Australian leaders quickly vowed to tighten up the country's laws on firearm ownership in the wake of the deadly gun attack on Jewish people at Bondi Beach on Sunday. Australia has a history of reacting quickly to gun violence with legislation, and many have credited a ban on rapid-fire long guns brought in following a 1996 mass-shooting with sharply reducing death in the years since.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proposed new gun restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain and reviewing existing licenses over time, just hours after decrying the Bondi Beach massacre as an act of antisemitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.

"The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws," Albanese said after authorities revealed that the older of the two suspected gunmen, who were father and son, had held a gun license for a decade and amassed his six guns legally. Those weapons, including rifles and at least one shotgun, were believed to have been used in the Sunday attack, according to police.

Other government leaders also proposed restricting gun ownership to Australian citizens, a measure that would have excluded the older suspected gunman, who came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa and became a permanent resident after marrying a local woman, according to authorities. Officials wouldn't confirm what country he had migrated from.

His son, who doesn't have a gun license, is an Australian-born citizen.

The government leaders also proposed the "additional use of criminal intelligence" in deciding who was eligible for a gun license. That could hypothetically have meant that a 2019 investigation into the son's suspicious associates, confirmed Monday by Albanese, would have disqualify the father from owning a gun.

Christopher Minns, premier of New South Wales, where Bondi, a suburb of Sydney, is located, said his state's gun laws would change, but he could not yet detail how.

"It means introducing a bill to Parliament to — I mean to be really blunt — make it more difficult to get these horrifying weapons that have no practical use in our community," Minns said. "If you're not a farmer, you're not involved in agriculture, why do you need these massive weapons that put the public in danger and make life dangerous and difficult for New South Wales Police?"

Australia's ban on semi-automatic long guns came after 1996 massacre
The attack was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in Australia, since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people were murdered.

Just 12 days after that shooting, Australian lawmakers approved legislation banning the sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns; forcing people to present a legitimate reason, and wait 28 days, to buy any firearm; and initiating a massive, mandatory gun-buyback for banned weapons.

The Australian government confiscated and destroyed nearly 700,000 firearms in the wake of the law being adopted, reducing the number of gun-owning households by half.

"It is incontestable that gun-related homicides have fallen quite significantly in Australia, incontestable," former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who defied many in his own conservative party to usher in the new laws, told CBS News' Seth Doane two decades later, in 2016.

In the 15 years before those laws were passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia. In the two decades since, there was not a single one. Gun homicides overall decreased by nearly 60% in the same period.

"People used to say to me, 'You violated my human rights by taking away my gun,'" Howard told CBS News. "And I'd [respond], 'I understand that. Will you please understand the argument, the greatest human right of all is to live a safe life without fear of random murder.'"

Asked to respond to critics who said the fall in gun deaths did not necessarily happen because of the legislation, Howard told CBS News: " I can say that, because all the surveys indicate it."

"The number of deaths from mass shootings, gun-related homicide has fallen, gun related suicide has fallen," he said. "Isn't that evidence? Or are we expected to believe that that was all magically going to happen? Come on!"

A study published earlier this year, however, found that Australia still had some way to go to fully implement the 2016 legislation, called the National Firearms Agreement. The paper, by the Australia Institute think tank, said some of the measures in the law had yet to be fully brought into force 29 years later, and that others were being inconsistently enforced across different states.

The law "was ambitious, politically brave, and necessary for public safety," the report concluded, lauding Howard's will to defy his fellow lawmakers.

However, "Australia still allows minors to hold firearm licenses, still lacks a National Firearms Register, and still has inconsistent laws that make enforcement difficult," the group said, adding that overall gun ownership across the country had actually boomed over the last three decades.

"There are now over four million registered privately owned guns in Australia: 800,000 more than before the (1996) buyback," the institute said in its May report. "Australians needs gun laws that live up to the Howard Government's bravery, and right now Australia does not have them."

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