Golf legend Phil Mickelson responded to Australian PM Anthony Albanese’s post-Bondi Beach attack gun control push by noting that the two terrorists who opened fire Sunday evening “didn’t seem affected by the strict gun laws already in place.”
Mickelson used an X post to say, “In fact the shooting went on for a long time since there wasn’t anybody else with a gun to stop them.”
He linked to to Albanese’s speech about the possibility of enlarging Australian gun controls and said, “I’m not a big gun guy but even I’m not this dumb to believe what this guy is selling.”
Breitbart News reported that Albanese has suggested a considerable expansion of Australian gun controls in the days since the Bondi Beach attack. Ironically, the new controls would affect law-abiding citizens rather than the two terrorists who committed the heinous act — and others like them.
The New York Times noted the Australian government will consider measures including “a limit on the number of firearms a person can own and a ban on gun licenses for noncitizens.”
Albanese also suggested the possibility that the government may set up certain time frames for gun licenses to be reviewed in order to be sure those holding them have not become “radicalized.”
NPR noted that other gun controls on the table include ways to “speed up the establishment of a National Firearms Register” and changing import policies so as to bar “items involving 3D printing or accessories that hold large amounts of ammunition.”
Australia already has some of the most stringent gun controls in the world, and Mickelson’s point is that none of those controls appeared to hinder determined terrorists from taking innocent lives.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.