Bondi shooting sparks ‘lone wolf’ fears, gun law review as Australia reels from worst terror attack

SYDNEY – Even as the authorities probe possible foreign terror links in the

Dec 14 Bondi Beach mass shooting

, they say the father-and-son duo appear to have acted alone – a scenario that analysts say is hardest to prevent.

As the nation reels from the shooting that left at least 16 people dead, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that the son –

24-year-old Naveed Akram

– had come to the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in October 2019.

Naveed, who was injured in the attack on Australia’s most popular beach, was investigated by ASIO for six months, reportedly due to his links to an ISIS cell in Australia, but was not believed to pose an ongoing threat.

National security expert Greg Barton from Deakin University noted that the father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, appears to have been radicalised by his son.

If this was indeed a lone-actor attack, Professor Barton told The Straits Times, “the good news is that it suggests there are no further threats, and we haven’t missed networks that have gone under the radar”. 

“The bad news is that the authorities have told us for some time that what keeps them awake at night is lone actors,” he added.

Indeed, the head of ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess, said in the agency’s latest annual threat assessment in February 2025 that the country’s greatest threat “remains a lone actor using an easily obtained weapon”.

“At the height of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, offshore groups or individuals were inspiring and directing attacks in Australia,” he said. “Now, extremists are self-radicalising.”

The national terror threat rating was raised in 2024 to “probable” – the middle of five levels – due to concerns about the growing risk of political violence and terrorism, particularly in the wake of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

The Bondi attack came just four months after Australia

expelled the Iranian ambassador

and three Iranian officials after ASIO said it believed that Iran ordered at least two anti-Semitic attacks on Australian soil in 2024.

It is too early to know whether Iran or other foreign actors had been involved in the Bondi attack, said counter-terrorism expert John Coyne from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

He told ST that it was also unclear whether ASIO should have done more to investigate Naveed, noting that security agencies had finite resources and could never monitor all potential targets.

Prof Barton said the Bondi shooting was “the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil”, while noting that more Australians died in the Bali bombing – an attack by Islamists in 2002 that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

The worst attack by an Australian was a 2019 attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a gunman who killed 51 people.

Mr Albanese on Dec 15

announced moves to tighten gun laws

, including closer scrutiny of gun owners and limiting the number of firearms that individuals can own.

The authorities have confirmed that Sajid had a firearm licence for six weapons, and that these weapons were used in the attack.

Australia introduced some of the toughest gun laws in the world after a crazed gunman massacred 35 people in a tourist town in 1996. But there are concerns that gun ownership has increased in recent years due to inconsistencies in state and territory laws, and a lack of enforcement.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told ABC News on Dec 15 that he wanted to ensure that gun owners had to renew licences rather than hold them permanently. “We will particularly look at whether criminal intelligence, rather than criminal records, is a reason to restrict access to a licence,” he said.

Dr Coyne said the world has experienced a “war on terror” for almost 25 years – precipitated by the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the US – and the Bondi attack confirmed that this war is not over.

“There are people in Australia with the capability and intent to undertake these sorts of activities,” he said. “That is true of many countries.

“With terrorism, the government has to get it right all the time. The bad guys only have to get it right once.”

However, he added, “there is a very small number of people in Australia who hold these extremist views”.

“This attack was the fault of two men who were ideologically driven, who have a belief system that hates Jewish people, and they went out of their way to execute women, children and men.”