The recent shooting at Bondi Beach horrified Australia and drew international attention.
An attack carried out in a public and symbolic space inevitably provoked grief, fear, and demands for action. As always after such events, political leaders were quick to promise tougher laws, framed, of course, as essential for public safety.
That instinct is human. It is also predictable.
Moments of collective shock and mourning are routinely used to advance policies that would otherwise face serious resistance. In the UK, tragedies abroad and at home are increasingly leveraged not merely to justify tighter security but to expand state control over what people may say, read, and share online.
If I may use a familiar analogy, road safety offers a useful lens through which to view these so-called “safety” laws.
People die every year as a result of drink driving. Yet no government proposes stripping every citizen of their driving licence. Cars are recognised as socially necessary tools. The response focuses on behaviour: licensing, enforcement, penalties, and education.
We punish the offender, not the existence of driving itself.
Firearms follow the same logic. The overwhelming majority of lawful gun owners never harm anyone. Banning all guns because a few commit atrocities is no different in principle from banning all drivers because some drive drunk. It mistakes the tool for the cause.
What is more revealing, however, is how governments now respond beyond the question of weapons.
In the UK, acts of violence are increasingly blamed on failures of online regulation. Each attack becomes a justification for broader censorship and greater state influence over public discourse. Legislation such as the Online Safety Act is sold as protection, yet its vague definitions of “harmful content” allow lawful dissent, journalism, and political criticism to be quietly suppressed.
This is not simply about stopping extremism. It is about controlling narratives.
Under the banner of safety, the government positions itself, alongside major technology firms and an expanding class of institutional gatekeepers, as the arbiter of acceptable opinion.
Speech is treated not as a liberty to be protected, but as a risk to be managed.
This approach is deeply flawed.
The 2017 Finsbury Park attacker explicitly stated that his radicalisation was triggered by a BBC documentary, not by fringe online content. Radicalisation can occur through mainstream media, personal grievance, and political climate.
None of these are meaningfully addressed by censoring the internet.
The car analogy clearly exposes the imbalance. When a drunk driver kills someone, the state does not censor discussions about driving or monitor private conversations between motorists. It targets the offender and the dangerous behaviour.
Online, the opposite occurs. Violence committed by a few becomes justification for monitoring the many. Fear is used to normalise speech controls that would once have been unthinkable.
Policies rushed through in moments of collective trauma rarely enhance public safety. They do, however, reliably expand state power.
If every act of violence becomes an excuse to narrow the space for dissent, then we should remember the warning offered long ago by Benjamin Franklin:
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”