On December 14, 2025, as families gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah, terror struck. A father-and-son duo, allegedly inspired by Islamic State ideology, opened fire on the crowd. Fifteen lives extinguished – including a child and a rabbi – dozens more wounded, in Australia’s worst mass shooting in nearly three decades.
Barely hours later, US Vice President JD Vance weighed in – not with unreserved condolence, but with a political jab: suggesting the atrocity “would have never happened” if Australians were allowed to carry arms, and declaring how “truly grateful” he was for America’s Second Amendment.
Grateful. In the wake of bodies still warm on a Sydney beach.
How grateful must Vance be when a mother drops her young daughter at school for the last time – only to identify her bullet-riddled body in a morgue that afternoon? Over 400 school shootings in the US since Columbine; children drilled to hide under desks while Australian kids play without that shadow.
How grateful when a man stumbles home drunk, argues with his wife, and in a rage ends her life with a handgun pulled from the hallway drawer? Intimate partner gun homicides claim hundreds of American women yearly – rates dwarfing Australia’s near-elimination of such deaths post-1996 reforms.
How grateful when a husband kisses his family goodbye, heads to work, and never returns – gunned down by a disgruntled ex-colleague who legally acquired an arsenal? Workplace massacres such as Virginia Tech or the thousands of smaller shootings that pepper US headlines.
These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re the daily fabric of life under the system Vance boasts about. Almost 47,000 gun deaths in the US last year alone – over 120 every single day. Mass shootings (four or more victims) happen almost daily. Meanwhile, Australia’s strict laws – triggered by the 1996 Port Arthur massacre – have kept such horrors vanishingly rare for 29 years.
Vance’s remark isn’t just tone-deaf; it’s dangerously detached. This was a planned terrorist attack on a soft, open-air target. Armed beachgoers might have escalated chaos – crossfire amid panicked families – or done nothing against determined assailants. (In reality, an unarmed bystander heroically disarmed one gunman, saving lives without adding more bullets.)
But why let facts intrude on ideology? Sydney’s grief becomes mere fodder to defend a status quo that sacrifices thousands of American lives yearly – all so Vance can feel “grateful.”
Politicians exploiting foreign tragedies to score points at home is nothing new, but doing it while victims are still being buried? That’s a new low – even for the culture wars.
Australia mourns, unites, and already moves to tighten laws further. America? We get lectures from leaders grateful of a system that normalises child coffins too small.
Mr Vance: Keep your gratitude. We’ll take the lower body count – and the humanity to grieve without the lecture.
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Michael; Thank you, so well written – nothing more to be said.
Quite so Michael.
Why does Oz continue leaving itself open to the mind-blown audacity of America, the perpetrators and sellers of horror?
USAnia’s massive gun ownership has not so far done a good job on reducing mass shootings. Exactly when will it start to help, Mr Bowman?
Thanks for this article, Michael
And he is not only “grateful”; he is smug. “Contentedly confident of one’s ability, superiority, or correctness; complacent”.
Well good on you JDV. You consider yourself a leader. You ain’t mate 😭
Michael, thank you for your work and dedication, to you and yours, and to all the other contributors to this community that I have missed, merry Christmas.
What a contrast, the VP of the United States, an allegedly educated man who would prefer to see a re-run of the OK Corral and Ahmed Al-Ahmed an unarmed Arab man of Syrian heritage who without thinking of his own safety, pounced on one of the shooters, disarmed him, was shot in the process and undoubtedly saved several lives.
I stand with Mr Ahmed !
For a perspective of the bondi murders:
In the 1990s men killed 125 women (and many of their children) a year.
This century the murders are down to 100 women a year.
Sadly, there is not much noise from the men in religion, nor the men in the media, nor the men in politics, about such awful statistics????????
ps
The Bondi murders were religious and as such are protected from investigation and exposure.
Thus making the simple task of society knowing the beliefs of the 4 major bible religions, impossible.
The leaders of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in Australia should discuss their beliefs of each other to decide how to prevent such terrible murders.
The liberal Prime Ministers, Howard (Bryant), Abbott (Lindt Cafe) and Morrison (WA and Darwin) were afforded instant support from the Labor opposition.
Sadly, Albo, rather than bipartisan support, has been subjected to blatant politicking, by the current opposition, minor parties and ex politicians.
wam:
The Bondi massacre was political. ISIS is, and always has been, far more a political movement than religious.