Sydney’s suburbs are awash with firearms, with the top 100 licence-holders in New South Wales owning more than 13,000 weapons combined, many of which are located in metropolitan areas.
Following the terrorist attack on Sunday that killed 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, has pledged to review the state’s firearm laws.
Police confirmed one of the alleged Bondi Beach terrorists – who was killed by police during the attack – had a licence and owned six weapons.
Several licence-holders in NSW have almost 300 individual weapons linked to their licence, with six of the top 10 gun owners in the state living in suburban Sydney. They are not collectors or dealers.
Data from the NSW firearms registry shows about a third of the state’s approximately 1m firearms are located in major cities.
A Guardian Australia analysis of these figures shows the local government areas of Penrith, Hawkesbury, Canterbury-Bankstown and Blacktown have the highest number of firearms in Sydney. These are also among the most highly populated areas in the state.
On Tuesday evening, the prime minister said in a statement that national cabinet had resolved that “strong, decisive and focused action was needed on gun law reform”, including renegotiating the National Firearms Agreement first established after the 1996 Port Arthur mass shooting.
Changes being considered include limiting the number of firearms one person can own, ensuring that firearm licenses can only be held by Australian citizens and limiting open-ended firearms licensing, among other options.
The impending crackdown on licensed firearm owners is expected to face fierce resistance from the gun lobby in NSW, with Minns indicating he wants to make access to guns more difficult for those not involved in primary industries.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Asked Monday whether NSW’s gun registry laws needed to change, Minns said: “The short answer is yes.”
“It means introducing a bill to parliament to – to be really blunt – making it more difficult to get these horrifying weapons that have no practical use in our community,” he said.
“If you’re not a farmer, you’re not involved in agriculture, why do you need these massive weapons to put the public in danger and make life dangerous and difficult for New South Wales police?”
Minns would not comment on what specifically would change, but said he wanted to make sure any reform “makes a big difference”.
“That’s entirely my intention and my colleagues feel the same way,” he said. “You can expect action soon.”
The alleged Bondi gunmen who killed 15 people at the Chanukah by the Sea event have been identified as father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Naveed, 24, was taken to hospital under police guard. Sajid, 50, was shot dead by police. The latter held a “category A/B” licence, police said, which entitled him to possess long arms like those used in the attack. “Basic” explosive devices were also found at the scene.
It was disclosed on Monday that the son came to the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) in October 2019 “on the basis of being associated with others”.
“The assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence,” the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said.
It is not clear whether this would have affected the father’s gun licence, or whether the NSW firearms registry was aware of this association.
The Greens’ NSW justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said there was “a frightening concentration of guns in the outer suburbs of Sydney” that needed to be confronted.
“It’s unfathomable that a young man had been examined by Asio for his association with terrorism, and yet his father was able to obtain a gun licence and register six firearms. That is a system that is not working and it needs fixing,” Higginson said.
The party at state and federal levels is now pushing for a three-gun limit for a licence holder, prohibitions on high-powered hunting rifles, time-limited gun licences and the removal of recreational hunting as a “genuine reason” for a firearm licence.
In the wake of the shooting, the Australian Federal Police Association president, Alex Caruana, criticised the slow progress on the national firearm register that was promised after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 and is still yet to be delivered.
He said after the Wieambilla shooting in 2022, the association had again reiterated the need for urgent changes, including the establishment of the register and the need for it to track ammunition sales.
“If our suggestions were followed back then, we may have had the ability to reassess this person of interest who has now been involved in a really heinous and tragic crime, and to possibly be in a position where police could have possibly prevented it and the loss of life.”
He also questioned whether a robust national database would have allowed police to better assess the risk posed by Naveed and his father given the access to licensed weapons.
“If there was a national firearms database that Asio also had access to in real time … they might have been able to make a dynamic assessment and change the risk level of that person. They would have the ability to do that,” he said.
As part of its investigation into the state of Australian gun control in August, Guardian Australia found several cases where people were successfully able to overturn decisions to refuse licences based on associations with outlaw motorcycle gangs, among other groups.
In a press conference on Monday morning, the NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, said the 50-year-old alleged perpetrator, now deceased, had held a gun licence since 2015 with no incidents.
Police have located six weapons from the scene of the attack and after raids on a property in Campsie and the pair’s home in Bonnyrigg.
Lanyon later confirmed that the older shooter held a recreational hunting licence as a member of a gun club. Hunting and gun club membership is one avenue to obtain a gun licence across most Australian jurisdictions.
There have also been unconfirmed claims that Naveed was a member of a hunting club, after images emerged of what appears to be a membership card said to have been found in his wallet.
It’s not yet confirmed if he was a member of the club.
In a social media post on Sunday night, the club said it would be closed until 15 January. The Guardian’s calls and messages to the club went unanswered.
The building at the club’s listed address was empty, except for a lone ute parked out the front, when the Guardian visited on Monday morning.
