Bullets in the bush

At Steelo’s Guns & Outdoors in Narrogin, Australia, owner Bevan Steele sells guns, camping gear, and outdoor equipment. According to “Steelo,” as he’s locally known, customers sometimes drive two hours southeast from Perth, the coastal capital of Western Australia, to shop.

When Western Australians were for­bidden from leaving their state during COVID-19 a few years ago, Steele says, ­people rediscovered childhood pastimes. They bought motorbikes, fishing gear, and camping gear. And guns. Families found that using a modest box of .22-caliber bullets to shoot at targets provided all-day entertainment for 8 Australian dollars—less than the cost of a two-hour movie at the theater.

That could change next year. Although Western Australia already has the strictest gun laws in the country, Paul Papalia, the state’s police minister, has proposed sweeping gun control legislation to promote public safety: Lawmakers plan to vote in early 2024 to tighten shooting rules and make their state the first in Australia to restrict the number of guns a person can own—10 for farmers and competitive shooters, five for recreational shooters—and require online registration for each shooting event. Licensees would also need an annual mental health check.

In Western Australia, police struggle to curtail illegal gun importation and use. The reform plan, which includes a gun buyback scheme, is ostensibly meant to reduce the number of guns that could be used to commit crimes. Yet the reforms don’t address illegal guns. Many farmers depend on licensed ­recreational shooters to help protect their land and livestock from feral animals. When some of those shooters lose their licenses under the proposed laws, landowners may have to protect thousands of acres alone.

Australia, unlike the United States, does not have a constitutional guarantee of gun ownership. The continent’s penal colony past meant keeping guns out of the hands of citizens. Today, self-defense is not an approved need for ownership.

A salesperson checks rifles in a gun shop display in Sydney, Australia. Rick Rycroft/AP

The country’s federal gun laws saw significant reform in 1996. Twelve days after an attacker shot and killed 35 people and wounded several others in Port Arthur, Tasmania, Parliament enacted countrywide legislation banning semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian ownership. (Farmers and ranchers are exempt.) The government bought back and destroyed 650,000 privately owned guns. Officials enacted a 28-day waiting period, background checks, and a state-by-state gun registry.

Australian gun-related homicides, already in decline before the buyback, by 2020 had decreased to 0.08 deaths per 100,000 people. (The U.S. rate that year was 4.05 per 100,000.)

One thing the 1996 laws didn’t prohibit was states enacting even stricter controls. Western Australia will likely take advantage of that option. Both parliamentary houses enjoy a Labor Party majority. Papalia says the new buyback scheme will remove up to 13,000 guns of the current 360,916 registered to civilians. Steve Harrison, an advocate for the lobbyist group Shooters Union Western Australia, says he will likely lose his licenses and his six guns, scopes, and reloading equipment under the new law, because he would not be able to prove his need for the types of guns he owns.

For now, firearms owners can shoot their bolt- or lever-action long guns anywhere on private property with permission. (Handguns may only be discharged in a sporting club.)

Harrison says gun dealers made permission letters from property owners available to gun license applicants who had to demonstrate their need to own a gun. He says the Western Australia police commissioner was generous about approving such applications. But will that last?

The proposed legislation requires landowners to upload data electronically for each hunter or target shooter on their property—each day they shoot. Steele anticipates this additional regulatory hassle will discourage hunting. He predicts increased mobs of feral animals will wreck fences and water sources. Not only kangaroos but herds of feral camels, donkeys, horses, goats, wild dogs, and pigs roam the arid reaches of Western Australia.

“We’ve got a big issue with pigs at the moment,” Steele says. “Pigs don’t just destroy the environment. They also eat livestock. They’re attacking sheep and baby lambs, because they taste good.”

Police Minister Papalia made his proposals public on Oct. 17 and closed feedback after 29 days, despite a 13,000-signature petition to extend consultation.

Steele thinks the current debate superimposes the American culture war on Australian outdoorsmen. “Even though we emulate you in a lot of things, our gun culture over here is very much ‘waltzing Matilda,’” he says, using an Australian phrase that alludes to bush camping, traveling, and shooting whatever you and your family need to eat.

During the pandemic, Steele’s typical customer didn’t want a firearm to protect his family, he says. “He wanted a firearm in case the grocery stores shut down and he had to go and shoot a kangaroo to keep his family alive.”