There are many myths about firearms in Australia. This idea that Australians 'gave up all their guns' is one of them. Only a distinct minority of firearms were ever handed in, or ever required to be handed in, during the buyback of the late 1990s.
There are millions of legally held firearms in private hands in Australia. There will still be millions of legally held firearms in private hands after this new amnesty - because not a single legally held weapon is targeted by this amnesty. It is squarely aimed at a minority of illegally held firearms.
Law abiding citizens have little real problem owning a fairly wide range of firearms in Australia. Yes, the laws are overly bureaucratic, and there are significant restrictions on semi-automatic weapons especially if they are considered to be 'military style', but there are plenty of firearms that don't fall into those categories.
This new amnesty is aimed at removing illegally held firearms from the community. Because law abiding citizens have little problems owning firearms, who do you think holds firearms illegally? Predominantly criminals. That's who is targeted here. People with criminal records who are disqualified from owning firearms because of those criminal records.
Will the amnesty work? Probably not very well. We obviously don't know exactly how many illegal firearms are in Australia but the 600,000 estimate is unlikely to be anywhere near accurate. So the idea is probably a waste of time and money. But it has virtually no relevance at all to law abiding people.
Understand. But, regardless of laws, the criminals won’t have any qualms about obtaining or having guns.