On October 16, 2024, 9news.com.au in Australia published an article about police confiscation of 150 guns. Most of the guns were confiscated at what appears to be a gun shop in Liverpool, a suburb of Sidney. A man and a woman were arrested. Both were released. Later, the man was arrested again and charged. A man and a woman were arrested in Port Macquarie when a search of a property at Bobs Creek turned up two replica guns and several boxes of ammunition. From 9news.com:

Over 150 guns have been seized and three people have been charged after an investigation into fake firearm licences across New South Wales.

Police allege businesses based in Liverpool, in Sydney’s southwest, and Bobs Creek, south of Port Macquarie, had provided over 1000 people with fraudulent permission to shoot licences for a fee, which allowed them to obtain gun licences.

The majority of those people were from south-west Sydney, with some linked to organised crime.

Bobs Creek is a rural area about 15 miles (23 kilometers South of Port Macquarie.

In the current case, three people have been charged. All are out on bail.  One is a 50-year-old firearms dealer from Sydney. He is charged with 17 counts of failing to keep labels and records and giving ammunition to a person not authorized to use it.

One is a 48-year-old woman from Port Macquarie. She is charged with 14 counts of making a false document for financial advantage.

The third person is a 39-year-old man from Port Macquarie. He is charged with two counts of possessing an unauthorized firearm and possessing ammunition without holding a license. This correspondent’s speculation is the “unauthorized firearms” charges are for the two replica guns. The charge for possessing a replica gun and a real gun is the same in New South Wales, Australia. The 9news.com reporting did not mention any real guns as found in Port Macquarie.

The investigation and raid appear to be centered around the allegations of documents used to show permission to shoot on a property in western New South Wales, hundreds of miles west of the coast. The allegations are about a thousand people were given permission to shoot on the remote property, when only one person’s permission met the legal standards. In addition to the 150+ firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and $380,000 dollars in cash were seized.

In the Draconian Australian gun control scheme, only people with a “genuine reason” for owning a firearm are granted a license. People must apply to the Police Commissioner. Issuance of a license is theoretically discretionary and subjective. From the NSW statute:

The Commissioner may issue a licence in respect of an application, or refuse any such application.

In practice, most licenses are granted if the proper paperwork is submitted. One “genuine reason” to own guns is a “permission to shoot” given by a land owner or property manager of rural land.

This correspondent suspects the “permission to shoot” was for the purpose of recreational hunting/vermin control (b1). From  nsw.gov.au:

Reason: recreational hunting/vermin control

The applicant must—

(b1)  produce proof of permission given by a land manager within the meaning of the Forestry Act 2012 to shoot on land in respect of which the land manager is authorised to exercise functions as land manager under that Act

If the “land manager” did not have the proper permission to be a “land manager,” then the permissions given might be fraudulent. This correspondent traveled in western New South Wales in 2019. There is a lot of land with little on it except kangaroos, goats (considered vermin), and very sparse grazing.

It appears the gun shop owner and/or the “land manager” got a little sloppy or creative, or a combination of both with the somewhat fluid definitions of “genuine” reason to possess firearms.  In the USA, the ATF has a current “zero tolerance” for paperwork errors.

The history of government controls over the ownership of arms shows a long, slippery slope where initial controls are gradually tightened over time, making legal ownership of firearms more and more difficult.

In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled such subjective and discretionary schemes are not allowed under the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

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About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.