The weapons and firearms Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram could have accessed under NSW gun laws
Video of Sunday’s Bondi attackers firing into a crowd shows how quickly and repeatedly guns, legal in Australia, can be fired before being reloaded almost seamlessly, despite gun law reforms banning semi-automatic rifles after the Port Arthur massacre.
Police have not yet officially announced which weapons were used in the attack, but Australian Strategic Policy Institute national security program manager Dr. John Coyne said that it was revealed that among the weapons police found at the scene were the terror suspects’ high-powered bolt-action rifles and pump-action shotguns.
Coyne said the two suspects — Sajid Akram, 50, and his son, Naveed Akram, 24 — were able to fire the weapons in rapid succession thanks to the rifle’s “straight-pull bolt action,” allowing for rapid reloading.
NSW Police confirmed the six firearms were legally owned by Sajid, who was a member of a gun club.
“Over the last few years, what you call straight-shooting guns has proliferated,” said Coyne, a former federal marshal. “Because they are faster.
“This is a global trend; they are being designed and manufactured everywhere,” Coyne said. But the reason this trend was evident in Australia was because “people did not have access to semi-automatic fire weapons and approached that speed when fired repeatedly.”
The straight pull action, which Naveed Akram clearly demonstrates in a video, means that once the gun is fired, the shooter only needs to pull the slide back in one motion to load another round.
The young suspect’s apparent proficiency suggests he has had plenty of practice.
But as American weapons expert Brian Kimber points out in X, the gun itself also makes this easier.
“So for people who don’t use guns: it really isn’t hard to do [practise] Practice and master gun manipulation at home,” the U.S. military veteran and podcaster wrote. “I promise I can have you easily turning the bolt this way in just a few days.”
Australia’s gun laws are adopted nationally but administered at the state level. In NSW, Coyne said the weapons used at Bondi were likely “category B”, meaning “a lever-action shotgun with a magazine capacity not exceeding five rounds”.
If this is the case, the “real reasons” for owning and using these models include a wide variety of purposes: sport and target shooting at a distance or on private land, hunting game or pests on private or public land, and “primary production” (farming)..
“The reasons people give are that they want to shoot a group of animals, multiple shots, quick shots,” Coyne said.
Rate of fire is also one of the key marketing points that gun manufacturers use to sell these models.
On its Australian website, the manufacturer claims that Beretta’s straight-pull bolt-action rifle, which retails for around $2600 in Australia, “guarantees the highest speed, accuracy, sensitivity, safety and ease of use from the first pull of the trigger to the smoothness of reloading.”
The gun is “a versatile, modern, modular weapon suitable for all types of hunters and shooting environments… [and] “It summarizes all the experience Beretta has gained over the years working in both the military and civilian fields.”
Deakin University criminology professor David Bright said post-Port Arthur buybacks, gun amnesties and bans on semi-automatic firearms were effective enough to ensure there have been no mass shootings in Australia since 1996.
Rules regarding firearm ownership mean that shooters must be licensed, demonstrate a genuine reason for owning a firearm, and then must have a genuine need to own a particular type of firearm. However, only Western Australia limits the number of weapons an individual license holder can own.
The WA law, which came into force earlier this year, sparked strong reactions from the gun lobby; Australian Shooting Industry Foundation CEO James Walsh said: he said he was there “There is no correlation between the number of legally owned firearms and violent crime.”
Walsh did not return calls from this imprint on Monday.
Nationally, the number of licensed gun owners in Australia has halved since 1996, while the number of firearms in the country has risen to record levels. A recent Australia Institute report showed that 4 million guns nationwide belonged to civilians; 25 percent more than thirty years ago.
“This is because licensed owners have more guns than they used to,” Bright said.
While many people think guns are largely found in rural areas, a recent report found that a third of the 1.1 million guns in NSW are held in the cities of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.
“As a country, we need to have this conversation again,” Bright said. “Most Australians support stronger gun laws.”
NSW Premier Chris Minns said on Monday it was “time to make a change” to firearms registration laws in NSW.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday proposed limiting the number of firearms that can be licensed per person.
Criminal law expert Associate Professor Andrew Hemming from the University of Southern Queensland said the new generation of quick-loading guns needed to be rethought. Authorities should also look carefully at whether individual firearms have been altered, he said.
More generally, Hemming said Australia’s gun control laws were suffering from a lack of attention. There were inconsistencies between the states and they were not developing in the right direction. “These are the dog’s breakfast… and they are slowly unraveling. This is a wake-up call to the Australian people,” he said.
Hemming said state and federal attorneys general “need to put this at the top of their agenda.”
Bondi terror attack given more coverage
Michael Bachelard is The Age’s senior writer and former deputy editor and research editor. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, written two books and won several awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.Connect with: excitement or email.
