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More than 250,000 people have acquired gun licences in NSW claiming to be hunters or sports shooters, but just a fraction engaged in either activity in the past year, exposing what one research group called a “gaping hole in Australia’s gun laws” that had been exploited by the Bondi terrorists.
A second study, by the state’s crime statisticians, has revealed many of the gun-related murders and attacks in NSW are being carried out against family members and partners in a domestic violence context.
Since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, people in all states and territories have been forced to provide a “genuine reason” for requesting a firearm licence.
The diverse reasons include employment, gun-collecting and farming. But by far the most relied upon is recreational hunting and sports shooting.
Combined, those two reasons appear on 253,670 of the licences in NSW alone, according to records kept by the police firearms registry.
However, researchers from the Australia Institute found that based on figures from the Australian Sports Commission, only 35,761 people, at most, participated in either activity in NSW between June 2024 and July 2025.
Its report says: “The gulf between these two figures suggests that the majority of people who own a firearm with the stated reason of sports or recreation do not actually participate in either activity.
“While some of these people may be licence-holders who have retired from active shooting, it would be ambitious to suggest retired shooters make up the entirety of the over 200,000-person gap.”
The institute said people appeared to be “taking advantage” of an easy way to tick the genuine reason box. While sporting shooters are required to attend clubs a number of times a year, “it is unclear if, or how effectively, this is checked and enforced”.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who don’t use their firearms for the reason on their licence, and that is a major concern,” said Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell.
“The huge gap between those who say they need a gun for hunting or sports, and those who actually do either, exposes the facade that underpins gun licensing across this country.”
The institute found there were “multiple tragic examples” in which people had abused the genuine reason requirements with “fatal consequences”, including domestic violence murders and suicides.
The most horrific were alleged Bondi Beach terrorists Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Sajid, 50, had acquired rifles and shotguns legally after being licensed for recreational hunting in 2023.
He and his son, Naveed, allegedly opened fire into a crowd of Jewish families in December, killing 15 and injuring dozens more. Police shot Akram dead and gravely injured Naveed, 24, who is now in custody facing dozens of charges.
Naveed Akram’s connections to his local shooting club emerged within hours when police found a membership card for Zastava Hunting Association in a wallet along with his driver’s licence.
The Serbian club, speaking to the Herald on the night of the attack, said it did not recognise Akram’s name.
It later told a Serbian news outlet that Naveed had attended for safety and hunting training but that he had not been seen at the club for five years.
“That man hasn’t come to us in over five years. I don’t remember him or his face. He had our membership card, but we don’t issue weapons permits,” the president reportedly said.
There is no suggestion Zastava club or its members acted improperly or illegally, only that the Akrams had a membership card.
The report says most Australian states and territories allow paid-up memberships to sports shooting clubs to satisfy the “genuine reason” test. Shooting groups promote this fact, the institute said.
It found shooting club membership had flourished since the Port Arthur massacre and that had created a guaranteed stream of funds flowing to the gun lobby, providing it with a multimillion-dollar war chest to fight firearm regulation.
The Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia said it was “baseless” to suggest 200,000 shooters were not participating in their nominated sport, and it disputed the claim that it is sitting on a war chest paid for by its 220,000 members, which it could use to lobby for relaxed gun laws.
“Current Australian gun laws are strong and there is no evidence that the genuine reason provisions are failing. Hunters in clubs are required to attend twice a year, while R-licence hunters are required to report to the state government yearly on the amount and results of their hunting,” said SSAA chief executive Tom Kenyon.
Kenyon said SSAA’s annual revenue was “less than half” of the $48 million suggested by the research, and the organisation uses the money to fund shooting ranges, insurance, competitions and publications.
The Bondi attack triggered sweeping changes to federal gun laws that will create stricter import controls, a buyback scheme and intelligence on people trying to get licences.
NSW also passed tougher laws that limit magazine capacity, set a maximum of four guns per person (except farmers) and make mandatory gun club membership for all licence holders.
Kenyon criticised the NSW reforms as “unfair and unnecessary”.
“The attack was the result of a failure to prevent radicalisation and a failure of information-sharing between the federal and state government, not a failure of legislation. Police had all the powers they needed to prevent the [alleged] terrorist Sajid Akram from receiving his firearms licence.”
The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research this month compiled data for the Herald that showed a significant number of gun murders were committed in the context of domestic violence.
In 2016-17, 36 per cent of firearm-related murders were domestic violence. That same year, 30 per cent of harassment/stalking/intimidation incidents involving guns were also domestic violence.
Similar figures repeated for four consecutive years. Between 25 and 38 per cent of murders and stalk/harass/intimidate events involving guns were perpetrated in a domestic violence setting.
The catastrophic consequences of firearms in the hands of abusers was illustrated in January when Julian Ingram allegedly shot dead his pregnant former partner Sophie Quinn, her friend John Harris and her aunt Nerida Quinn in the NSW Central West town of Lake Cargelligo.
Ingram, also known as Julian Pierpoint, fled following the triple murder. He never held a gun licence.
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