Hundreds of thousands of gun owners are using a “loophole” in Australia’s firearms laws to own guns without a genuine reason, according to a report by the Australia Institute.
The report compared firearms licensing and ownership statistics from NSW Police with data on recreational hunting and shooting from the Australian Sports Commission’s annual AusPlay survey.
It found there were between 215,000 and 253,670 firearms licences in NSW that list either sports shooting and/or recreational hunting as the reason for owning a gun.
But just 35,761 people in NSW actively participated in either of those activities between June 2024 and July 2025, according to the AusPlay survey.
Rod Campbell is a research director for the Australia Institute and said it suggested there were hundreds of thousands of people in breach of firearms legislation.
“There’s a gap of 200,000 people who are not doing what they told authorities they would do in order to justify their gun licence,” Mr Campbell said.
“It’s a problem because we don’t know what these people want guns for.”
Rod Campbell is calling for stricter gun laws. (ABC News:Â Barrie Pullen)
In all Australian states and territories, applicants for gun licences need to list a “genuine reason” for owning a gun, such as working on a farm or as a security guard, being a gun collector or for recreational hunting or shooting.
But NSW is the only state that publishes data on the number of firearms licences, broken down by genuine reason or firearm category.
Mr Campbell said it should serve as a “red flag” for Australia — especially as other states and territories fell short of NSW when it came to firearms reporting.
“Australia’s gun laws are predicated on the basis that having a gun in Australia is privilege — it’s not a right,” he said.
“These people have been enjoying this privilege of gun ownership without doing what they’ve said they need it for. These people have no need of a gun.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who own guns who don’t need them, or at least they’re not doing the activities they said they would do when they applied for their gun licence.”
‘Huge numbers of lethal weapons’
Mr Campbell says there is “little transparency” about how gun clubs operate. (ABC: Chris Lewis)
Financial membership to an approved shooting or gun club is a requirement for sports shooting to be accepted as a “genuine reason” for gun ownership in every state and territory.
But Mr Campbell said there was little transparency or accountability around how clubs operated or whether gun owners actually participated in them.
“In the majority of states you don’t have to ever actually get cold and muddy shooting ducks in order to justify your gun licence — you just need to be a paid-up member,” he said.
“The gun lobby is trading on this loophole and how easy it is to allow people to get lethal weapons in their hands, from the comfort of their own home, simply by paying a gun lobby group.
“People with mal-intent are quite able to get lethal weapons and plan for the kinds of tragedies that we’ve seen.”
Gun ownership came under the microscope in the wake of Bondi terror attack in December, in which 15 people were killed and 40 injured.
One of the two gunmen, Naveed Akram, reportedly held membership at a Sydney shooting club and trained in “firearms safety” and “how to hunt”.
‘Anti-gun propaganda’
Mr Borsak says the report is “nonsense”. (AAP: Joel Carrett)
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MP Robert Borsak dismissed the report as “propaganda” and argued most licensed recreational shooters and hunters were engaging in the sport at least once a month.
“Our hunting club has around 500 members and at any one time there’s at least 50 per cent of them are out there doing it,” he said.
“Most of it [hunting and shooting] is done on weekends and long weekends — that’s the reality of it.
“They’re somehow trying to say that every single shooter out of 260,000 almost is rorting the system — what nonsense, what absolute nonsense.”