Police in the Australian state of Western Australia have seized guns and revoked or blocked firearms licenses from dozens of citizens linked by investigators to "civil sovereignty ideologies" or political views that reject government authority, the Associated Press reported, BTA reported.
Australian officials linked the crackdown on gun owners believed to hold such views to the deadly August shooting in the eastern state of Victoria in which two police officers were killed by a conspiracy theorist. The suspect in the killings, 56-year-old Desi Freeman, is still at large, the AP notes. He is alleged to have killed two police officers who entered his country home with a search warrant.
Freeman is suspected of killing Detective Senior Constable Neil Thompson and Constable Vadim De Waart-Hotart, as well as injuring a police officer. After the shooting, Western Australian investigators used tougher gun laws passed last year to track down gun owners in their state who they believed shared Freeman's views.
"The mission of this operation was clear - to confirm and verify our intelligence on who might be espousing citizen sovereignty ideologies here in Western Australia,“ the state's police commissioner, Colonel Blanche, told reporters. Social media posts and information from gun owners were used to identify the people targeted in the operation.
Officers visited 70 properties over a five-day period late last month and early this month, seizing 135 firearms and suspending or revoking 44 gun licenses, Blanche said. Investigators cited a statutory provision that allows only those who meet the “fit and proper” standard to hold a gun permit.
“If you have stated quite clearly that you do not comply with the laws of Western Australia, as established by Parliament, then you cannot be a fit and proper person,” said the police commissioner, quoted by the AP.
Explaining the police operation, he noted that in the past three years, six police officers in four states have been shot by citizens, which he said was “unprecedented” in Australia.
In 2022, two police officers were shot by Christian extremists on a rural property in the state of Queensland. The three shooters, in this case conspiracy theorists who allegedly hated the police, were killed by law enforcement officers after a six-hour siege in the Wyambilla area, the AP recalls.