Gun-Grabbers Demand More Defenselessness After Brown University and Australian Shootings

Efforts in USA and Australia to disarm potential victims continue after decades of failure

January 08, 2026 By David Codrea, Politics Field Editor

“The Providence Police Department confirmed ‘multiple’ people were shot after gunfire rang out late Saturday afternoon at Brown University in Rhode Island,” Fox News reported in mid-December.

“Remember: RUN, if you are in the affected location, evacuate safely if you can; HIDE, if evacuation is not possible, take cover; FIGHT, as a last resort, take action to protect yourself,” school officials wrote in a campus alert.

Brown’s “Weapons and Firearms Policy” makes that “last resort” problematic: “The possession, use, or storage of Weapons or Firearms is strictly prohibited on all University Property and at University-sponsored events, except as authorized under this policy.” The “exceptions” proved to be irrelevant: “University Law Enforcement… Law Enforcement [and] Credentialed armed private dignitary security personnel…”

“When seconds count,” the meme goes, “police are minutes away.”

Another school mass shooting in a “gun-free zone.” Those with the power to do something about it have either learned over the decades, or they know damn well what they’re doing and are complicit in letting victims pay the price rather than let the public see that, rather than being protected with “commonsense gun safety laws,” they’re being deliberately endangered and sacrificed on the altar of a government monopoly of violence.

They’ve been doing it since before Columbine, often aided and abetted by supposed “gun rights leaders,” notably former NRA EVP Wayne LaPierre, who addressed the Annual Meeting of members in 1999 with the assertion, “First, we believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period ... with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.”

Some of us have been arguing against the folly of that ever since. This correspondent was invited by The New York Times blog to address the Virginia Tech killings (against a panel of half-a-dozen antis, meaning they tried to set me up and failed), and began the exchange with the recollection of how, before the shootings, the school’s gun prohibition was touted by then-University Vice President Larry Hincker as “very sound policy.”

“We saw Mr. Hincker’s ‘very sound policy’ play out and prevent nothing,” I noted. “We saw 32 innocents slain without a chance, even though the police response to a campus shooter had begun two hours before the mass slayings at Norris Hall.”

Decades before that, we saw another policy play out during 1966’s University of Texas Tower shooting, when students armed up to shoot back. Per The Washington Post:"The upshot of the Whitman story is that these armed students and citizens kept human carnage to a minimum,” David Codrea, a prominent gun rights advocate, wrote last year in a post on Ammoland.com. "Guns preserved the peace and kept people safe." Don’t expect the lesson to have been learned.

“‘We’re Angry’: Brown Univ. Student & Parkland Survivor Zoe Weissman Demands Action on Gun Violence,” Democracy Now! Posted on YouTube. “Yes, there is something we can do to stop mass shootings - Treating gun ownership as a serious, monitored responsibility rather than a casual consumer choice should be the minimum required to save lives,” The Boston Globe chimes in. Everything but what will work. And the beat goes on.

“Do you come from a land down under?”

“Two mass shootings—one at a Sydney beach, the other on an Ivy League campus—expose how the U.S. treats gun violence as a tragic but tolerated norm,” Ms. Magazine lamented. (And yes, of course it’s legit to cite these ideological lightweights if for no other reason than to illustrate the “mainstream media” pile-on with parroted narrative talking points. You’ll get the same dreck from CNN.)

Media attention has been focused on the “hero cop” who took out one of the shooters with a 45-yard pistol shot. Less is paid to the response time, and how unarmed citizens who weren’t shot were reduced to fleeing, hiding, throwing rocks, and in one case, sustaining wounds while taking on a shooter even though unarmed. Meanwhile, authorities are downplaying a trip the pair took to the Philippines, where Islamist militants have trained. Per CNN, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett declared “There is no evidence to suggest they received training or underwent logistical preparation for their alleged attack,” but then admitted “she was limited in what she could disclose about the investigation in the Philippines because she did not want to prejudice Naveed Akram’s trial.” The response from the Australian government was predictable. Australia’s already draconian gun laws are not enough.

“Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that the government will introduce legislation for a gun buyback scheme, which will be jointly funded by the states and the federal government,” SBS News reported. “Albanese said he expects ‘hundreds of thousands’ of guns to be collected and destroyed through the scheme… The NSW government will seek to introduce a cap of four guns for owners and move to restrict public gatherings during ‘high-risk times’ [and] seek to be able to enforce the ban on demonstrations for up to three months.” That and he announced new hate speech laws. Unsurprisingly, he deliberately missed the barn.

“Anthony Albanese spoke more than 5,000 words in the day after the Bondi terror attack — but one topic was conspicuously missing,” news.com.au reported. “Albo warned of ‘far right’ threat — but wouldn’t say the words ‘Islamic extremism’ after Bondi attack.”

Epilog

Reviewing what happened at Brown University and at Bondi Beach, what could have been done to deter both, and what officials and their media cheerleaders tell us needs to happen next, evokes nothing so much as what Charlton Heston screamed while getting hosed down in a cage in Planet of the Apes:

“It’s a mad house! A MAD HOUSE!!!”

About the Author

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms News and AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.