The Tide on Caps.
Where the push for caps now stands.

On Thursday, the Tasmanian House of Assembly voted not to put a cap on the number of firearms a person may own. An Opposition amendment to impose one was defeated 15 votes to 16, with the Government and several crossbenchers against it. Tasmania’s firearms Bill — which sets up a national firearms register, a buyback of newly-prohibited firearms, and mandatory minimum jail terms for serious offences — will now proceed without a cap.

The proposed Tasmanian cap was five firearms, or ten for primary producers and sporting shooters — the very same structure now before the ACT Assembly. What is most striking is not that it failed, but why. The Tasmanian Government opposed the cap on the ground that it “would target law-abiding firearms owners, rather than criminals.” Its Police Minister, Felix Ellis, told the House that the number of homicides and firearm thefts had fallen even as firearm numbers rose — and that a cap “would not have stopped the Bondi massacre, as the shooters had just three guns between them.”

Step back and the picture is clear. Numerical caps have been imposed in only two of the eight Australian jurisdictions, and the national opt-in buyback is being progressed by only two — and wherever caps have been freshly put to a vote or an independent review this year, they have been rejected or dropped.

Caps: numerical limits on how many firearms a licensed owner may hold. National buyback: participation in the Commonwealth-supported opt-in Gun Buyback Scheme — Western Australia and Tasmania have pursued their own separate arrangements rather than the national scheme. New South Wales’ caps are now the subject of a repeal Bill; the ACT’s caps are proposed, not yet law.

The updated National Firearms Agreement, signed at National Cabinet on 26 August, adopted neither numerical caps nor any recategorisation of firearm types. On the Government’s own preferred test — consistency with the national standard — the case for the ACT’s caps is weaker today than at any point in this debate.

Firearm caps are fast becoming a political issue rather than a settled one — contested in the jurisdiction held up as the model, voted down in Tasmania, dropped in Victoria, and left out of the national standard. With caps imposed in only two jurisdictions and rejected wherever they have lately been tested, the ACT can no longer claim any substantive, evidence-based basis for pressing ahead with them now. Our respectful message to the Assembly is unchanged, and stronger than ever: hold the ACT’s proposals to the same test the rest of the country has applied, and the caps do not meet it.

Our position is exactly what it has always been: no numerical caps, no recategorisation, and no mandatory buyback; and any ACT buyback only on just terms at fair market value. We continue to engage constructively with the Government, the Opposition and the cross-bench, and to press — on the evidence — for firearms policy that is fair, proportionate and directed at genuine risk. The national trend is now firmly with that case, and we will keep making it on your behalf.