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Gun violence rocked communities on opposite sides of the globe in recent days. In Rhode Island, a gunman killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University. The suspect remains at large.
In Australia, two people — a father and son — shot and killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Twenty-seven others remain hospitalized. The father was killed and the son is in police custody. It appears the men were motivated by antisemitic hate, a growing problem around the world that cannot be ignored.
A bystander, Ahmed al Ahmed, was shown on video wrestling a long gun from one of the shooters at the beach. He has been hailed as a hero who saved lives.
The vastly different reactions to these two shootings by leaders in the U.S. and Australia highlight America’s broken, and deadly, approach to gun violence.
While President Donald Trump offered sympathy for the victims of both attacks, he summed up Saturday’s attack in Rhode Island by saying “things can happen.”
Such complacency should be shocking. Instead it is familiar.
Gun violence happens much too frequently in America. It doesn’t have to.
A day after Sunday’s shooting in Sydney, Australian leaders pledged stronger gun laws.
“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday.
In Australia, unlike the U.S., such a pledge will likely result in action because it has before.
Within weeks after a 1996 shooting massacre left 35 dead in Tasmania, Australia placed strict limits on gun ownership, including a virtual ban on rapid-fire rifles, a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases and registration requirements. About a third of the country’s guns were surrendered during a buyback program. Since then, gun deaths, including suicides, in Australia have decreased dramatically. The rate of deaths by firearms in Australia is 12 times lower than it is in the United States.
Shockingly, gun violence is so frequent in the U.S. that the Brown shooting was the second for two of the university’s students. Mia Tretta, a junior at Brown, was injured in a 2019 shooting at a high school in California.
“No one in this country even assumes it’s going to happen to them,” Tretta said. “Once it happens to you, you assume or are told it will never happen again, and obviously that is not the case.”
“I’m angry that I thought I’d never have to deal with this again, and here I am eight years later,” Zoe Weissman, a sophomore at Brown, told NBC News. She was a student at the middle school next to the Parkland, Florida, high school where a gunman killed 18 people in 2018.
We are angry as well.
We understand that Australia doesn’t have 2nd Amendment-style gun ownership protections, but those protections are not absolute and can’t continue to be used as an excuse for inaction to protect American lives.
We don’t believe that Australians love their fellow citizens more. However, it is clear that politicians there are not beholden to gun manufacturers and their lobbyists, allowing them to put the safety of their fellow citizens at the forefront.
American politicians could do the same. It would just take courage and a willingness to buck a powerful — and often threatening — group.
Australia’s commitment to take further action is a repudiation of the notion “thing will happen,” that gun carnage is somehow acceptable. It is a path that U.S. lawmakers should find the courage to follow.