SYDNEY, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Australia’s capital will join a gun buyback as part of a response to a shooting spree that killed 15 at a Jewish festival in Sydney, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday.
Albanese’s centre-left government enacted laws in January for the gun buyback, tighter checks for gun licences and a crackdown on hate in the wake of the December 14 gun attack at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state.
The state, Australia’s most populous, became the first to commit to the plan, which will launch on November 2.
The Australian Capital Territory, home of the national capital Canberra, has agreed to a similar scheme in an effort to make sure “an antisemitic terrorist attack like we saw at Bondi can’t happen again”, Albanese said.
“I thank the ACT Government for their collaboration as we work to take guns off our streets in order to better protect Australians,” he said in a statement.
The ACT has 23,000 guns and more than 7,000 firearms licence holders, the statement said. It did not say when the ACT buyback would begin. Albanese’s office did not immediately respond to a request for details.
The gunmen accused of carrying out the Bondi Beach attack, a father and son who police say were inspired by Islamic State, used powerful firearms that were legally obtained. The surviving suspect is yet to enter pleas to a raft of charges, including 15 counts of murder.
Australia had a record 4.1 million firearms last year, the government has said.
The buyback is to be Australia’s largest since a similar campaign after a 1996 rampage in Tasmania’s Port Arthur, in which a gunman killed 35 people.
(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney)
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