Australia will take away excess weapons from its citizens. Prime Minister: The licensing system has failed

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday that Australia would introduce a nationwide gun buyback program, modeled on decisions made nearly 30 years ago after the mass killing in Tasmania. Surplus and illegally possessed weapons will be repurchased, the website of the Australian broadcaster ABC reported.

The decision was made after an anti-Semitic terrorist attack that killed 15 people celebrating Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light, on Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday. A flag of the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS) was found in the car of the attackers, father and son.

Albanese, who heads the government accused of inaction against the wave of anti-Semitism growing after the attack on Israel by the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, said that last week's attack on Bondi Beach proved that the authorities must limit access to weapons to the country's inhabitants, Reuters reported.

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The arms buyback program would be similar to reforms introduced shortly after the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people. 640,000 were seized then. firearms. “The terrible events in Bondi show that we need to remove more guns from our streets,” Albanese told a news briefing.

Both the federal government and the state government of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, have also committed to a number of reforms, including tightening gun control laws.

The older Islamist attacker had a firearms license and registered six firearms. “If a man in suburban Sydney needs six high-powered rifles and is able to get them under existing licensing systems, then something is wrong,” Albanese admitted. It is estimated that there are currently 4 million weapons in circulation in the country, inhabited by 27 million people.

The costs of the gun buyback program will be split between the federal and state governments. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has announced he will convene a session of Parliament to consider limits on the maximum number of guns a person could own and tighter licensing conditions.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose government purchased weapons after the Port Arthur massacre, warned, however, that today's center-left government, by focusing on the issue of weapons, is distracting society from the basic problem. Howard said he did not want the gun “to be used as an excuse to avoid debate about spreading hatred against the Jewish people,” ABC reported. (PAP)

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