There was no lack of heroes at Bondi Beach. Unfortunately, some of them are now dead.
This is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. There was a couple at Bondi Beach who saw one of the gunmen early on, realized the danger, and tried to thwart him. This couple – Boris and Sofia Gurman – were not young; they were 69 and 61 years old. And yet Boris somehow managed to wrest away the gun from one of the terrorists. Here’s the story (there are some still photos at the link):
The dramatic dashcam footage shows Boris courageously tackling the terrorist, Sajid Akram [the 50-year-old father], on the street and wrestling away the gun as Sofia runs to help.
Boris is then filmed pointing the rifle at the mass killer in a frantic attempt to make him retreat — only for the terrorist to grab another rifle.
The couple, who lived in Bondi and had been married 34 years, were ultimately executed at close range.
A separate drone video showed the couple tragically clutching each other where they died.
The latter photo is also at the link.
When I read that story, many things came to mind. The first is their incredible heroism, and the horrific ending as well as the tremendously touching photo. The second was the thought: if only they’d had a weapon! The third was: wait a minute, they did have a weapon and – much like another hero that day, Ahmed al Ahmed – they used it only to threaten the terrorist rather than shoot him. Unlike Ahmed, who only ended up wounded, they ended up dead.
I don’t know why they didn’t use the gun. Perhaps neither had ever fired one before and didn’t really know what to do. A worse possibility is that perhaps they thought that by firing, they’d be the ones arrested or even killed by police. They almost certainly only had at most a few seconds to think what to do, and I’m not faulting them in the least. I’m just both sad and angry that it came to this.
At first I thought maybe neither fired the gun at the terrorist because he hadn’t yet shot anyone and they weren’t sure how dangerous he was, but I learned from this article that that was not the case:
“My dashcam accidentally captured this shocking scene,” the user who posted the video, who told NBC News she wanted to go by the name Jenny, said in the caption to her post.
“One terrorist on the bridge fired the first shot, then the second, then the third. Meanwhile, the other terrorist had just gotten out of the car when an elderly man by the roadside didn’t run away. Instead, he charged toward danger, fought desperately to grab the gun, and held on tightly! Watching through the lens as the old man was finally shot and fell to the ground — my heart was torn apart,” she said.
From their first names, it seemed to me that this couple had probably emigrated to Australia, and it turns out they were Jewish and had come from Russia.
Another person who tried to fight was killed as well:
Reuven Morrison, 62, was killed when he physically confronted one of the gunmen, according to his daughter, Sheina Gutnick.
“He managed to throw bricks at the terrorist,” she told CBS News.
Also not a young person.
There were many civilian heroes at Bondi Beach that day. All of them were extraordinarily brave, but unfortunately all of them were unarmed. RIP.
If you are not familiar with the weapon, you may not know how to use it. Bolt action rifle is not the same as a pistol. Incredibly brave. No one knows how they would react in any given situation.
Unfortunately, Australian PM is calling for more gun control, not Muslim control.
Yes. Neo is exactly correct, in that more than a few gun wielding heroes have been shot by police.
SHIREHOME also. I had a little exposure and training with firearms as a kid, but it was until my 60’s that I got interested again. Things like automobiles are relatively standardized, but firearms moderately or considerably less so. Even within the pistol category, there is lots of variability.
“Israeli carry” is a phrase describing the practice of always carrying a pistol without a round in the chamber. I’m told it originated because in the early days of their military, they gathered weapons from a wide range of sources and so soldiers were assumed to be unfamiliar with whatever weapon they had with them.
A truly tragic story, and likely true that they did not know how to operate a bolt action rifle.
I am familiar with many different types of firearms, and when the video showing that bystander wresting the shotgun away from one of the killers came on the TV my wife asked if I would have shot the killer at that point.
Several things came into my mind: it appeared to be a double-barrel shotgun, in which case (if he had recently fired it) it was likely not loaded and ready to shoot; secondly, it is not easy to contemplate taking a human life; and finally, had I (or someone in a similar situation) indeed shot the perp, there is a high likelihood the police would have shot me. That all occurred to me in the first second, and I think the longer one waits the less likely s/he is to shoot.
There will be more horror stories coming out of this terrorist act.
P.S. I still don’t know how to embed a link, but there’s a good easy on Substack by Holly Mathnerd called “the reality of national gun control.” I highly recommend it.
Tragic, but Fuck Tragic.
Happy Hanukkah!
Merry Christmas!
Peace and Good Will
Prime Minster Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke have much blood on their hands. This would never have happened in the Australia of John Howard or Bob Hawke.
All I can say is that it’s a damn good thing those innocents weren’t allowed to be armed…someone might have gotten hurt.
My guess is that he hoped the terrorist would run away before the gun, may not have known how to fire the gun, and didn’t realize that the terrorist had an additional weapon on hand.
But I think neo’s supposition is spot on where if he had managed to scare the terrorist away and lowered the gun, that is when one of the cowardly Australian police would have come out of their hiding spots and shot this hero in the back.
There is some short footage of one terrorist using what appears to be a “straight pull” bolt action rifle.
Not to be complicated; with a system of cams and such, the rifle can do everything the conventional boltie does with its four moves, each at right angles to the previous, with a straight pull back and shove forward.
This might have been the future of repeating rifles but it included enough work that the semi-auto could be developed from it.
It is very rare, having been supplanted as I mentioned. But a gun shop owner would have access to various sources for oddities and scarcities.
Point is, the average guy gets hold of it and the first move–unlock–doesn’t work because he’s thinking standard bolt never having seen one of these or heard of them. An adrenalin-fueled fraction of a second and he thinks it’s non functional, good only for threatening.
Now the perps’ families bring law suits…..
I think it’s quite possible they didn’t know how to fire the weapon.
Umm… BrooklynBoy… It was Howard who took away the guns from the law-abiding & the innocent.
“I think it’s quite possible they didn’t know how to fire the weapon.“
The operative word is “ the”. As a former resident of the Soviet Union he likely had military training.
I’m still struggling to comment calmly and coherently. This is pretty close to home as my daughter and son-in-law used to live right across the street from the site of the shooting. I’ve walked that beach.
Albanese, Wong and the rest of this administration are weak as Starmer and as pernicious and mendacious as I have ever seen.
Australia may soon become a nation of Rorschachs… and the anti-western civilization crew will be trapped in here with us.
As bad as Uvalde Texas? Not good Australia LEOs (not lions), not good.
Net migration into Australia was 446,000 persons in 2023-24. An apposite number for a country with Australia’s population and productivity might be around 35,000 per year, if that. The same 12-fold excess is manifest in Canadian policy, almost as if both policies were designed elsewhere. The net migration is a mix of increments to the population of ‘temporary’ residents and ‘permanent’ residents. New ‘permanent’ residents number 190,000, about half of them from the subcontinent.
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Australians appear to be sitting on their hands while their political class has them turfed out.
There are two political parties in Australia promoting an end to the immigration tsunami. Between them, they received 8.3% of the vote the last general election.
The politicians are defending the New South Wales police. We’re beginning to see survivors accounts who have it that the police arrived and dithered for 20 minutes.
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The Howard ministry implements mass confiscation of guns, and a generation later, this is the protection people get.
I think not knowing how to use the gun might be a reason they didn’t shoot; but, I think it is also possible that they own sense of humanity caused them to hesitate as it would most certainly be taking of another human life. Which is the ultimate taboo in civilized societies.
While I would love to think of myself saying “oh, absolutely, kill them before they kill you or others”, I’m not so sure that I would not hesitate before taking the life of someone, even if that someone is such low down scum as these killers.
Now, if I had been trained in the military or law enforcement, or had actually been in combat then I most likely would not hesitate; but, for civilians to make such a split-second decision is a very heavy thing to do. Which makes these heroes all that much more remarkable, They didn’t run away, they tried to do something. RIP everyone one of them.
A horrible confluence of events, about which there has been much commentary and analysis..But the question arises, as it always does, “What now is to be done?” It appears that the government seeks to do more of what led to the tragic outcome: import more of your alien antagonists, eliminate even the scant measures available for self-defense among your native population and make sure to squelch any hint of protest. Like drilling more holes in your boat in order to drain the water already collecting in the bottom of the hull, it’ll work for sure this time. Perhaps it’s just me, but I think it’s time for a different solution.
Several things to enable one to “focus the mind”…
(OTOH, you can lead a horse to water BUT…)
“IRGC claims Bondi Beach shooting was a false flag operation;
“Iranian state-controlled media has begun publishing several accusations that the Bondi Beach shooting was orchestrated by Israel as a false flag operation”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419558
“Australian Counterterrorism Unit Rams Car, Arrests Five Men Suspected Of Planning Violence”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/australian-counterterrorism-unit-rams-car-arrests-five-men-suspected-planning-violence
“All of France is a No Go Zone Now”—
https://danielgreenfield.substack.com/p/all-of-france-is-a-no-go-zone-now
+ Bonus…
Something that should already have been considered:
“World-renowned MIT nuclear researcher was assassinated in his home in targeted attack by Iranian operative, Israel says”—
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15393799/mit-professor-nuno-loureiro-murder-iran-israel-nuclear.html?ito=native_share_article-top
H/T Powerline blog (for last two links)
Epilogue…(Epitaph?)
“For shame!…”
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2025/12/18/wtf-223/
Another hero…
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419547