IT'S official - NSW is gun mad - with shooters stockpiling almost 100,000 new registered firearms in the past five years.
The number of gun licences, meanwhile, has only increased by about a fifth, or 18,852 over the same period, showing some are stocking up with numerous weapons, The Daily Telegraph reports.
There are now 763,359 registered firearms across the state, including 27,956 handguns, compared with 190,844 licences - taking the ratio to four guns for every licensed owner.
In some country towns firearms outnumber people - in Ivanhoe, in the state's far west, 273 residents own 432 guns.
But licences are also set to explode, with nearly 2000 issued in the past month.
Sydney is battling a drive-by shooting epidemic. Over the weekend, two more incidents took the tally for January to 14.
Six shots were fired in Pelman Ave, Greenacre, yesterday about 4.20am - "scare mongering" between rival gangs, police said.
And in Wentworthville, a bullet hit a parked car outside a hotel on Wentworthville Rd.
The figures from the NSW Firearms Registry have shocked the anti-gun lobby, which has called for more scrutiny on the reasons shooters give when applying for new guns.
Soaring ownership has also taken the number of owners to just short of the estimated 200,000 licence holders prior to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which triggered the federal government's buy-back scheme and sweeping gun control laws.
Gun Control Australia president John Crook said registered weapons were being stolen and making their way into the hands of criminals - a scenario that could worsen the drive-by shooting craze currently holding western Sydney to ransom.
"The authorities are not taking sufficient care in the examination of why they (shooters) need additional guns," Mr Crook said. "After all, it is another gun that has to be protected and stored and another gun that can cause harm in the wrong hands."
But shooters fired back, arguing already draconian laws were a "paperwork nightmare" that played into the hands of criminals at the expense of honest people.
"There are a lot of issues with the firearms registry; it has never stopped nor solved any gun crime as far as we know," Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters president Peter Whelan said.
"They say every illegal gun starts off as a legal gun (but) even the gun control zealots say very few stolen firearms were used in the committing of crimes."
Australian Institute of Criminology data shows just 592 registered guns were stolen in NSW in 2008-09.
"Governments like to say we need to know where all the guns are, it's a great political line but they only know where the guns of those people honest enough to register them are," Mr Whelan said.
"That has nothing at all to do with the criminal use of guns.
"There is no benefit to the community."
While he is an ardent supporter of safe gun storage, Mr Whelan said hundreds of hours of valuable police time was wasted maintaining the firearms registry and conducting inspections.
"It would be better if these police were reassigned to other duties like extra patrols in these suburbs where drive-by shootings are happening," he said.
He said gun buy-backs in 1996 and in 2001, which outlawed various semi-automatic weapons, actually forced people to go out and buy more firearms.
Mr Whelan said while in the past a licensed shooter might have had a single semi-automatic shotgun they used for clay target competitions, hunting and pest control, under the current gun laws, they are now forced to buy separate guns for each of those purposes.
Victims of Crime Assistance League spokesman Howard Brown said 94 per cent of people convicted for gun offences were not licensed.
"What this says is these people being brought before the courts don't give a stuff about gun laws or being licensed," he said.
Instead Mr Brown said most of the weapons used in drive-by shootings and armed robberies were illegal overseas imports. He said tougher customs inspections of shipping containers and better funding for police prosecutors and more judges were needed to clear a backlog of gun crime cases choking the courts.
"Justice delayed is justice denied to the community," Mr Brown said.
"Until we start locking people up and locking them up for a long time, and we advertise that fact, the community has no confidence that if they come forward with information that the legal system will back them."
Read more on The Daily Telegraph.
