Two gunmen opened fire on a celebration of the first day of Hanukkah at Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing 15 and injuring dozens more. One of the gunmen was killed, and another alleged shooter was injured and is now in custody.
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What do we know about the attack in Australia? Australian officials have described the shooting as a targeted antisemitic attack carried out against the Jewish community in Sydney. There were two gunmen: a father and a son.
What’s the context for the violence? Incidents of antisemitism are rising in Australia and globally; Jewish Australian communities have been targeted with antisemitic graffiti, vandalism, and arson over the past two years, resulting in the creation of an antisemitism task force in December 2024. Australia’s low levels of gun violence make the shooting shocking, but it remains situated firmly within a disturbing trend of similarly antisemitic incidents worldwide.
In addition to the string of recent incidents in Australia, a Jewish couple was shot and killed in Washington, DC, in May 2025, outside of an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. In October 2025, two people were killed in an attack on a UK synagogue over the Yom Kippur holiday.
What are Australian gun laws like? The violence in Australia is shocking for another reason as well: Mass shootings are exceedingly rare in Australia. This is the worst in almost 30 years, since a 1996 attack in Port Arthur killed 35 people. Australian lawmakers responded swiftly to that shooting, passing a broad — and effective — gun control law.
That law resulted in the mandatory buyback of some 650,000 guns, as well as a ban on some kinds of weapons, including automatic and semi-automatic rifles. Australia also established a national firearm registry and began requiring permits for firearm purchases.
The result was striking: While it didn’t entirely end gun violence in Australia, the National Firearms Agreement “likely saved a lot of lives,” as my colleague Zack Beauchamp reported in 2022. Gun deaths, both suicides and homicides, dropped substantially.
