The siege in Sydney's CBD and its terrible end received saturation coverage on American cable news, with at least one commentator lamenting Australia's tough gun laws.

Speaking on Fox News after police stormed the Lindt cafe,  Charles Hurt, a writer with the conservative newspaper The Washington Times and a Fox News contributor, said: "These people are hell bent to kill innocent people … In a free society there is nothing you can do about it. You can't prevent all these things from happening, which is why most Americans, when they see this stuff play out … they think about guns and it is why they think about personal gun ownership and being able to protect yourself, protect your family and protect your neighbours.

Hurt appears to have been referring to a Pew Research poll published last week that found for the first time in two decades of its own research that more people support gun rights than gun control, by a margin of 52 per cent to 46 per cent.

"I think it is sort of interesting that, in Australia, they have banned guns, just about all guns, for personal ownership, yet somehow this insane killer managed to get himself a shotgun," Hurt said.

The host of the program added that after "a couple massacres in Australia there was massive gun control in that country, where people turned in their weapons because they did not want to have them any more and this was sort of hailed by gun control advocates as the poster child for the way things should be.

"A number of folks said this should be in the United States."

Another guest noted that this was something that could happen anywhere, with or without gun control.

An Australian who occasionally appears on Fox programs, Nick Adams, wrote a piece for the Fox website saying: "Monday's events have also prompted Australians to revisit their gun laws.

"The United Kingdom has had two beheadings of members of the public in the last two years, with neither police nor civilians able to prevent it. It also has prohibitive gun laws," he wrote.

"Australians are looking to America, and not the UK for guidance."

The gun debate was also raised on CNN, when host Chris Cuomo said to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy: "You get a plus/minus from situations like this on a signature cause of yours, namely gun control in the United States.

"We believe the man in Sydney has a shotgun, an old-fashioned shotgun. If he did, that would be an illegal weapon there."

"When you look at what the risk is in the United States, generally men like this are involving themselves with weapons but it also creates pressure on people who want weapons so that they can defend themselves against citizens who decide to lose it and become sympathisers of terrorism. How does this change what you think you can achieve with gun control?"

Senator Murphy, who represents Connecticut, the state where 26 children and staff were massacred at Sandy Hook two years ago, responded that people armed with assault rifles of the sort widely available in the US kill more people.

He added: "And this mythology that you end up killing bad guys by arming good guys just doesn't work.

"Study after study shows you that, in communities that have more guns, more people get killed. And the reality is that, if you have a gun at home, you are more likely to be killed by it than kill an attacker or someone that's going after your neighbour.

"So, we've got to have a conversation in this country about the kinds of weapons that we make legal because assault weapons are more likely than not going to be used in these mass slaughters rather than used by some citizen to stop someone in one of those situations."

Fox & Friends  co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck used the hostage siege to defend the CIA and attack the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the agency's interrogation techniques, the Huffington Post wrote.

"Meanwhile, the actual individuals here at home who have been looking into and trying to stop attacks like this and perhaps future hostage situations, as we are still at war indeed with ISIS and terrorism, are the CIA, and they have been painted as the bad guys at home," the website reported Hasselbeck as saying.

"When you see what's happening in Australia, today, right now, in a chocolate shop, and you understand the real war with ISIS that we're in, and the sharp contrast with the accusations of the CIA really just trying to do their job and keep America safe for the past 13 years, startles you, any day," she is reported to have said.