(LifeSiteNews) — The mass murder in Sydney’s Bondi Beach is one of the worst crimes in Australian history.

The country, for the most part, has managed to avoid the kind of shooting incidents that have plagued other Western nations, especially the United States. The two shooters, Pakistani father and son immigrants, targeted Jewish Australians celebrating Hannukah, making it by far the nation’s worst anti-semitic attack.

The political response has revealed the limits of what governments can do about such crimes. Prime Minster Anthony Albanese, head of the left wing Labor Party, blamed “right wing extremism” – whatever that is supposed to mean – and vowed to tighten gun laws by restricting gun ownership to Australian citizens. (The older gunman, who was killed, had lived in Australia since 1998 on a student visa, and became a permanent resident after marrying a local woman.) The state premiers also said they would impose stricter laws.

The problem is, after the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, when 35 people were killed, Australia has imposed some of the strictest anti-gun laws in the world. There is very little more that the authorities can do to restrict ownership of weapons.

Even if they were able to identify improved legal measures, it would do little. Crimes are by definition a breaking of the law, so making more laws cannot offer greater deterrence, especially to terrorists who are willing to die, as these shooters were.

The expressions of horror and grief, including the holding of vigils, have been compelling. Fourteen people were killed, including four children, while 27 people were injured, including two police officers.

But the political debate has tended toward the simplistic, further underlying the limitations of government. After decades of heavy immigration from many parts of the world, Australia has become a complex, multi-ethnic country that seems to be poorly understood by the leadership class. The only nation with higher per capita immigration in the post-World War II period is Israel.

Some politicians, particularly on the right, were quick to demonize Muslim immigrants.  Most vocal was Pauline Hanson, leader of the minority One Nation party, who said the shootings were a predictable outcome from allowing Muslims to come into the country. She insisted that they do not assimilate and that they threaten Australian culture and social stability.

Yet even if her claim is accepted as correct, it is, by her own admission, too late. Many of the Muslims immigrated decades ago, especially from Lebanon. And it is clear that the incident cannot be depicted as a problem with mainstream Islam. For one thing, Albanese said there is “no evidence” the alleged shooters were part of a “wider [terrorist] cell,” or that they colluded with other people. He believes they were rather motivated by an “extreme perversion of Islam.”

More tellingly, an Australian Muslim of Syrian birth, Ahmed Al Ahmed, acted heroically to temporarily disarm one of the shooters. Footage of the 43-year-old’s actions has spread around the world, undermining the claim that the religion of Islam should be seen as the primary source of the problem. Al Ahmed’s parents, who migrated to Australia a couple of months ago, said their son acted because “he saw they were dying, and people were losing their lives.” He is now awaiting multiple surgeries for gunshot wounds.

The incident has fed into the recent debate in Australia over the mass killing of Gazans by the Israeli Defence Forces. There has been deep shock, especially for younger generations, who have witnessed on social media many horrific images of slaughter. That debate eventually led to Australia formally recognizing the Palestinian state, something that would have been unthinkable before the Gaza attacks started.

At the same time, measures were taken to counter anti-semitism, including the appointment of a Special Envoy to Combat Anti-semitism. On the face of it, these actions by the federal government point to the humane position that all forms of violence and prejudice are wrong and should be resisted.

Yet it did not stop the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from accusing the Australian government of causing the Bondi killings because of what he claims has been a “feeble” response since the attacks on October 7, 2023, and for its decision to recognize a Palestinian state. Netanyahu also praised Al Ahmed’s action as a “symbol of Jewish heroism” until it was pointed out to him that he isn’t Jewish.

If there has been a failure it is on the intelligence side. Albanese said the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) investigated the son, the surviving alleged shooter, in 2019. ASIO also interviewed the father, but deemed he was not a threat. The pair seem to have been good at keeping their intentions well hidden. Even close family members seem not to have known, believing they had gone fishing.

The incident underlines the asymmetry between government and terrorism. Governments have the power to oversee citizens who are mostly lawful but they have much more limited tools against unlawful actors. Few countries have made more effort than Australia to prevent mass killings, but in this case it has failed.