The latest report by The Australia Institute claims “hundreds of thousands of gun owners have no genuine reason to have a firearm”, sparking outrage from shooting representatives who say the report is biased, flawed and part of an agenda to demonise responsible firearms users.
The Hole In Australia’s Gun Laws report claims that in NSW alone, there are at up to 253,670 gun licences using either sports shooting or recreational hunting as a genuine reason, but claims only 36,000 people participate in either activity. This participation figure was reportedly arrived at via an AusPlay survey.
The Australia Institute claims “this gap of more than 200,000 licenses shows that many people are giving misleading information or failing to update their gun licence conditions”.
The questions in the survey were not specifically about hunting or sports shooting, and some commenters online pointed out they believed the questions were more about physical activity (in the running/football/swimming/hiking sense), and it would not have occurred to them to list “hunting” (or target shooting) in that context.
AusPlay’s top-level Sport & Physical Activity Reports do not include hunting or target shooting either.
The assertion most people with hunting as a genuine reason on their NSW gun licence are lying about it is simply not borne out by the NSW Government’s own figures, with a 2023 report from the Department of Primary Industries stating hunting in NSW was worth at least $509m in gross state product and supported more than 4192 jobs annually in 2021/22 alone.
That same report indicated there were 46,703 hunting trips made that year just by the respondents to the DPI survey (about 5000 people), spending an average of $1067 per trip.
NSW DPI’s 2023-2024 figures state there are 25,821 R- and G-licence holders in NSW, who booked 63,015 public land hunts that year alone. These figures do not include hunting on private property, for which DPI does not (and cannot) collect data.
NSW has mandatory attendance requirements for target-shooting licence holders, and failure to comply with those results in loss of the firearms licence; the idea that hundreds of thousands of people are simply not meeting their legal obligations and nothing is being done about it is absurd to say the least.
Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park said it was clear the Australia Institute is — at least on the issue of firearms — an extremely biased organisation that was not publishing these reports in good faith.
“Once again they have published an extremely biased, anti-gun report containing errors and inaccuracies, and are falsely suggesting that law-abiding citizens who have jumped through all the hoops and met all the police background checks and other requirements for a firearms licence are doing the wrong thing merely by existing,” he said.
“It is absolutely inexcusable for the Australia Institute to issue an official report accusing hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens of being liars and criminals, and I would have thought that if any other minority group was subjected to the same treatment then it would surely raise potential hate speech issues.
“It’s bad enough an appalling, offensive report like this was even published in the first place, but what’s worse is the way the mainstream media keep treating the Australia Institute’s firearm reports as gospel despite the glaring issues, inaccuracies and serious flaws they contain.”
SSAA National CEO Tom Kenyon was similarly critical of the report, which bizarrely went out of its way to criticise SSAA for having a greater annual income than Netball Australia.
“The Australia Institute consistently includes misinformation in their reports related to firearms which is helping no one, and is actually becoming dangerous,” he said.
He revealed that, after a similar Australia Institute report last year, two SSAA offices had received emails contain the threat that the writer would “make it my final mission to come and deal with the lot of you”.
“Since the Bondi Terrorist Incident, leaders across the nation, including the Prime Minister, have been calling on the community to lower the temperature when commenting on such sensitive matters, yet the Australia Institute seem to want to fan the flames with vigour,” Mr Kenyon said.
“Real information is important, and we back our members to comply with the strict firearms regulation that already exists in Australia, and we are deeply concerned by any misinformation that may compromise the safety of the public, or our members and their families.”
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