I heard these figures at the time but would hazard a guess they are wildly inflated. Still I know a few farmers and they assure me that many they knew would find a way to hold onto a few guns for vermin shooting purposes.
What we do hear about more nowadays are semi-automatic hand guns being used by bikie gangs to shoot at each other. These are either 1) Guns that were secreted during the buy back scheme or 2) Smuggled guns. I think the later may be more true as these guys have connections everywhere. In reality we do not have a lot of gun crime and that which we do have is pasted all over the newspapers.
Of course if you’re a thug it’s easy to replace a gun with a knife, machette or baseball bat and commit the same crimes.
Mel
Another "story" that was making the rounds about the same time was that 10" plastic sewer pipe was in short supply in Australia.
It is the same story with the media here.