After every serious incident involving a firearm in Australia, the policy response follows a familiar path. Governments move quickly to propose tighter gun laws, and those laws are directed, first and foremost, at licensed owners, regardless of the situation.
Following the Bondi Beach terror attack in December 2025, that pattern again repeated. National Cabinet immediately moved toward stronger firearm controls, including proposals for ownership limits, tighter licensing settings, reclassification of certain firearms and a national buyback.
The Labor government ran a campaign that they were going to “take dangerous guns off our streets”, yet this is a long way from the reality of their policy, which will not affect a single illicit firearm.
For law abiding shooters, none of this is unusual. Following an event, the community waits for rushed and poorly thought policies, which inevitably lead to further restrictions, tighter licensing and additional limitations on lawful sport. None of which address the actual problem.
The problem is, governments see licensed firearm owners as an easy political win. It is far easier to regulate those who comply with the law, than coming up with tangible measures to tackle the criminal element and illegal firearms.
Licensed firearm owners are a known quantity. They are already in the system, recorded and compliant. In a fast moving news cycle, where governments want to be seen doing something, action directed at this group is immediate, quantifiable and enforceable. Policy changes can even be precisely measured and presented as outcomes in the (false) interest of ‘public safety’.
The problem is that this is not where the risk sits.
Illicit Firearms
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has consistently identified the primary sources of illicit firearms in Australia as illegal importation, domestic manufacture and theft. These firearms exist outside the lawful system and circulate through networks that operate beyond regulatory reach.
When the response to criminal firearm misuse is to further regulate licensed gun owners, it does not address the failure, it avoids confronting it.
Australia already operates under a comprehensive firearms framework built on licensing, registration and compliance. None of these settings affect the illegal use and possession of firearms by those operating outside the system.
Restrictions on ownership limits, licence conditions and buybacks only affect individuals who are licensed and already in the regulatory system, they do nothing to disrupt illicit supply or affect those in possession of illegal firearms.
Firearms regulation is most effective when it targets criminal behaviour, not when it defaults to licensed gun owners because they are the easiest group to regulate.
Australia Needs a Targeted Response
A response that targets illicit supply is challenging. It is more difficult to execute, harder to quantify, and takes significant time, money and resources to produce results.
Illegal importation of firearms requires enhanced border enforcement, including targeted cargo screening, improved detection of firearm parts and component shipments, stronger penalties reflecting the seriousness of organised trafficking, and closer international intelligence sharing to identify and intercept consignments before they reach Australia.
Domestic manufacture requires a focus on criminal intent and supply, supported by specialised law enforcement capability that understands how firearms are being produced and distributed. This includes increasing intelligence capabilities to monitor precursor components and consistent application of offences for illegal manufacture and trafficking.
Firearm theft remains a point of diversion into the illicit market and requires stronger deterrence and enforcement responses that reflect its role in supplying criminal access to firearms.
There is also a sequencing issue. Australia has established mechanisms for examining complex policy questions through inquiries and commissions. Allowing those processes to identify where gaps exist, rather than moving immediately to broad restrictions on lawful ownership will produce a more precise and defensible policy response.
Its Time For The Hard Fix
Australia’s firearms regulatory framework is often held up as a global benchmark. It works within the law abiding cohort it is designed to control, yet it does not address criminal possession or illicit supply.
Four million firearms owned by law abiding people are not the problem, a single illicit firearm in the hands of a criminal or a terrorist is. While governments continue to respond to illegal firearm use by tightening controls on people who are already complying, the result will remain predictable.
Regulation will increase within the lawful system, while the mechanisms that supply criminals remain largely untouched and continue to be sustained by illegal importation, domestic manufacture, theft and organised distribution.
This is not simply a gap in the regulatory system, it is a systemic failure by policymakers to target the actual risk where it exists. Until this changes, illicit supply and criminal possession will continue, and outcomes will not shift. After the next incident, the same process will repeat and regulation will tighten around the law abiding, and the drivers of criminal misuse will remain in place.