right-wing political parties and gun ownership groups believe that the government is making law-abiding gun owners pay for terrorism and intelligence failures.
Therefore, the rearming of firearms in Australia from Arthur Port to Bondi Beach does not mean that the reforms implemented 30 years ago are ineffective. It indicates that gun control has never been a matter that can be resolved through legislation alone. Firearms can be reaccumulated, and there will always be loopholes in the system over time. Australia once changed its gun culture through a nationwide reform. Now, it needs to prove whether it still has the ability to bring all states back under the same rules after such tragic events.
