1. Live and love every day. This is the latest in a string of tragic events around Australia that remind us how uncertain life is and how precious it is. Live every day to the full, love completely and without reservation, and never part from your loved ones in anger if there is any way to avoid it.
2. The police cannot protect you. The police WANT to protect you, they will do everything they CAN to protect you, but the reality is they can’t. It’s just simple physics. They can’t be everywhere, and attackers (be they terror motivated, or just common criminals) will pick places and times when their victims are vulnerable. All the laws in the world would not have stopped this attack. And once again we see someone with a long and violent criminal history being released by our court system to strike again. It’s a story we’ve seen repeated far FAR too many times over in this country. In short, if you believe you are safe because of the police, our courts, or our laws, then the truth is you are not safe, you’ve just been lucky so far.
3. It’s true that VERY few Muslims will ever commit an act of terror, and the vast majority would work to STOP such an attack if they could… yet it’s ALSO true that the vast majority of terrorists today self-identify as Muslims (Whether rightly or wrongly is mostly irrelevant). We need to acknowledge that and deal with that reality, not wish it away because it is confronting and politically incorrect. The Muslim community needs to find ways to identify and stop these sorts of people before they strike, for the sake of their reputation and acceptance within Australian society, and for the sake of all Australians.
4. It’s not a surprise to see it happening so close to home, and judging by other western cities around the world it could get a lot worse before it gets better. Terror attacks (by which I mean random attacks designed to make a political point or score religious brownie points, rather than criminal attacks which are targeted and designed to personally benefit the criminal) have become frequent in Europe and most go unreported over here. Anyone saying ‘I can’t believe it happened here’ hasn’t been paying attention, or has been lying to themselves for the last few years. This is not the last time it will happen in Australia.
5. This attack re-enforces my view that we need to be able to defend ourselves at an individual level. Terror attacks have morphed. They have become individual, lone wolf, strike anywhere at any time attacks. In many ways they make no sense and it’s hard or impossible for police or ASIO to anticipate the where, when or who of these attacks. In other words, they can’t really be stopped in advance, only dealt with once they are underway. And the best person to deal with an attacker is one of the intended victims. We all saw the pictures coming out of Sydney. The police were there in their hundreds, the best people we have were on the scene with the most advanced weapons money can buy, and all they could do was stand outside and hope. All those guns in all those highly trained hands were worth less than a single gun in the hands of one of the staff or one of the shoppers would have been. The ability to INDIVIDUALLY defend ourselves has once again become necessary. Less than 20 years ago Australia issued permits for people to carry firearms on themselves as they went about their daily lives for their own protection and the protection of everyone around them. It’s time to re-introduce such a system. We can see clearly that criminals can get guns, even people with a long criminal history (or should we say ‘especially people with a long criminal history’) can get them easily enough. And when someone attacks us the first thing we do is call for help from people with guns (the police) who, as we’ve seen, can’t always help us. So the only people who have been disarmed by anti-gun laws are the victims themselves, which are the very people who most need them and the people who are best placed to use them. It’s long past time to re-introduce sensible personal gun ownership into Australia.

Some people will hate me for saying the above, and so be it. I’ve said EVERY SINGLE ONE of the above 5 points numerous times before, and I’ll keep saying them for as long as it takes to see some common sense in our laws and in our responses to those who would do us harm.