Washington: The worst terrorist attack ever on Australian soil was always going to command headlines in the United States. But in this febrile and divisive climate, it was instantly hijacked for political purposes.

The American gun lobby wasted no time in using the Bondi Beach massacre to campaign against stricter gun laws in the US, claiming Australian governments had “empowered terrorists” and left citizens defenceless by regulating weapons.

Gun lobby groups in the US are fiercely opposed to tougher regulations.

Allies of President Donald Trump echoed those sentiments, saying Australia needed to fix its antisemitism problem, or reduce immigration, rather than get even tougher on guns.

In a statement that also drew upon the weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island, in which two students were killed, and nine others injured, Gun Owners of America asserted that strict gun laws were to blame.

“The consistent failure in these tragedies is not the presence of firearms, but their absence in the hands of law-abiding citizens,” said the lobby group’s vice president, Erich Platt. “Gun control laws in these jurisdictions make it far more likely that no one is armed to intervene........

© The Sydney Morning Herald