Brown University and Bondi Beach Shooting
On Saturday, December 13, 2025, a lone gunman opened fire inside a classroom at the Barus & Holley Engineering Building at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The shooting claimed the lives of two students and injured nine others. Rhode Island enforces some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S. These include: Mandatory background checks for all firearm purchases (including private sales), a seven-day waiting period before possession, a “blue card” permit system for handguns that requires training and testing, a ban on assault-style weapons and magazines exceeding 10 rounds, and even a “duty to retreat” law. Despite these “common sense” restrictions, the shooting still occurred—underscoring that no amount of legislation is going to be able to prevent an attack like this.
Bondi Beach Shooting
In another devastating incident, a terrorist attack occurred on Sunday evening, December 14, 2025, targeting a Hanukkah celebration near Bondi Beach in Sydney at Archer Park. Two individuals, identified as a father and son, opened fire from a pedestrian bridge, killing 15 civilians, including a child, and injured approximately 40 others. Australia enforces one of the world’s strictest gun-control regimes since the 1996 Port Arthur assassination: This includes; uniform national ban on semi‑automatic rifles and pump‑action shotguns, mandatory background checks, 28-day waiting periods, a firearm licensing process with restrictions tailored to occupational or recreational needs. Australia also had a gun buyback that removed around 650,000 firearms.
Notably, both recent shootings cluster around the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which occurred on December 14, 2012. Sandy Hook claimed 28 lives—20 children and six staff—when a shooter fatally shot his mother, then used semiautomatic weapons to attack the school before turning the gun on himself. Sandy Hook brought renewed urgency to the U.S. gun-control debate and inspired various reforms, including Connecticut’s expanded assault-weapon ban and a firearms offender registry. Despite recent renewed regulations in the U.S. these tragedies highlight that legal frameworks alone do not eliminate risk. It is easy to blame a particular type of gun, but some of the most deadly mass shootings occurred with traditional firearms and not the political and media hyped “assault weapon” What stands out is injury and casualty numbers are almost always tied to how long it takes for bad guy to encounter an obstacle. That obstacle could be a well planned and rehearsed lockdown or evacuation process, but more often than not it requires the intervention of an armed response. Gun bans or regulations will do little to stop mass shootings. If legislators were really interested in protecting people they would focus their efforts on enforcing the laws already on the books, and removing the restrictions on law abiding citizens right to keep and bear arms.
