FAQ's for our friends

It’s our experience that knowing statewide numbers isn’t particularly useful for communities to imagine what is happening with firearms ownership and if this reflects their values. Finding out how many are in your suburb is much more meaningful.

The move to establish a National Firearms Register is welcome (and seriously overdue!) and we look forward to exploring the data released in it when it is complete. 

After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre guns weren’t banned in Australia but, under a National Firearms Agreement, sensible restrictions, licensing requirements and important prohibitions were implemented. One million guns were handed in and destroyed, but since then they have since been replaced with more than one million new ones.

Three decades on, there has also been a serious weakening of firearms laws, and research shows that not a single state or territory is fully compliant with the National Firearms Agreement. Protections for safe storage, access to ammunition, proper cooling off periods for gun purchases, minors permits and sensible limits on the reasons why you can get a gun have all been degraded as our gun laws have gone backwards.

Thankfully most violent crime is on a downward trend in Australia, and some of that will be due to changed attitudes towards guns and more stringent licensing. A trend in any direction can quickly change, and we do not agree that this is a time to be complacent.

NSW now has more than one million guns. Most of this growth in guns isn’t more people getting one or two guns, it’s about a fairly small number of gun owners getting dozens and dozens of weapons, some are getting hundreds. The data shows that less households own guns but those households that own guns on average now own more than 5 of them.

Firstly, if your argument starts off with all the ways that you can kill someone that’s not a great sign. But these are all practical things that are used much more broadly and have a purpose other than killing. Guns don’t.

Much like sensible gun control laws there are age restrictions, licensing requirements and some prohibitions on who, how and when dangerous machinery like forklifts and motor vehicles can be operated. These restrictions, and more, are required to protect us from the dangerous use of guns. We’ve never argued for all guns to be banned and never will. There clearly is a reasonable and limited role for firearms such as for primary producers and elements of law enforcement.

Suburb level information is not considered “personal information” and is not protected by any kind of privacy laws.

It is also not considered to in any way increase the risk of criminal attacks to produce suburb level information. Criminals work out where private arsenals are by more mundane methods such as listening to talk in a pub, following gun owners home from gun clubs and rifle ranges and identifying regular purchasers from gun shops. The NSW Police released this information, and they were right to do so, after the issue was tested in the NSW administrative tribunal.

We don’t agree that firearms owners are a persecuted minority, but we also are not attacking them. There are legitimate uses for firearms and we recognise this, but this does not mean the laws themselves cannot be questioned. When laws aren’t meeting public expectations they should be changed.

Our concerns relate to the fact that gun laws should be designed to protect public safety by limiting the number and type of guns in circulation to only those that are necessary. Clearly where one person can (and many do) own hundreds of weapons there is something not working in the law.

The existence of criminals using illegal guns doesn’t put gun control laws beyond scrutiny. Criminals also use cars and bank accounts and we regulate and control these too. Laws can always being improved, and current legal ownership trends can show where changes need to be made. For example the gun that Martin Bryant used at Port Arthur wasn’t illegal at that time, and now it is, thankfully.

The NSW Police are the appropriate agency to deal with criminal matters, and if you have specific concerns or information about illegal firearms we recommend you contact them directly.