The answer to gun theft is simple: if there are fewer guns in the community, there are fewer guns that can be stolen.

In early July, a Tasmanian man was allegedly left tied up outside his home while it burned down, and his 15 firearms were stolen.

This is a terrible and terrifying crime, and it also renewed debate around Tasmania’s inaction on gun control reform. 

In a press conference, Tasmania’s Police Minister Felix Ellis was asked a simple question: “Isn’t it the case, though, that if there were more people with more firearms, a robbery like this will occur?”  

Ellis labelled the question “the most outrageous example of victim-blaming”, and said that “it is the criminals who are the problem and it is the criminals we need to take action on.” 

His response to the question has been described as “out of Trump’s playbook”, but it also repeats a line pro-gun politicians in Australia have frequently presented for the past six months. Why go after law-abiding firearm owners when it’s the criminals who are the problem? 

It’s an attractive prospect, but one that can be applied to almost any set of regulation. Why force all passengers to wear seatbelts when it’s just bad drivers who are the problem? Why make everyone go through airport security, not just people with contraband? And it’s particularly bad in the case of firearms. 

Tasmania’s criminals just got their hands on 15 firearms. That adds to the over 3,000 which have been stolen in the Apple Isle over the last two decades. Around 100 are stolen each year at the moment. Tasmania has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country, with a gun for every four people. It also has the highest per-capita rate of firearms theft in the country, with 29 firearms stolen per 100,000 people each year – more than triple the national average. 

According to the most recent Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) data from 2018, theft is the largest source of new illicit weapons in Australia. Every theft adds more guns to the over 200,000 illicit firearms in Australia. 

Fewer legally owned firearms means there are fewer firearms that can be stolen. 

That’s one of the reasons that Western Australia and New South Wales have both implemented caps on the number of firearms a single person can own, with the ACT likely to follow. 

In fact, all state and territory governments agreed to pursue options to limit the number of licensed weapons a person could hold after the Bondi massacre in December. When the Tasmanian government announced its proposed reforms in late February, caps on gun ownership were nowhere to be found.  

If concerns over the rising number of firearms in Tasmania is “victim blaming”, it’s a label that should also be applied to the state’s police commissioner, who wrote to Ellis in February urging the adoption of ownership caps. 

As the commissioner said, “Firearms theft means that even legally registered and stored firearms can fall into the wrong hands, enabling serious criminal activity, including family violence.” 

When the Labor opposition pressed the state government on their refusal to implement caps, Ellis said they were “targeting law-abiding farmers, hunters and recreational shooters, instead of criminals.” 

But caps don’t stop farmers, hunters or shooters from farming hunting and shooting. What they do address is the flow of guns into the hand of Tasmanian criminals. 

This month’s robbery and arson attack in Coles Bay is a reminder of the dangers that firearm ownership can pose to the Australian community.  It’s also a reminder that, in line with calls from Tasmania’s police commissioner, Tasmania can still pursue sensible gun control reforms to limit the growing number of firearms in the state.