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SA Police Computer Counted Non-existent Guns

Advertiser (Adelaide)

20 October 2009

By Amy Noonan, Tom Zed

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A SA Police computer program counted firearms which had been destroyed, causing incorrect data on registered handguns to be made public, it has emerged.

It was reported today that there were 41,519 registered handguns in South Australia, but it has now been revealed that this figure was based on wrong information given by SA Police to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

AdelaideNow has been told that more than 20,000 handguns which were handed in under the federal gun buy-back scheme had been destroyed — but their details had not removed from a SAPOL computer register.

This led to the incorrect figure of 41,519 handguns being provided to the Institute of Criminology, which then published the figure in a 2008 report on the criminal use of handguns — giving the wrong impression that SA had more registered handguns than any other state.

AdelaideNow today confirmed that, as at June this year, there were actually 20,063 registered handguns in SA.

This total had been counted manually during an audit of the handguns which had been destroyed but not deleted from the SAPOL firearms registry…

ID: N488

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