South Australian shooters appear be more enthusiastic about their guns than most Australians, with the average shooter there owning at least five firearms, higher than the Australia-wide average of around four firearms each, according to police figures.
There are more than 60,000 licensed firearms holders in SA as at 31 January this year, and a total of 328,905 guns registered in the state, according to recently released Right To Information (RTI) documents from SA Police.
The same document also showed there were 95 dealers licensed to sell both firearms and ammunition, along with a further 42 licences to only sell ammunition (such as might be issued to an outdoors supply store in a regional area), and 19 licensed armourers.
There were 3451 firearms licence applications in 2024, and 20,713 PTA applications.
The majority of firearms in SA were Category A (204,975), with 93,113 Category B firearms, 6070 Category C firearms and 4106 Category D firearms.
The handgun shooting sports are also doing well in SA, with 19,801 Category H firearms registered there.
684 deactivated firearms were registered in SA, along with 156 Category P (“Prescribed”) firearms — essentially short-barrelled (under 33cm) rifles and shotguns, which are categorised differently to handguns.
Shooters Union South Australia president Peter Heggie said while target shooting and hunting continued to grow in popularity in South Australia, the raw numbers did not tell the story of the deteriorating situation with Firearms Registry processing times.
“The delay in processing licensing applications is disgusting; it’s up to 6-7 months now,” he said.
“Even Permit to Acquire processing is taking 7-8 weeks. It’s not good enough, and it needs to get sorted out immediately.”
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