Australia cracks down on gun hoarders

SYDNEY (AFP) — Australia will use a sweeping buyback scheme to “get guns off our streets,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday as hundreds plunged into the ocean to honor Bondi Beach shooting victims.

Sajid Akram and his son Naveed are accused of opening fire on a Jewish festival at the famed surf beach on Sunday, killing 15 people in one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings.

Albanese vowed to toughen laws that allowed 50-year-old Sajid to own six high-powered rifles.

“There is no reason someone living in the suburbs of Sydney needed this many guns,” he said.

Australia would pay gun owners to surrender “surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms.”

It would be the largest gun buyback since 1996, when Australia cracked down on firearms in the wake of a shooting that killed 35 people at Port Arthur.

Australia will remember those slain at Bondi with a national day of reflection, the prime minister said.

Albanese urged Australians to light candles at 6:47 p.m. on Sunday, 21 December — “exactly one week since the attack unfolded.”