Tougher gun laws will be written in Sydney – but they will land here

After the Bondi Beach attack, Sydney and Canberra moved fast: promises of tighter gun laws, faster registers and tougher eligibility checks.

That’s the part everyone sees.

What matters next is what happens after the cameras leave because the impact won’t be felt in a ministerial media room. It will be felt in places like Tamworth, Gunnedah, Inverell, Narrabri and Moree, where firearms can be tools of work as well as sport.

So this isn’t “someone else’s issue”. It will shape how people in our patch experience licensing, compliance, and policing.

What is on the table

A lot of options are being floated, including limits on open-ended licences, caps on how many firearms a person can have, tighter rules on types and modifications and restricting permits to Australian citizens.

NSW Police said one of the alleged gunmen was a licensed firearms holder, with six firearms licensed to him.

Prime Minister Albanese said people’s circumstances can change and that licences should not be in perpetuity.

NSW Premier Minns has said the state is looking at reforms and has argued against permanent licensing settings.

The part Sydney sometimes misses

Out here, people don’t talk about firearms in the abstract. We talk about what they’re for.

Service NSW lists genuine reasons for a firearms licence, including primary production, business or employment and sport shooting. It also states self-protection is not a genuine reason.

Most people in the region understand that line, even when they don’t like it. The political job now is to reduce risk without treating legitimate rural users as a social problem.

That’s where “tougher laws” can go wrong.

A blanket cap on numbers might sound neat at a press conference. In practice, it can hit primary producers, professional pest controllers, sporting shooters and collectors in very different ways.

It is the same with “genuine reason” reforms. If the settings don’t match how work is actually done in the bush, the result is not better safety – it is more red tape for people who were never the threat in the first place.

Risk checks need to work in small towns

Regional towns run on relationships. That’s a strength… but it also makes reporting concerns hard.

In September 2025, I emailed the NSW Police Firearms Registry to raise a public-safety concern about a person I believed may have access to firearms. I asked police to assess whether the person held a NSW firearms licence and to take appropriate risk-management action if needed.

That experience sits alongside the question people keep asking after Bondi: if warning signs show up, do they trigger meaningful checks or do they disappear into silence?

NSW audit reporting on firearms regulation notes the registry has enforcement tools, including suspension and revocation of licences, and it calls for clear guidance on proportionate enforcement.

In plain terms: the system can act. Public confidence depends on whether it does act and whether it can explain its standards without breaching privacy.

If policy is being rewritten, regional communities should insist on:

1. Smarter licensing, not louder politics – stronger periodic reassessment, clearer triggers for review and better integration of relevant intelligence with safeguards.
2. Fair rules for rural use – protect legitimate primary production pathways while targeting accumulation and high-risk access.

Bondi has created momentum for tougher laws. The regional test is whether “tougher” becomes “smarter” – and whether safety improves without widening the policing net onto people who were never the threat.

Dean Foley grew up in Gunnedah and later served as an analyst in the Royal Australian Air Force before founding Barayamal, an Indigenous business accelerator. He is a contributor to the New England Times covering Indigenous Affairs, procurement and community-led economic development.

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