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Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Here's the worst part of the Bondi Beach terror attack

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Mon, 15 Dec 2025, 8:05pm

Perspective with Ryan Bridge: Here's the worst part of the Bondi Beach terror attack

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Mon, 15 Dec 2025, 8:05pm

This terror attack in Sydney is what everyone else has been saying it is: absolutely horrific. Antisemitic terrorism.

Sadly, this type of attack is happening and will keep happening more frequently, according to intelligence agencies. And the worst part is that it's almost impossible to stop.

Australia has what the world considers the 'gold standard' gun control. After the Port Arthur massacre, they tightened up the rules.

But it still has more guns now than it did back in the 90s - both in number and per capita.

Guns don't cause terror attacks of course. For that, you'll need radial fanatics with a screw loose. The internet is full of them. It's a great place to meet like-minded people, sadly.

We run very expensive security agencies in most Western countries whose job it is to track people down and prevent Bondi beach events.

In this case, ASIO knew about the son with the gun in Sydney as early as six years ago. There were links to ISIS. But it didn't stop him, did it?

Brenton Tarrant was posting about the God-awful things he was going to do up to a year beforehand online, but wasn't stopped, either.

Samsudeen - the guy who slit peoples' throats while they shopped for groceries in New Lynn - he was actually being watched and followed at the time and even he still managed to stab eight innocent people.

Some argue migration is the problem. They say Jews and Muslims have been fighting for centuries and that's where the problem lies. Except mass shootings are perpetrated by all different sorts of people for all different sorts of reasons.

There's left-wing extremism - the death of Charlie Kirk, the insurance assassin, the attempt on Trump are all suspected of being motivated by far-left extremists.

And then you've got right-wing extremism and radical Islamic terrorists. And then there's just completely crazy people who seem to have no motive, they just want to be famous or kill people for a body count like life is some video game.

The sad, disturbing, uncomfortable part of this attack is that it won't be the last, and there's very little it seems we can actually do to stop them.

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