More guns in Australia now than before Port Arthur massacre

Australians now own more guns than before the Port Arthur massacre, and are arming themselves at an alarming rate, 7NEWS can exclusively reveal.

In NSW, there are more than 1.1 million firearms, with a third of those weapons registered in suburban Sydney.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Australians arming themselves with guns at an alarming rate.

There are more than 2000 registered gun owners living in Camden and Liverpool, and hundreds more in Bankstown, Merrylands, Greenacre and Punchbowl.

In Dee Why, there is 416 registered gun owners, and nearly the same amount in Ryde and Abbotsford.

There is more than than 300 in Mosman and Maroubra.

The national total is now more than before the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, a mass shooting in Tasmania that killed 35 people and wounded 23 others.

Prior to the 1996 national firearms agreement, there was an estimated 3.2 million firearms in public possession across the country.

“We drew a line in the sand right there and then about guns in Australia,” Greens MLC Sue Higginson said.

“We mustn’t forget that.”

Despite agreeing to a national firearms register last year, gun laws still differ widely between each state.

Only one state, WA, has a cap on the number of firearms that can be owned by one person.

One licence holder in Cremorne, Sydney, has almost 400 guns registered to their name.

Australian Gun Safety Alliance spokesperson Stephen Bendle said “we know that 70 per cent of people think that it should be harder to get a firearm”.

“The community really needs to have a conversation about ‘should there be limits on the number of firearms people can own?’,” Bendle said.

NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley believes the state’s gun enforcement agency can keep up.

“The regulations in New South Wales are robust but the settings are right,” Catley said.