Major police crackdown on illegal guns
Guns stolen from Victorian rural and regional areas are being traded by criminals “in town”, where they are used in violent burglaries, carjackings and murders.
Police & Courts
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A Melbourne transit company is facing criminal charges over the disappearance of a stockpile of high-powered firearms.
Morrow’s Logistics, a dangerous goods mover based in Keysborough, has been the subject of an extensive 12-month investigation by Victoria Police’s Illicit Firearm Squad after more than a dozen rifles and shotguns vanished while in the company’s possession last February.
The whereabouts of the weapons remain unknown however detectives have identified multiple “persons of interest” and charged the company with failing to properly store the firearms.
A firearms industry source speculated the theft, which occurred while the firearms were in transit, would have required a high level of planning with the likely intention of trading them in Melbourne’s underworld.
The gun thefts remain under active investigation, with Morrow’s Logistics ordered to front court in July.
Revelations about the investigation come as the elite police squad details the extent of the illegal gun trade in Victoria in a Sunday Herald Sun special report.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission estimates more than 260,000 firearms are circulating in the country’s illicit firearms market, which is dominated by outlaw motorcycle gangs, Middle Eastern criminal groups and emerging crime entities.
The biggest thefts in the past year occured in suburbs including Keysborough, Ferntree Gully and Pakenham.
However, police said suburban gun raids are often one-offs and the vast majority of overall thefts occur in regional and rural areas.
Detective Senior Sergeant Leigh Howse of the Illicit Firearm Squad said illegal guns are a “highly sought after commodity” and, when stolen in the regions, often end up in town where they are traded by criminals.
Once there they are used in high-level drug importations and trafficking and in acts of intimidation and violence including burglaries, robberies, carjackings and murder.
Low-level crooks can even find themselves a gun with the right connections and price.
Reports of firearm thefts dropped throughout the pandemic, Crime Statistics Agency data shows.
Licensing and Regulation Division Acting Superintendent Johh Cahill said firearm burglars have a much higher “strike rate” targeting country homes, as most licensed firearms owners live outside the city.
“There are plenty of guns in Melbourne. But in terms of your likelihood of going to a random address in Melbourne and finding firearms, it’s much, much lower than if you were doing a burglary on a country property. Even getting out of country towns to rural properties, the chances of firearms being there are really high,” he said.
“There are cases were premises are targeted by virtue of people identifying themselves as a firearms owner but doing something like putting Winchester on the back of their 4X4. People make themselves targets.”
Other sources for illegal guns include those imported from overseas or interstate or those made or altered by backyard manufacturers, including 3D printing gurus.
The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal only 444 firearm and ammunition thefts were reported to police across Victoria in the year to September 2021.
The theft reports were the lowest in a decade, which police attribute in part to Covid-related stay-home orders and restrictions on travel to the regions.
However guns remain in high circulation on the streets Melbourne.
Gangland figure Nabil Maghnie, Love Machine security guard Aaron Khalid Osmani and patron Richard Arow, newlyweds Lindita and Veton Musai, Yarra Ranges Council worker Marty Sheahan, rapper Christopher Habiyakare are among those killed by gunfire in the past few years.
The Illicit Firearm Squad was formed in September 2020 to protect lives and reduce the number of guns moving through criminal hands.
The squad has significant capabilities, including dedicated intelligence operatives who keep a close eye on black market trades and high-level dealers.
Detective Inspector Mick Daly said his squad is determined to get guns off the streets.
“In the wrong hands, a firearm poses serious impacts to the safety of the community and that’s why it’s important we investigate all allegations of illicit firearm trafficking, manufacturing and attempts to import,” he said.
One of the squad’s biggest busts took down an alleged firearm and drug trafficking syndicate in the Latrobe Valley.
The investigation resulted in the arrest of 12 men and the alleged seizure of 20 firearms, quantities of methamphetamine, cocaine and 1-4 Butanediol in November.
Several of the alleged firearm dealers were considered such a risk they’ve spent the past few months locked up in prison awaiting their day in court.
Another two men were arrested in February after an angle grinder was allegedly used to cut open a safe and steal nine firearms from a property in Pakenham.
The men had allegedly ground the serial numbers from the guns to de-identify them with the likely intention to trade them in the illicit firearm market.
Firearms such as these undergo extensive forensic testing to determine their origin and history of criminal involvement.
The Ballistics Unit uses specialised techniques to recover destroyed or altered serial numbers before they are sent to forensic hubs and test fired to check for identifying features of projectiles and shells.
These details are then entered into a database and compared against unsolved crimes nationwide.
“Often we are dealing with a very cold trail,” Acting Superintendent Cahill said.
Spike in fake gun offences
Gel blasters remain a huge concern for police in Victoria as criminals increasingly use the illegal weapons to commit robberies, drug crime, family violence and road rage.
The Saturday Herald Sun can reveal imitation firearm offences have skyrocketed across the state over the past 12 months.
The latest Crime Statistics Agency figures show a 58 per cent jump in offences for possessing imitation firearms without exemption,with 833 offences recorded in 2021 compared to 526 the previous year.
There was a similar increase in prohibited people being busted with imitation firearms, up from 266 offences in 2020 to 395 last year.
Gel blasters were reclassified as imitation firearms in Victoria last September but remain legal in Queensland.
Many of them resemble assault weapons such as military-style automatic machine pistols and handguns and are extremely hardto discern from genuine firearms.
For that reason they have grown to become an extremely effective tool to intimidate victims into compliance.
Illicit Firearm Squad Detective Inspector Mick Daly said Asia is the biggest exporter of imitation firearms and those thatare imported into Queensland often make it across the border into Victoria.
“The problem is interstate, particularly in Queensland, they are not regulated so it’s quite easy for them to pass over theborder into Victoria,” Insp Daly said.
“We see them used in family violence incidents to intimate and threaten, in armed robbery and used as intimidation in drugdealing. They are also turning up in road rage incidents,” he said.
“The realism makes them almost impossible to tell the difference between a gel blaster and a real firearm.”
Insp Daly said attempted imports of imitation firearms and parts are regularly stopped at the border.
The national Firearm Amnesty is currently underway and allows anyone in Australia to hand in unregistered or unwanted firearmsthat could otherwise fall into the wrong hands.
About 1600 firearms were handed into authorities from July to December last year – with roughly half categorised as gel blasters.
Licensing and Regulation Division Acting Superintendent Johh Cahill said gel blaster are still in high circulation in thecommunity.
“While plenty are being handed in there are still so many out there,” he said.
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