Editorial: After a weekend of mass shootings, Australia's leaders bolster gun laws while their US counterparts shrug

The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Dec 17, 2025

Published in Op Eds

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Two horrific mass shootings over the weekend offered a contrasting study in political leadership.

In Australia, after a father and son allegedly killed at least 15 people and injured more than two dozen others who gathered on a Sydney beach to celebrate the start of Hanukkah, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an emergency meeting and announced immediate reforms to the country’s already strict gun laws.

In the United States, after a shooter killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University, President Donald Trump essentially shrugged and said, “Things can happen.”

Trump then showed his distinctive lack of empathy by offering the victims and their families his “deepest regards and respects from the United States of America.” For good measure, he lamely added “and we mean it.”

It did not seem as if Trump could get hollower than that. But hours later he showed his bottomless capacity to go lower.

After Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home, Trump turned the tragedy into a narcissistic social media post that suggested the deaths were all about him.

The Reiners’ son Nick, who battled addiction, was arrested, but any motive for the killings remains unknown.

Yet, Trump claimed without evidence that Reiner, 78, a successful actor and director who was active in Democratic politics and critical of Trump, died because of “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”

Amid a weekend of unspeakable violence, Trump managed to make things worse. So, don’t expect any leadership, let alone efforts to unite or console the country, during times of crisis or tragedy.

If Trump cared about the safety and welfare of others beyond himself, he could offer sympathy rather than solipsism. He would condemn the carnage and vow to crack down on the gun epidemic that continues to kill, maim, and traumatize the United States.

Instead, taxpayers will get zero effort by Trump or any Republican state or federal lawmaker to do a damn thing about the mass shooting or nearly 50,000 annual suicides that have become all too routine. Sorry, “things can happen.”

This year there have been nearly 14,000 gun deaths and more than 25,000 injuries in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which also counts 392 mass shootings. (Important reminder: Despite Trump’s innuendo about crimes committed by immigrants and Black Americans, the majority of mass shootings are carried out by white males.)

There have also been at least 75 school shootings. The school shootings have become so routine at least two Brown University students had survived previous attacks and trauma when they were in high school.

It does not have to be this way.

A large majority of Americans — including many gun owners— support commonsense gun laws like universal background checks, mandatory waiting periods to buy a gun, and a ban on assault weapons.

But the powerful gun lobby spends millions to essentially buy off Republican elected officials and prevent the passage of gun measures. So the bloodletting in America continues.

While the mass shooting in Australia was heartbreaking, it was also rare.

In 1996, after a gunman killed 35 people, then-Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative, responded 12 days later with a sweeping overhaul of the country’s gun laws that included banning high-powered automatic weapons.

After gun reform and a massive gun buyback program believed to have taken about a million firearms out of circulation, the country did not have another mass shooting until 2018, when a man killed six members of his own family.

One day after the latest mass shooting, Australia’s elected leaders agreed to bolster gun laws already considered the gold standard by implementing a national registry and limiting the number of guns a person can own.

While Trump rambles on social media, real political leaders in Australia have already acted.

Nothing will change in the U.S. until voters fed up with mass shootings hold elected officials accountable.