A resident of Young has 65 registered guns according to the NSW Greens.
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The Greens created the website – toomanyguns.org – aimed at showing ‘the extent of the gun ownership in NSW’, with an interactive postcode search that outlines the approximate population, total registered firearms owners, total registered firearms, largest number of guns held by one registered owner and average registered firearms per registered firearms owner.
The data was obtained through a Freedom of Information application to the NSW Police. It shows there were 810,023 registered firearms in NSW as of March 2017.
The political party is very clear about the purpose of the site, highlighting, ‘this is too many guns’.
In the Young area postcode – 2594 – wasn’t listed in the top 100 in the state but according to the Greens one registered owner (excluding collectors) has 65 guns.
The average registered firearms per registered owner was 4.65.
The Greens say there are 921 registered firearms owners in the Young area of 4285 guns.
Cootamundra area postcode was 24th on the list of top 100 gun owners with 132 guns registered to one person.
Two thousand five hundred and seventy three guns are registered to 498 owners in the Cootamundra area.
The Cowra area 2794 – was 68th on the list with the largest collection at 77 and the average ownership 4.7. Boorowa’s postcode – 2586 – did not make the top 100, the largest registered collection is listed as 29 with 464 gun owners registered of 2127 firearms.
Police believe the high number of guns registered to one owner can be put down to large numbers registered to officials at gun clubs.
A map titled – Where are all the guns? – on toomanyguns.org shows the highest gun ownership in NSW is outside metropolitan areas.
“Farmers on rural properties often require firearms for euthanizing injured stock or controlling wild invasive animals,” the Greens website explains.
“Members of a shooting club and farmers may reasonably be able to establish a need for a number of guns, however, it is impossible to see how any one citizen can establish a “genuine” or “good reason” to have dozens or even hundreds of guns.”
The Greens believe a ‘serious loophole in Australia’s firearms laws’ allow gun owners to recycle the “good reason” for additional guns.
The NSW permit to acquire a firearm requires a person seeking to acquire a gun to state that, “I confirm that the good reason for acquiring this firearm is directly related to the reason for the issue of my firearms licence.”
The main reasons people give for obtaining a firearms licence are that they are a member of a shooting club or the owner of a rural property.
“In the interests of community safety, it is time this loophole in the firearms laws was closed so that once any gun owner owned at least five guns that they have to establish a separate and extraordinary reason for owning each additional gun,” the political party continued.
“Properly administered this reform would significantly reduce the number of firearms in our community and end the disturbing trend towards people collecting their own private arsenals.”
The Federal Government launched a three-month national gun amnesty, to address concerns about deteriorating national security and the increased threat of terrorism. Throughout Australia 51,461 firearms were surrendered to police stations and gun shops from July to September.
That compared with 660,000 handed in during the year-long amnesty and gun buyback program conducted in 1996.
