Toughest Laws?
A Vanguard of One.

ABC News reports that “NSW premier pledges ‘toughest gun laws of any state’ in buyback scheme after Bondi terror attack” — presenting what it describes as the first stage of the National Gun Buyback. From 2 November, NSW licence-holders who exceed the new caps, or whose licences no longer permit certain firearms, may surrender them for payment — up to 274,000 firearms, about a quarter of the State’s registered stock, from 50,000 owners. To the report’s credit, it is candid about the cost (“hundreds of millions of dollars”) and honest that most jurisdictions are opposed or uncommitted. The measure it describes is another matter.

The scheme is tied throughout to the Bondi terror attack — a terrorist atrocity, and a failure of intelligence and security. But the remedy acquires and destroys the lawfully-registered firearms of tens of thousands of vetted owners who have committed no offence. No link is shown between those ~274,000 lawful firearms and what happened at Bondi. Invoking a massacre to justify taking the property of the law-abiding is an emotional connection, not a causal one.

The Premier calls the cost “a price worth paying.” Worth paying for what measured reduction in harm? On the best independent evidence, that link is not established — and most firearm crime involves illicitly-held firearms, not the registered stock this scheme targets.

The second is the ACT’s own committee, examining the very caps now proposed here — and its priority recommendation against firearm theft was strengthened storage, compliance and licence pre-approval, not caps (Report 9, Recommendation 7). And the most rigorous recent study of the 1996 buyback (Duenow et al, 2024) found that while firearm deaths fell, overall homicide was not reduced — lethal harm substituted to other means. “Strictest legislation in Australia” measures political effort, not outcome; a law can be the strictest in the country and still not make anyone safer if it acts on the wrong pool.

Only NSW and WA have legislated caps; five of eight jurisdictions have declined them. On the buyback, NSW is the only jurisdiction firmly committed and actually proceeding. The ABC describes the ACT and Tasmania as “committed,” but records their funding as unresolved — which is not a firm commitment; the ACT’s position remains to be confirmed.

Compensation runs on a fixed schedule ($450–$1,000), with higher-value firearms capped at $10,000. For many quality sporting and collectible arms that is likely to fall short of fair market value — so a compelled surrender is not fully compensated. Because the scheme is co-funded 50:50 by the Commonwealth, whether compensation is “just” is a live legal question (the High Court has held the just-terms guarantee cannot be sidestepped through Commonwealth grants); for the ACT, a Territory bound directly to just terms, the question is sharper still. These are matters for independent legal advice — but a scheme of this scale should answer them on the record.

The report is fair journalism. The measure is a very large, very expensive acquisition of lawful property from vetted owners, justified by a terrorist attack it would not have prevented and a “strictest-in-the-country” framing that measures effort, not effect — while the independent evidence finds no clear benefit from caps and buybacks of already-legal firearms. That most of the country has independently declined it is the most telling fact in the report.