Gun laws: New ammo restrictions give police hope of tracking criminals by their bullets

WA’s new gun laws will overhaul the registration and traceability of ammunition in a technology upgrade the Government hopes will cut off the supply of bullets to bikies. As part of the wide-ranging reforms to firearm ownership — which will slap limits on the number of guns West Aussies can own — an overhaul of IT systems used in licencing will give police additional ability to monitor sales of ammunition closely. Under existing laws, WA’s 190 firearm dealers are required to keep track of sales in a physical record in their stores. This means WA Police are unable to analyse sales for stockpiling and whether a purchaser has a licence for a gun for which they are buying ammunition. Laws also allow a relative or person with a connection to a licence-holder to purchase ammunition on their behalf without being licensed themselves, raising Police concerns over bikies’ access to bullets. Police Minister Paul Papalia said while the vast majority of firearm dealers and licence-holders acted appropriately, WA’s outdated laws had created multiple, exploitable flaws for people who wanted to “inflict harm on our community”. “Under the current system, firearm dealers are required to record ammunition sales, but authorities have no immediate awareness of the transactions or their frequency,” he said. “Police would have to manually cross-reference the physical records of all 190 dealers in WA to know who has purchased what ammunition and when. This is one of many significant weaknesses in the existing laws that we are removing.” In one example, the new IT system would have given police real-time information on the sale of specific sniper bullets used in Nick Martin’s assassination, allowing them to trace them back to a small number of recent buyers. “In addition to the historic Firearms Act rewrite currently being debated in the Upper House, our Government is spending tens of millions of dollars creating a digital management system to support implementation of the new laws,” Mr Papalia said. “The modern and contemporary system will provide real-time monitoring of firearm and ammunition sales to the WA Police Force. “The upgraded system will ensure individuals can only purchase ammunition for firearms they are licenced to use, and alert officers if significant purchases are being made without justification.” The debate around the laws comes as the number of new firearm licence applications has plummeted, halving from 78 per day in June last year, to 34 per day last month. Applications approved by the force dropped from more than 11,000 in 2023, to fewer than 3000 to the end of May this year. The State Government is in the midst of a firearm buyback, arranged in concert with the new laws, which has so far paid out more than $4 million for 12,000 guns traded in.