Australia’s gun lobby thinks it’s “winning” according to a report in the Guardian today.

And fair enough. There are now over 4 million guns in Australia, that’s more than before the Port Arthur massacre, according to recent Australia Institute research.

The gun lobby seems particularly powerful in NSW, where the state government is looking to establish a “right to hunt”.

We pointed out in our submission to NSW Parliament that this would undermine gun policy in Australia, which is based an agreement that “firearms possession and use is a privilege that is conditional on the overriding need to ensure public safety.”

If the NSW Government and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party succeed in flipping guns from being a privilege and into a USA-style right, then they really will be winning.