Australia implemented a firearm ban and mandatory confiscation in 1996 pursuant to the National Firearms Agreement, in which nearly 700,000 privately-owned firearms were turned in to the government and destroyed. In 2017, NRA-ILA described how the country’s anti-gun officials and activists were nonetheless continuing to demand even stricter gun controls: “For those interested in restricting freedom, there’s always one more step that must be taken.”
True to predictions, the State of Western Australia (WA) has since adopted what the state government calls “Australia’s toughest firearms laws,” the Firearms Act Reforms 2024 and regulations, which take effect at the end of March. In the meantime, the government has been running a gun “buyback” scheme since February 2024 for gun owners who will have to give up their guns under the new law, with a budget of A$64.3million. As of January 2025, the government reported that approximately 52,000 firearms had been surrendered to police and removed, the “biggest reduction of firearms anywhere in the nation since 1997 when then Prime Minister John Howard introduced the National Firearms Agreement and buyback scheme.”
At the time the laws were proposed, WA’s government called the changes historic firearm reforms that would enhance community safety but, more to the point, laws that would “reduce unnecessary firearm ownership.” “Unnecessary,” obviously, is a subjective concept.
The latest laws include new license categories, prohibitions and disqualifications, restrictions on the number of guns an individual may own, mandatory health evaluations, mandatory training, and strict new storage requirements.
For individuals, licenses will be required for competitive shooters (“participating in shooting competitions held by a licensed firearm club at a licensed firearm range”); these licensees are limited to a maximum of ten firearms. A hunting license is required for anyone engaging in the lawful hunting of animals on land which the license holder has authority to hunt on, and the land must be registered with the government by the landowner. The maximum number of firearms that can be licensed under a hunting license is five, and is restricted to firearms listed as a “category A or B” firearm. The introduction of these firearm ownership limits was expected “to remove up to 13,000 guns from the WA community.”
A paintball license “authorizes the licensee to use a prescribed paintball gun for the purposes of participating in games of paintball conducted under the authority of a Paintball Business License,” with very specific requirements for the location of use and the paintball gun itself (e.g., the paintball gun must have “a calibre of at least 0.4 inches and not more than 0.68 inches”). Collectors of firearms, to qualify for a license, “must prove they are a student of arms and are a member of an approved society of collectors,” and “each firearm, major firearm part or ammunition already held or applied for must fall within the scope of the applicant’s applied interest.” In addition, the collection must meet defined “collectable firearm requirements.”
Persons with specified criminal convictions or subject to various restraining or protective orders stand to lose their licenses and have their guns seized. A license holder served with an interim restraining order or charged with a disqualifying offence becomes “an interim disqualified person during the court process” until the matter is resolved, and, during this period, their firearm license is suspended and firearms seized. Disqualification periods for such court orders are the length of the order plus five years: if an order lasted two years, “on the day it expires the 5-year period commences which then totals a disqualification period of 7 years” – a cumulative period more than three times the duration of the prohibiting order. For individuals with a disqualifying conviction, they remain disqualified for the period that represents the maximum imprisonment time possible for their offence plus any actual term of imprisonment, or, if the person was not imprisoned, the maximum imprisonment penalty. “Disqualifying offences and orders will be considered retrospectively,” meaning individuals with convictions and orders that predate the effective date of the laws may still be prohibited.
WA becomes the first Australian jurisdiction to require specific, recurring mental health checks as part of the licensing of gun owners. These include a self-assessment form that the applicant or licensee completes and takes to their medical provider. The doctor is to review the self-assessment form and conduct a medical assessment of the applicant/licensee, with the results reported to police (meets or does not meet the firearm authority health standards, or meets with conditions). New license applicants must undergo the examination as part of the application process; existing licensees will be subject to health examinations incrementally over a five-year transitional period. Licensees aged 80 or over will be required to undergo annual exams.
The new security and storage requirements depend on the type of firearm involved (including paintball guns, air rifles, muzzle-loading long guns, cannons, “kiln guns,” tranquilizer guns, and handguns). To make it easier for gun owners to understand this part of the law, the WA Police have published a color-coded matrix chart that breaks down the mandatory storage requirements based on the number and type of guns, and whether the storage location is occupied or unoccupied. This contains additional instructions for shared compliant storage (“a family could store all their firearms in one large cabinet so long as they are made temporarily inoperable so other family members with access to the firearms cabinet cannot use the firearm”) and on the necessary surveillance and alarm system standards. Separate security requirements apply to firearms when being transported.
Elsewhere in Australia, the State of Victoria is ramping up their machete law from a restriction to the country’s first-ever machete ban. Last year, the government proposed the Firearms and Control of Weapons (Machetes) Amendment Bill 2024 to restrict the use of machetes as weapons by specifically listing “machetes” as a type of “controlled weapon” that could not be possessed, carried, or used without a “lawful excuse,” or sold to anyone under the age of 18. The penalty for carrying a controlled weapon without a lawful excuse is a fine of more than A$23,000 or a jail term of one year. (According to the state police, “[s]elf-defence is not a lawful excuse for carrying [a] controlled weapon or dangerous articles.”)
Earlier this month, Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan announced harsher measures to reclassify machetes as “prohibited weapons,” making their sale, possession, and use illegal except for persons with government exemptions. The measure would take effect on September 1, although an amnesty between September 1 and November 30 would allow people to dispose of such weapons “using secure bins in safe locations.” Otherwise, those caught possessing a machete will face penalties that include up to two years in jail or a fine exceeding A$47,000.
Machetes would join the already lengthy list of “prohibited weapons” in the state that includes flick knives, non-metal/ceramic knives (“excluding plastic cutlery”), swords, laser pointers, slingshots and catapults, tasers/stun guns, crossbows, laser-tag imitation firearms, gel blaster guns, extendable batons, “acoustic anti-personnel devices,” and mace sprays and similar “noxious discharge articles” (club-type maces are also prohibited, “other than a ceremonial mace made for and used solely as a symbol of authority on ceremonial occasions”).
The state government has not yet finalized the key definition of “machete” or the exemptions framework, although it has indicated that machetes “can be broadly described as a cutting edge knife with a blade of more than 20 centimetres [about 8 inches]. Government will consult with industry on this definition before the ban starts, with kitchen knives not intended to be included.”
“That’s not a knife,” Crocodile Dundee famously taunted a mugger in the hit 1986 film. “That’s a knife!” he continued, flashing his own hunting blade. Only now, Dundee’s iconic knife is apparently a banned machete, and his (non-injurious) use of it for defensive purposes would be banned as well.
Apart from these major issues, there are other obvious problems. Turning in machetes under the amnesty would be entirely voluntary, with no compensation offered, and the government “has not outlined any proactive enforcement strategy to track remaining weapons after the amnesty period ends.” Machetes may still be legally imported into Australia because the federal government has not implemented a nationwide ban or other restrictions. And although Premier Allan has called on retailers to stop placing stock orders for machetes, residents will be able to circumvent the ban by buying machetes in other states. Criminals, true to form, will continue to ignore the law, as they have always done, and acquire (and use) machetes and other “prohibited weapons” and guns illegally.
That, of course, is the heart of the matter. Human nature being what it is, the evil-minded and the mindlessly violent will always be with us. A former WA police commissioner observes that going after law-abiding sports shooters, and farmers and others who require access to legitimate firearms “is nonsensical because it’s not going to make a difference to the problem” of illegal guns and violent crime. Premier Allen, speaking of the Victoria’s new ban, seemingly ignored the role that the criminal element plays in wreaking havoc on her state’s residents and focused on scapegoating the tool: “Machetes are destroying lives so we will destroy machetes.”
As American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson recognized long ago, laws forbidding the carrying of arms “disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes” while making “things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants.” As honest Australians fret over whether possessing a kitchen knife is liable to turn them into felons, criminals are apt to rejoice that curtailing “unnecessary firearm ownership” and other weapon clampdowns simply disarm their would-be victims. Making citizens more vulnerable increases crime which, in turn, justifies the “one more step” required to enhance public safety. Rinse and repeat.
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