Western Australia’s sweeping overhaul of its firearms laws, described by the Cook Government as the most significant gun reform in Australia since the National Firearms Agreement was introduced in 1996, continues to be implemented across the state, with new licensing, storage and disqualification rules now firmly in effect. The complete rewrite of WA’s fifty-year-old Firearms Act made the state the first jurisdiction in Australia to impose a hard cap on the number of firearms an individual can legally own.

Premier Roger Cook has consistently defended the reforms as unapologetically placing public safety ahead of what he has described as the privilege, rather than the right, of owning a firearm, framing the changes as a necessary modernisation of a regulatory regime that had remained largely unchanged for five decades.

What the New Laws Change

Under the reformed regime, firearms ownership is now capped depending on licence type, with primary producers and competition or club shooters permitted up to ten firearms and recreational hunters restricted to five, with competitive shooters aspiring to represent WA nationally or internationally able to apply for additional numbers through the regulator. The changes also introduced Mandatory Disqualifying Offences and Orders, stripping firearms from serious offenders including those with a history of family and domestic violence, alongside new mandatory training requirements and regular health assessments for all licence holders.

An overhauled digital licensing and management system, backed by significant government investment, was introduced to support the new regime, alongside a rewrite of the state’s previously criticised property letter system, intended to give landowners and lease holders clearer control over who is permitted to shoot on their property.

Opposition and Stakeholder Concerns

The reform process has not been without political friction. WA Nationals leader Shane Love accused the government of abandoning proper process in what he described as an ideological rush to pass unworkable legislation, criticising the consultation period on the complex, 62-page reform document as inadequate given the scale of change proposed to licensing and regulatory arrangements affecting WA’s roughly 90,000 registered firearms owners.

More than 12,000 West Australians signed a petition calling for the consultation process to be extended, a request the opposition says the government dismissed despite the significant number of licence holders affected by the changes. Despite this friction, some stakeholder groups directly affected by the reforms, including the WA Pastoralists and Graziers Association, ultimately expressed satisfaction with how their sector-specific concerns were incorporated into the final legislation.

Support From Safety Advocates

Child and community safety organisations have been considerably more supportive of the reforms, with the Alannah and Madeline Foundation describing the changes as the strongest firearm laws introduced anywhere in Australia since the Port Arthur tragedy in 1996, while noting room remains for further strengthening in some areas. Advocacy groups have particularly welcomed provisions removing guns from the hands of family and domestic violence perpetrators, framing the reform as directly relevant to community safety rather than purely a matter of firearms regulation.

Ongoing Support for Affected Owners

The state government has continued rolling out support measures for licensed firearm owners affected by the changes, including financial compensation for owners of now-prohibited Rapid Release Action firearms and an extended buyback period running through to January 2026 for other affected weapons. Whether the reforms ultimately achieve the balance the government has promised between public safety and the legitimate needs of farmers, sporting shooters and collectors will likely remain a live political question as implementation continues and further data on the reform’s community safety impact becomes available.

How WA’s Reforms Compare Nationally

Firearms regulation in Australia remains primarily a state and territory responsibility, meaning WA’s reforms, however significant, do not automatically flow through to other jurisdictions unless they choose to adopt comparable measures themselves. Some interstate firearms policy advocates have pointed to WA’s ownership caps and mandatory disqualifying offences framework as a potential model for other states to consider, while gun owner advocacy groups in other jurisdictions have cited the WA reforms, and the political friction that accompanied them, as a cautionary example of the kind of sweeping regulatory change they hope to avoid in their own states.

Whether other Australian jurisdictions eventually follow WA’s lead on firearm ownership caps remains an open question, one likely to depend heavily on how the WA reforms are ultimately assessed in terms of both community safety outcomes and practical implementation experience over the coming years.

WA Police have indicated further reviews of the reform’s effectiveness will be conducted once the full suite of new rules, including the digital licensing system, has been fully bedded down across the state, giving both the government and its critics a clearer evidence base from which to assess whether the reforms have delivered the community safety improvements originally promised.

Political observers note that firearms reform tends to generate durable, cross-party bipartisan support once implemented, even where the initial legislative process proves contentious, a pattern seen following the original 1996 National Firearms Agreement and one WA’s government appears to be banking on as memories of the consultation dispute gradually fade.