The United States and Australia suffered horrific mass shootings over the weekend. First, a gunman at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, opened fire in a classroom building during final exams, killing two students and wounding nine others, several critically. And on Sunday morning at Bondi Beach in Sydney, a pair of Islamic terrorists sprayed bullets into a public Hanukkah celebration, killing at least 15.
Unsurprisingly, prominent Democrats have labeled the attacks as instances of “gun violence,” emphasizing the role of guns and downplaying the motives and identities of the shooters.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) referenced both tragedies in an X post Sunday afternoon while decrying the “epidemic of gun violence” and marking the Sandy Hook anniversary. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) also invoked Sandy Hook in response to the Brown shooting, lamenting that “we’ve done far too little to stop these recurring attacks.”
These despicable and intellectually bankrupt comments are low even by the standards of Hochul and Booker. To ascribe fundamental blame to guns or gun laws in either case is deeply disconnected from reality — and cynically manipulative.
We know for certain that Islamist antisemitism inspired the Bondi Beach attack. Australian police declared the shooting a terrorist incident linked to antisemitism. The two shooters involved, a father and son of Muslim background, specifically targeted Jews celebrating a holy day. Reducing this atrocity to generic “gun violence,” as if it were indistinguishable from a teenager accessing the family rifle, whitewashes the anti-Jewish hatred at root and absolves Islamism of responsibility. Progressives dare not name the ideology for fear of offending their woke base, so they redirect attention to guns.
This framing is especially absurd given that both Australia and Rhode Island have some of the world’s toughest gun laws on the books.
Following a mass shooting in 1996, Australia enacted sweeping reforms, featuring a mandatory government buy-back and a total ban on automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. In Australia, gun ownership is viewed as a privilege, not a right.
For its part, Rhode Island consistently ranks among the top states for strict firearm regulations according to gun-control advocacy groups, with universal background checks, red-flag laws, an assault-weapons ban, and high-capacity magazine limits. Brown University, meanwhile, is a “gun-free zone,” meaning that good guys with guns are unable to intervene in such instances.
Whether the shooter obtained his gun from out-of-state, as initial reports indicate, or he bought it in Rhode Island makes little tangible difference. The U.S. famously has more guns in circulation than people, including tens of millions of untraceable firearms on the black market. There is no way to “ban guns,” as progressives like to pretend, or to enact a government buyback program that wouldn’t disarm law-abiding citizens while leaving armed criminals with nonregistered guns.
TWO DEAD, NINE INJURED IN MASS SHOOTING AT BROWN UNIVERSITY
It’s understandable to want to “do something” in response to these atrocities. But enacting stricter gun laws wouldn’t achieve much in the way of preventing future ones. It’s wishful thinking at best and deliberate evasion at worst.
Democrats are quick to point to the “gun violence epidemic” following mass shootings because dealing with the true fundamental cause is politically inconvenient. Confronting the evil of Islamism and the sickness of our culture, which keeps churning out homicidal maniacs bent on mass murder, would force them to challenge their own assumptions. And we know that’s not something they’re willing to do.