Police in Western Australia have launched a sweeping crackdown on firearms owners allegedly connected to sovereign citizen movements—groups that reject government authority and legal legitimacy.
The operation comes in the wake of the August 2025 double police killing in Victoria, where 56-year-old Dezi Freeman, now on the run, allegedly shot dead Detective Senior Constable Neal Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart, wounding a third officer.
Authorities say Freeman had espoused anti-government and pseudo-legal beliefs—views increasingly associated with violent incidents across Australia.
In response, Western Australia’s police conducted targeted inspections under the state’s newly strengthened gun laws, enacted in 2024.
“The mission of this operation was simple — to validate and verify our intelligence on who may hold sovereign citizen ideologies here in Western Australia,” said Police Commissioner Col Blanch during a press briefing on Sunday, October 5, 2025.
Over a five-day period between late September and early October, officers raided 70 properties, seizing 135 firearms and suspending or revoking 44 gun licenses.
Authorities relied on a clause in the Firearms Act requiring permit holders to be “fit and proper persons.”
“If you’ve made it very clear that you do not abide by the laws of Western Australia set by Parliament, then there is no way that you can be a fit and proper person,” Blanch stated.
Rising Police Fatalities Spark Concern
The raids are part of a broader response to an alarming spike in police shootings nationwide. Six officers across four states have been killed by civilians in the past three years, a rate described by Blanch as “unprecedented.”
In 2022, two Queensland officers were murdered by Christian extremist conspiracy theorists in a six-hour siege. Subsequent years saw officers shot dead in South Australia (2023) and Tasmania (2024).
Australia’s last major gun massacre, in Port Arthur in 1996, left 35 people dead and led to some of the world’s strictest firearm laws.
When Western Australia’s tighter gun legislation took effect in June 2024, the government hailed it as the toughest in the country, introducing limits on ownership to 10 firearms per individual and expanding powers for license suspension.
Authorities say the recent crackdown is not an attack on law-abiding gun owners but a targeted safety measure against those who publicly reject legal authority.
“Our message is clear,” Blanch concluded. “If you deny the rule of law, you do not have the privilege to carry a gun in Western Australia.”
