What’s behind the rise in gun ownership in Australia?

The Australians were shocked by the news, two police officers were killed in the rural regions of Victoria when a 56 -year -old man pulled them in the bush.

Another police officer was injured during the incident, which sparked a new debate on the Australia firearms and who has firearms.

This can be a shock to learn that there are more weapons in Australia now than before the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

This event has led to radical changes in firearms and important restrictions on the possession of firearms.

It seems counter -intuitive that – a context of measures which were to slow down possession of firearms and a landscape in which legislation has become constantly tightened – we now have more firearms.

What do statistics say?

Although the Pré-1996 reliable statistics are not available, fragmentary data from that time suggest that there were about three million firearms held before the Port Arthur massacre.

This number now exceeds four million, according to estimates based on information on the state and the territory.

And it is not only the number of firearms increasing, but the number of people authorized to own them.

Again, the front 1996 figures are not available and not all states say historical or current information.

However, in New South Wales for example, there were 180,663 licenses in 2001, reaching only less than 260,000 in 2025.

In Queensland, there were approximately 150,000 licenses in 2010, moving to more than 200,000 today.

Although possession of firearms is more frequent in rural regions of the country, the statistics available (unequal too) show that most of the owners of firearms live in urban areas.

This reflects the distribution of the Australian population in general: in other words, where there are more people, there are more firearms.

Does this mean that we are flooded with crimes of firearms?

No. Although the number of firearms licenses and legally firearms have been increasing for decades for decades, poor use of firearms has been decreasing for even longer.

Homicides of firearms, for example, began to drop in the early 1980s, continued to fall at the same rate after 1996 and remain stable and weak.

Firearms’ suicides have followed a similar general scheme. The armed robbery with a firearm began to fall in the early 1990s.

This suggests that there are few relations between the levels of legal possession of firearms in Australia and the levels of violence and abusive use of firearms.

Who owns firearms and why?

Legally, people can have firearms in Australia for “authentic reasons”, including primary production, target shooting, hunting and collection.

Some club weapons and a small amount of research suggest that women and young people increase demography in what is traditionally a white, older and dominated activity by men.

However, this is another area where reliable information is rare.

The increase in firearms and firearms licenses in Australia is, in part, an unsurprising result of our growing population. Our population of 1996 was around 18 million. Today, it exceeds 27 million (growth that exceeds the increase in the number of weapons possessed).

Again, however, statistics only tell a part of the story. There are many unexplored shades. For example, anecdotal evidence – with whom we sometimes have to work – multiculturalism has played a role.

Some firearms of firearms report that they have firearms because they were not allowed to do so in the authoritarian diet they have migrated. Others, although born in Australia, say that they come from culturally diverse horizons where hunting is a tradition they undertake to keep the practice alive for their children.

These stories suggest that possession of Australian fire weapons is motivated by a wide range of different influences – many of which remain largely invisible.

There is little Australian research on what motivates the possession of firearms.

The search for the United States, with its very different approach to firearms, may not apply here (for example, having firearms for self-protection is explicitly prohibited in Australia but common in the United States).

However, work in New Zealand indicates that there are many reasons why people have firearms, including learning or mastering new skills, participation in conservation activities, creation of social ties, historical interest and pleasure of competitive sport.

Social and economic circumstances are likely to influence the possession of firearms.

For example, the view of the shelves of empty supermarkets during the covid and the realization that we cannot always count on the supply chains for fresh meat seems to have caused an increase in hunting.

In a disturbed and uncertain world, where the cost of living is a concern for so much, it is not surprising that various forms of self -sufficiency – be it the manufacture of bread, cultivation of vegetables, fishing or hunting – arouse interest.

The law of involuntary consequences?

In addition to all these plausible explanations of the increase in possession of firearms, there remains one thing that does not say, the approach that Australia has long adopted to “disinstate” the property of firearms is itself likely to have fueled the increase in firearms.

As any parent will know, the more you tell someone that he should not do or have something, the more this thing becomes attractive and the more it is determined to do or have it.

After 1996, the Minister of the time, John Howard, said that he hated arms and did not think that people should have them.

Ironically, he could well be Howard’s hard position, and his continuous influence, which has triggered decades of growth in the possession of Australian fire weapons.

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