Don't Be First in Line

By Graham Park

Let's talk straight for a minute, because I don't want you making a mistake you can't undo.

If your firearm gets caught by this buyback, don't rush to hand it in. Not on day one. Not in week one. Wait until the very last legal moment — and not one day before. Here's exactly why.

The rules move. They always have.

In 1996, gun owners were told there was one national deadline. There wasn't. South Australia shut its buyback seven months early while its amnesty kept running separately. Other states stretched theirs out well past the date everyone had been promised. Whatever you were told on day one wasn't what applied by the end.

Same story in Queensland in 2013. Conditions changed mid-stream. People who acted early got a different deal to people who waited.

It's already happening again, right now, before this scheme has even started. Queensland and the NT have said no outright. Victoria and South Australia have refused to sign on. WA and Tasmania are still "considering." NSW is technically running it — except there's nothing in the NSW budget to pay for it. The federal government has already blown through one deadline this year because the states couldn't agree. And the compensation scheme itself is split in two: a fixed price list from November, then a completely separate valuation process for anything valuable that doesn't even start until early 2027.

None of that is an accident. That's a scheme still being built while it's already running. Every time something's built on the fly, the terms get better for the people who wait and worse for the people who jumped first. Don't be the bloke who hands his rifle in on day one for whatever's on the list that week, when the list might look completely different by Christmas.

You might not even have to hand anything in

Here's the bit nobody's telling you: outside NSW, there is currently no functioning scheme to hand a firearm in to. Full stop. If your gun's only affected by a change your own state hasn't legislated yet, nothing is compelling you to do anything right now.

And governments fall. This whole scheme belongs to the current federal Labor government, propped up by a couple of willing states. Shooters Union's own modelling puts the first-year cost to Victoria alone at $437 million, and NSW at close to $1 billion — for a program most of the country has already rejected. That's not a scheme standing on solid ground. Handing in a legally owned firearm today, for a scheme that might not exist in this shape by the time your state even signs up, makes no sense. Check with your club or with us before you do anything. Don't act on what NSW is doing if you're not in NSW.

They want the photo. Don't give it to them.

You know the shot. Crates of rifles stacked up, a minister standing in front of them, a voiceover about "guns off our streets." What never makes the news is that most of those firearms belonged to farmers, competition shooters and collectors who never hurt a soul — while the criminal who caused all this never had a licence in the first place.

The bigger that pile looks on the six o'clock news, the stronger their story gets that all of this was necessary and welcomed. Every firearm handed in early makes that pile bigger before the argument's even finished. You don't owe the media that photo. If you're legally required to surrender something, do it at the very end of the window — quietly, properly, not as backdrop for the evening news.

And please — don't hand in your junk for a cheque

If you've got some clapped-out relic in the back of the cupboard that hasn't fired since the '80s, and it's not something the scheme actually requires you to surrender, leave it there. Don't hand it in for a few hundred bucks.

I get the temptation. But that gun gets counted in exactly the same tally as everything else "taken off our streets." It pads the numbers. It hands a minister a bigger headline built partly on junk that was never a risk to anyone. It feeds the exact narrative we're fighting. If it's not covered by the scheme, keep it, or deal with it properly through your dealer — don't hand the other side free ammunition.

Bottom line

If the law genuinely requires you to surrender a firearm by a real deadline, do it — I'm not telling you to break the law. But that deadline is the last moment you can act, not a starting gun to race toward. Use every single day you're given to fight against the buyback. Confirm what actually applies to you before you move. Don't be the government's poster child. Don't hand over anything you don't have to. And don't pad their pile with junk nobody was ever coming for.

Wait. Watch what happens. Then act — right on the deadline, and not a day sooner.

In the meantime, sign the petition at stopthebuyback.com.au

Sources: Prime Minister of Australia; NSW Government; ABC News; ABC News, ACT funding; The Guardian; Sporting Shooter; Australian Institute of Criminology; RAND Corporation; Australian National Audit Office.