Aussies amongst most heavily armed
July 9, 2003
AUSTRALIANS rank among the world's most heavily armed citizens despite the Federal Government's efforts to tighten gun laws.
There are an estimated 2.1 million private firearms in Australia, according to the Small Arms Survey 2003 by the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva.
Gun ownership in Australia surpasses the global ratio by more than 50 per cent with roughly one gun for every nine people, according to the study released overnight at a UN conference.
In comparison, there is one privately held gun for every 16 people in the world with one gun per person in the US.
Australia's gun legislation was the most up-to-date in the Pacific region, the survey said, with average annual firearm imports dropping 66 per cent since gun laws were tightened in 1996/97 after the Port Arthur killings.
However in the 2001/02 financial year Australian customs officials seized 812 illegally imported firearms with hundreds of thousands believed to have made it onto the market.
And from 1999 to 2002 the number of robberies involving firearms in Sydney's most populated areas rose by 34 per cent, while handgun homicide has grown from 13 to 50 per cent since Martin Bryant killed 35 people at the Port Arthur tourist site in Tasmania in April 1996.
As the most dominant economic powers in the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand accounted for 98.99 per cent of legal imports into the region, the survey said.
Of the two countries, New Zealand has more permissive gun laws but there is little difference in Australia's rate of gun crime and injury.
While all states and territories permit gun ownership, Australia has in the past lacked uniform national gun laws.
After the Port Arthur massacre police ministers agreed to enact new legislation for tighter regulation of gun ownership.
And earlier this month the federal government launched a buyback scheme for small firearms prompted by last year's Monash University shootings in which two students were killed and five injured.
The Federal Government predicts 65,000 guns will be handed in under the $118 million scheme, which will run until December 31.
Under the legislation, high calibre handguns above 9mm and short-barrelled handguns under 12cm for semi-automatics, will be banned.
People found in possession of 10 or more firearms, where at least half are military style fully automatic weapons, face up to 13 years in prison.
The buyback and a six-month amnesty on illegal weapons is actively in force in all states except Victoria, where it starts in less than a month, and NSW and South Australia, where it starts on October 1.
