Gun buyback: Labor’s gun crackdown in chaos as police have no rights to seize weapons after tribunal ruling

The Cook Government’s gun crackdown has been thrown into disarray by a tribunal ruling that police have no right to seize weapons because key parts of the new Firearms Act have not officially come into effect.

Police have for the past few weeks been flooding firearms licence holders with disqualification letters, giving them three months to surrender their guns because they are ineligible under recently passed laws.

The so-called revocation notices blindsided shooters because regulations governing how the nitty gritty of the 2024 Firearms Act would actually work have not been finalised.

The pre-emptive action to disarm WA ahead of the entire act receiving royal assent has been questioned by the State Administrative Tribunal.

The SAT raised its timing concerns when determining whether a man who was the subject of an interim family violence restraining order was a fit and proper person to hold a firearms licence.

Acting as the respondent in the case, police argued the SAT’s decision would be made irrelevant by the 2024 act because under those laws the licence holder would be deemed a disqualified person.

“I do not accept the respondent’s submission that it is a relevant consideration in this matter that my decision may ‘shortly be rendered moot’ by operation of the 2024 Act,” SAT member Naomi Eagling noted.

“The applicant is not yet a disqualified person.

“The respondent’s submission relies on an interpretation of various definition sections in Part 1 of the 2024 Act.

“However, no operative provision in relation to whom are disqualified persons and in what circumstances they are disqualified has commenced.

“Furthermore, the definition of a disqualified person . . . is set by regulations which have not yet been promulgated.”

Ms Eagling also noted that provisions in section 9 of the act, which defined the disqualification process, were inactive.

“No regulation has yet been promulgated which prescribes the above matters,” she ruled.

“The tribunal must apply the law which is in effect at the time which it makes its decision.”

Lawyers representing gun owners believe the September 6 SAT judgement is the reason the State Government re-opened the voluntary gun buyback scheme.

Police Minister Paul Papalia warned repeatedly that firearms owners would not get a second chance to be compensated up to $1000 for weapons they would be banned from owning once the new act came into effect.

The original six-month scheme expired in August.

It yielded 3195 handguns, 9908 shotguns and 25,339 rifles.

The second program runs until January 17.

Revocations notices seen by The West Australian show police are using decades-old convictions to justify confiscating guns.

People hit with the disqualification orders include a 32-year-old man from Perth’s southern suburbs who was told he would have to forfeit his rifles, a .22 and .243, because he had committed a drug offence as a teenager and a mother of three from the Pilbara who robbed someone when she was a child.

One case that left professional and sporting shooters shaking their heads involves a middle-aged man from the Wheatbelt.

The approved foster carer, who donates to WA Police Legacy and supports the WA Police Golden Oldies rugby team, will lose his five firearms because in 2006 he was unwittingly embroiled in a theft at a pizza shop.

It is believed that police have also used historical traffic offences as justification for disqualifying people.