The NSW Police unit that gave a gun licence to shooters’ club member turned Bondi terrorist Sajid Akram was urged in writing five years ago to close a “critical gap” in the firearms licensing regime that could be leaving extremists unchecked.
During a meeting at police headquarters on December 8, 2020, psychologist and gun club official Daniel Gregg warned officials from the NSW Police Firearms Registry that far too little was being done to encourage club members to spot and report any signs of extremism among their fellow shooters.
In his presentation to NSW Police Clubs, Intelligence, and Licensing officials, Gregg warned that police were missing an opportunity to improve vigilance within gun clubs amid patchy and inconsistent official guidance about how and when a club member should identify and flag concerns about a fellow member. But Gregg said his warning went unheeded, with police never following up.
Gregg urged NSW Police in his 2020 presentation, which included a written briefing, to “address a critical gap in early detection of emerging risk among [gun club] applicants who may not trigger traditional disqualifiers but exhibit concerning behavioural patterns” indicative of extremism.
In his PowerPoint, Gregg warned the NSW Police that the existing system of firearms’ “regulation and the law” was flawed and there was a risk that “lone-actor extremists [who] exhibit observable behaviours before acting” were not having these behaviours reported to police.
“Clubs are often the first point of contact for new firearm users, giving them a unique opportunity to notice these behaviours. Static checks [by police] alone cannot detect dynamic risk – structured behavioural observation [within a club] can help fill that gap,” Gregg’s briefing stated.
The revelation of the warning comes as the royal commission prompted by the Bondi attack in December last week urged states, territories and the federal government to further strengthen rules across Australia around gun ownership, improve the inter-agency sharing of information about gun owners and “prioritise efforts to implement the proposed National Gun Buyback Scheme”.
But legislative reforms introduced post-Bondi have largely focused on restricting the number and types of weapons available to licensed gun owners, rather than encouraging and empowering firearm owners – who typically have to join a firearms club to get a licence – to help police detect extremists. Gregg said his 2020 warning to NSW Police stressed that this was a vital task that could be funded via state and federal grants. Earlier this year, Gregg submitted his 2020 briefing to the ongoing royal commission.
Reforming Australia’s gun laws is a complex policing and political task, given the division of responsibilities and a patchwork of laws across states, territories and the Commonwealth and pressure from the gun lobby and some conservative politicians to protect the rights of the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.
More than 900,000 people have a firearms licence in Australia, including more than 250,000 in NSW and 243,000 in Victoria.
Police in NSW and Victoria, along with insiders at the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, have also told this masthead on condition of anonymity, that state police gun licensing divisions remain vastly under-resourced and often seen as a backwater. These problems were untouched by the interim commission report.
In both states, a relatively small number of firearms licensing police oversee huge numbers of gun owners, with multiple sources claiming police in gun licensing teams are “overwhelmed”. NSW Police sources said there was also increasing concern that “sovereign citizens” with firearms licences could descend into extremism, while previous reporting by this masthead has exposed the efforts of Australia’s largest neo-Nazi group to obtain firearms via associates with gun permits.
For years before the Bondi attack, the NSW Firearms Registry had been beset with problems and Police Minister Yasmin Catley had described it a “shambles”. There were serious backlogs between 2020 and 2023, and it was normal for applications to take two to three years to be processed. It was not fully digitised until 2023.
In January 2017, a man called John Edwards was approved for a permit to shoot at sporting ranges. There were 18 previous incidents involving Edwards on the police database, 15 of which related to AVOs, stalking, assault allegations or so-called adverse interactions in relationships. The following year, Edwards shot and killed his two children.
In 2022, the year before alleged Bondi gunman Sajid Akram was permitted to have multiple guns, it granted a licence to one of the first men to be charged with anti-terrorism offences in Australia. The man, whose nickname was Jihad Jack, had fought for the Taliban and shaken hands with Osama bin Laden. His licence was only revoked after a year.
Gregg’s December 2020 briefing to NSW Police – which he told this masthead applied to gun licensing regimes not only in NSW but across Australia – described how the Christchurch terrorist incident and the case of Edwards had demonstrated “that individuals can legally acquire firearms and join gun clubs despite displaying observable warning signs”.
Gregg told the police how, in the case of the Christchurch terrorist, his fellow New Zealand gun club “members noticed concerning behaviour, but there was no structured process to escalate those concerns”.
“The New Zealand royal commission (2020) highlighted this as a missed opportunity.”
Gregg warned the problem in Australia was exacerbated because of patchy and inconsistent laws and regulations that required some – but not all – gun club owners to report suspicious activity and little guidance for clubs about how to detect signs of extremism.
Gregg told this masthead that the changes he unsuccessfully urged the NSW Police to embrace in late 2020 would ensure clubs could work more closely with authorities to detect a gun club member on the path to extremism or violence.
“The firearms community has been let down by a regulatory system that treats them as only a suspect population to be checked, rather than a community of citizens with a vested interest to be partners in safety,” Gregg said in an interview with this masthead.
“Most shooters I’ve worked with would welcome a credible framework that gives them agency in this process.”
In the months after his 2020 meeting, Gregg said he pushed the NSW Police to take up his proposal to improve the screening and reporting of suspect gun club members by their fellow shooters, but received no follow up.
But after the Bondi attack, when Gregg sought meetings with the Minns government to again raise his concerns, Catley’s office wrote to him to advise the “NSWPF’s Firearms Registry had in April provided an undertaking to further engage with you about firearms club compliance and culture”. Gregg said he subsequently raised his proposal again with a senior NSW Police licensing division official.
There is no suggestion from Gregg, or this masthead, that the failure to address longstanding deficiencies in the NSW licensing regime – a failure officials say is present to varying degrees in all states and territories – directly contributed to Sajid and Naveed Akram’s alleged decision to murder innocent people.
One senior NSW official said that, had Sajid not been granted the right to acquire multiple long-arm firearms he used in the attack, he could have sourced weapons from the black market or used a car or a knife.
But the Bondi tragedy has highlighted longstanding problems with firearms licensing regimes that experts and insiders warn make it too easy for criminals or potential extremists to sidestep existing system checks and lawfully acquire guns.
In December, this masthead revealed how federal officials had warned that the development of a National Firearms Registry, operated by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and meant to improve data sharing about gun owners across the nation, had been plagued by internal problems and poor buy-in from some states and territories. The royal commission’s interim report urged the prioritisation of the registry’s launch.
Extremism researcher Josh Roose told this masthead it was in the interest of gun clubs to identify and out potential attackers within their ranks.
“Gun clubs do not want members going out and carrying out extremist attacks,” Roose said.
“In context of the recent attacks, such as Bondi, the impact on the clubs is immense. It’s in their best interest to weed extremism out and identify it.”
Roose said a major issue was the lack of awareness and training in identifying extremists, given that gun owners, and club members, can come from across the political spectrum.
