This article discusses the recent shooting at Bondi Beach. The article consists mostly of summarizing the event that transpired and discussing the aftermath of the shooting. Last Sunday at a Hanukkah event, two gunmen, a father and son, opened fire on the onlookers at the event. The gunmen killed 15 people with many others hospitalized. The total death toll was 16 as the police killed one of the shooters. This sparked new conversations about the possibility to reform and make even stricter gun laws in Australia. Australia already has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. The police say the gunmen held licenses since 2015 and this has led people to discuss the potential to reassess gun ownership more often.
I think this article is very important to not only inform people about this tragic event as well as discuss the impacts of it and the potential steps forward. I think that this is very important for Australia because it forces them to directly address anti-semitism which has been becoming a growing and relevant issue since the start of the war in Israel-Palestine. I think that this does not have as large an impact on the region as a whole because Australia is somewhat isolated from the rest of the region which is across the ocean and although they work together economically they do not domestically.
The main stakeholders in this are the government of Australia and the citizens of Australia. The Australian government needs to take action in order to make a change to prevent something like this from happening again. Anti-semitism has become a significant issue in the world and Jews, who make up a significant population of Australia, being 150,000 of 27 million. In order to make a change I think that shifting the gun laws away from this one time permission for gun ownership as people can over time sway and have their views changed in ways that could lead them to things such as these.
This is a direct tie to peace and conflict. Specifically ties to internal conflict because it is extremely important that the people in the country are able to feel safe and can thus legitimize the Australian government. This is a kind of internal social conflict that, should it escalate, may require a more significant response from the Australian government. This also relates to the topic of equality as it becomes necessary to ask if the government is able to provide the same level of protection to all groups.