It’s Always the Guns: Don't let the "Cookers" turn Australia into the US
We are a nation in mourning. Again.
The horrifying events at Bondi this week have left us all shattered. Fifteen lives taken. A community torn apart. A summer day turned into a massacre. As we scroll through the news feeds and watch the tributes flow, the grief is heavy, but so is the anger. Because we know, deep down, that this didn’t have to happen.
Already, the vultures are circling. You can see it in the comment sections, hear it on the shock-jock radio stations, and feel it in the whispers of political opportunists. They want to make this about race. They want to make this about religion. They want to divide us, to point the finger at "the other," and to distract us from the one cold, hard truth that links every single mass casualty event we’ve seen in recent years.
It’s the guns.
The Lie About "Us" vs "Them"
Let’s look at the facts of Bondi, not the spin. The people trying to turn this into an immigration debate are conveniently ignoring the reality of who pulled the trigger and who stopped him.
Naveed Akram, one of the terrorists who rained bullets down on innocent families, wasn’t some fresh arrival. He was born right here in Australia in 2001. He grew up on our streets, went to our schools. He was as Australian-made as the hatred that radicalized him.
And who was the hero? Who was the man who ran towards the gunfire while others fled? Ahmed el Ahmed. A man born in Syria, who came to this country in 2006 seeking safety and a better life. A Muslim man who tackled a terrorist to save his fellow Australians.
If you listen to the crazy conservatives, they’ll tell you this is an imported problem. But the shooter was born here, and the saviour was a refugee. The "us vs. them" narrative falls apart the moment you look at the birth certificates.
So, if it’s not just about where people come from, what is the common denominator? What turns a radicalized ideology—whether it’s religious fundamentalism or white supremacist conspiracy theories—into a massacre?
It’s the high-powered firearms in their hands.
The Rise of the "Cookers" and the White MAGA Threat
We need to talk about the pattern. The media might be fixating on Bondi because of the religious angle, but let’s not forget the blood that was spilled just months ago. The last two major shooting events before Bondi weren’t committed by Islamic extremists. They were committed by what we can only describe as "born and bred white MAGA" conspiracy theorists.
Remember Porepunkah in August? Dezi Freeman. A "sovereign citizen," a man poisoned by online conspiracy theories, who gunned down two police officers. He wasn’t an ISIS recruit; he was a homegrown radical, fed a diet of American-style anti-government paranoia.
Remember Wieambilla in 2022? The Train family. Gareth, Nathaniel, and Stacey. They lured young police officers into an ambush and executed them in cold blood. They weren’t reading the Quran; they were reading online forums about "false flags" and "globalist cabals." They were Christian fundamentalist conspiracy theorists.
These are the "cookers." They are the Australian echo of the MAGA movement in the US—angry, paranoid, disconnected from reality, and increasingly armed. They sit in the comments sections of Facebook and Instagram, spewing hate, threatening violence, and talking about "tyranny." It is truly terrifying to think about what happens when these people get a hold of guns. And as we’ve seen in Porepunkah and Wieambilla, they are getting them.
The Political Betrayal: Deals with the Devil
Why is this happening? Why are we seeing a creep of American-style gun violence in a country that once prided itself on the world’s gold standard for gun control?
Because our politicians are selling us out.
There is a concerted effort by the conservative right in this country to water down our gun laws. They look at the carnage in the United States not as a warning, but as a market opportunity.
We cannot forget that Pauline Hanson is the only major political figure who has been caught red-handed seeking money from the NRA. The footage from the Al Jazeera investigation proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Her One Nation staffers were flown to the US, wined and dined by the gun lobby, and caught on tape discussing how to soften Australia’s gun laws in exchange for millions of dollars in donations. They sought a foreign power’s money to undermine our public safety.
But it’s not just the fringe parties. The rot goes deeper.
In Queensland, the LNP has been playing a dangerous game. There have been consistent reports and accusations of the LNP doing deals with the devil, taking donations and cozying up to the gun lobby. They know that the "cooker" vote is energized. They know that the rural gun lobby is loud. And instead of standing firm on the laws that John Howard—a conservative hero, ironically—put in place after Port Arthur, they are chipping away at the edges.
They are flirting with the same "rights" rhetoric that has turned American schools into shooting galleries.
Crazy MAGA conservatives want more guns in Australia. They believe the lie that "more guns = more safety," despite every shred of evidence proving that More Guns = More Killing.
The horrifying stats we ignore
The Australia Institute released terrifying data that every Australian should have tattooed on their brain: Every four hours, a gun is stolen in Australia.
Let that sink in. Six guns a day. Over 2,000 a year.
Where do you think those guns go? They don’t vanish into thin air. They go into the grey market. They go into the hands of gangs. They go into the hands of terrorists like Naveed Akram. They go into the hands of "cookers" like Dezi Freeman who think the police are the enemy.
Our storage laws are being flouted. There are too many guns circulating in the community, and there is too little oversight. We have become complacent. We thought the job was done in 1996. We were wrong. The gun lobby has been working tirelessly in the shadows for thirty years to undo that work, and now we are seeing the results.
The "Cooker" Culture War
If you have the stomach for it, look at the comments on any news article about these shootings. Or look at the Instagram reels shared by political watchdogs like this one.
The comment sections are a cesspool. You see people defending the shooters. You see people blaming the victims. You see the same rhetoric used by the January 6th rioters in the US. "The government is coming for you," "Fight back," " tyranny."
These aren’t just harmless keyboard warriors anymore. Wieambilla proved that. Porepunkah proved that. When you combine that level of delusional paranoia with a stolen Glock or a stockpiled rifle, you get dead police officers and dead civilians.
The "cookers" are like looking at MAGA in the US, but they are here, in our suburbs and our country towns. They are being fed lies by algorithms and emboldened by politicians who are too scared or too greedy to call them out. The QLD LNP and One Nation are happy to ride this tiger if it means a few extra votes or a few extra dollars, but they don’t seem to care that the tiger is going to eat us all.
It’s The Guns. Get The Guns.
We are at a crossroads.
We can go down the American path. We can let the conspiracy theorists and the gun lobbyists dictate our laws. We can accept that "mass shootings happen" and offer thoughts and prayers while doing nothing. We can let the LNP and One Nation sell our safety to the NRA.
Or, we can remember who we are.
We are the country that stood up in 1996 and said "Enough." We are the country that prioritized the right to live over the right to own a weapon of war.
It doesn’t matter if the shooter is a radicalized Muslim born in Australia, a white sovereign citizen in the bush, or a mental health patient in a shopping centre. The ideology varies. The mental state varies. The background varies.
The common link? The guns.
If Naveed Akram didn’t have a gun, Bondi would have been a fistfight or a knife scare—terrifying, perhaps, but not a massacre of fifteen people.
If the Trains didn’t have high-powered rifles, those young police officers would still be alive.
If Dezi Freeman wasn’t armed, he would have been just another angry man shouting at clouds, not a cop-killer.
It is time to stop being polite about this. It is time to stop letting the "cookers" dominate the conversation. It is time to demand that our politicians stop taking NRA money and gun lobby donations. FFS, get the guns.
We need a national amnesty. We need tighter storage laws. We need to ban the donations. We need to close the loopholes that allow one gun to be stolen every four hours.
Don't let them divide us with hate speech about immigrants. Look at Ahmed el Ahmed. He is the best of us.
Don't let them distract you with conspiracy theories. Look at the bodies in Wieambilla.
Focus on the metal in their hands.
