Police in Australia seize guns from dozens of owners who hold views
rejecting government authority
[October 06, 2025]
By CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-McLAY
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Police in Western Australia have seized
guns and revoked or suspended firearms permits from dozens of owners
linked to what investigators describe as sovereign citizen ideologies,
or views that reject government authority.
Officials linked the crackdown on firearms users believed to hold such
views to the fatal shooting in August of two police officers in Victoria
state, in the country's east. The suspect in those killings, 56-year-old
Dezi Freeman, remains at large, weeks after he is said to have killed
two officers visiting his rural property to serve a search warrant.
In the years before the shooting, Freeman appeared to have embraced
so-called sovereign citizen views during court appearances. Members of
such movements use debunked legal theories to reject government
authority.
Gun owners had their permits canceled over their views
Freeman is suspected of killing Detective Senior Constable Neal Thompson
and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart and wounding a third
officer. Following the shooting, investigators in Western Australia used
bolstered gun laws enacted in 2024 to identify weapons owners in their
state who they said held similar views to Freeman’s.
“The mission of this operation was simple and that was to validate and
verify our intelligence on who may hold sovereign citizen ideologies
here in Western Australia,” the state’s Police Commissioner Col Blanch
told reporters on Sunday. Social media posts and information from other
gun owners was used to identify those targeted.
Officers visited 70 properties over five days in late September and
early October, seizing 135 firearms and suspending or revoking 44 gun
licenses, Blanch said. Investigators relied on a legal provision that
allows only someone who meets the standard of a “fit and proper person”
to hold a gun permit.
“If you have made it very clear that you do not abide by the laws of
Western Australia, set by the Parliament, then there is no way that you
can be a fit and proper person,” Blanch said.
Raids prompted by shooting deaths of 6 Australian officers
In explaining the raids, Blanch said that in the past three years, six
police officers in four states have been shot dead by members of the
public, which he said was “unprecedented” in Australia.
In 2022, two officers were shot and killed by Christian extremists at a
rural property in Queensland state. The three shooters in that case —
conspiracy theorists who reportedly hated the police — were shot and
killed by officers after a six-hour siege in the region of Wieambilla.
A South Australia police officer was shot dead in 2023. Another was
killed in Tasmania in June.
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Victorian state Police gather at a staging area at Feathertop Winery
in Porepunkah, Australia, Aug. 27, 2025, during a search for a
fugitive believed to be involved in the shooting of two police
officers. (Simon Dallinger/AAP Image via AP)
Shooting deaths in Australia are otherwise rare. A 1996 massacre in
the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, where a lone gunman killed 35
people, prompted the government to drastically tighten gun laws and
made it much more difficult for Australians to acquire firearms.
When Western Australia’s tighter gun laws were enacted last June,
the state’s government boasted that they were the strongest in the
country. The changes included limiting the number of guns someone
can own to 10 for most people.
Six weeks later, the search for the Victoria police killer goes
on
Meanwhile, in rural Victoria, Australia’s largest ever tactical
police operation continues the search for Freeman. Hundreds of
officers have traversed rugged landscapes, squeezed into caves and
checked mine shafts, with no confirmed sightings of the fugitive so
far.
The Aug. 26 killings happened when 10 armed police officers tried to
execute a search warrant at Freeman’s property in Porepunkah, a town
of just over 1,000 people located 320 kilometers (200 miles)
northeast of the city of Melbourne.
The suspect, Freeman, fled alone, on foot and heavily armed, into
dense surrounding forest. He is experienced in wilderness survival
skills, officials said.
Victoria’s Police Commissioner Mike Bush did not offer a reason for
the search of Freeman’s property at the time, but he told reporters
that attending officers included members of a unit that investigates
sexual offenses and child abuse.
Australian news outlets widely reported that Freeman espoused
sovereign citizen beliefs, citing a 2021 video taken in Wangaratta
Magistrate’s Court and published online in which he can be seen
attempting unsuccessfully to arrest a magistrate and police officers
during a hearing.
In a 2024 finding from Victoria’s Supreme Court, where Freeman tried
to challenge a lengthy suspension of his drivers’ license, a judge
wrote the man had “a history of unpleasant encounters with police
officers” whom he referred to in his submissions to the court as
“Nazis” and “terrorist thugs.”
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