Western Australia announces first gun law update in 50 years

One state has made moves to ban 56 types of weapons in its first update to gun laws in 50 years.

Long-range guns and armour-piercing rounds are among a slew of weapons now banned under Western Australia’s new gun laws.

Announced on Tuesday, the bans target 56 types of guns and 19 calibres of ammunition within WA and will kick in on July 1.

The state government will reimburse the owners of the 248 currently legal weapons covered by the impending ban, with a $1.5m buyback scheme announced.

The changes to WA’s Firearms Act are the first moves to update the state’s gun laws in 50 years.

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan and Police Minister Paul Papalia have announced bans on 56 types of guns. Picture: AAP/Rebecca Le May

Premier Mark McGowan said the armour-piercing rounds could “go through vehicles, even armoured vehicles, and there’s no purpose, no need, no role for those sorts of guns in our community”.

“They’re the sorts of guns you’d see being used in Ukraine, in the war,” Mr McGowan said on Tuesday. “There’s no point anymore – if there ever was – to those sorts of guns”.

Police Minister Paul Papalia said the catalyst for updating the laws came after an incident in May in which a man was found to have similar weapons stashed in an “extraordinary bunker” hidden under his couch in High Wycombe.

The hidden door to a man's underground gun bunker in High Wycombe.

“Some of these firearms were those firearms in that bunker,” Mr Papalia said. “They were licensed, they were clearly in a place where they shouldn’t have been, and who knows what they were being used for.”

The 52-year-old man charged over that incident was in September fined $2600, had his gun license revoked and had to surrender all firearms, along with illegal body armour and suppressors.

WA Police Assistant Commissioner Kylie Whitley said, fortunately, armour piercing rounds hadn’t been used against her fellow officers.

Some of the guns seized from the High Wycombe home that were hidden in an underground bunker.

“We don’t want to wait for that to happen, to have to ban firearms that have no place in the community,” she said.

Mr Papalia last week also announced changes to gun laws that would require licence owners to be subject to mandatory mental health checks.

Mr McGowan said he didn’t want to see his state become like the US.

“I watch the gun violence there, I’ve seen the gun violence there, and you just do not want … our state to become anything like that,” Mr McGowan said.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 67 mass shootings in the US since the start of 2023 to February 12.

The archive defines a “mass shooting” as any single incident in which at least four people are shot, not including the shooter.

Twenty people were shot and killed by another person in Western Australia in 2022, with mental health playing a role in nearly half of those incidents.

Originally published as Western Australia announces first gun law update in 50 years