Should GPs be required to provide medical assessments for firearm access? A coronial inquest has put the question back on the table.
A Victorian coronial finding is adding momentum to calls for GPs to screen firearms licence applicants – a prospect the RACGP warns raises serious practical and ethical concerns.
The concern stems from a coronial inquest into a gun owner’s death by suicide.
The man – identified only as AT – failed to self-disclose his mental health history and substance abuse when renewing his gun licence.
At the time of his death, AT held a valid firearms licence for two handguns, two rifles, and an air rifle.
According to coroner Simon McGregor’s report, firearm licence holders in Victoria typically receive a 5-year licence from the Victoria Police Licensing and Services Division.
To renew their Victorian licence, applicants must declare they are a “fit and proper” person to control a gun and don’t possess “incompatible” attributes – including mental or physical illness or drug or alcohol misuse.
Mr McGregor said the current system exhibited “the hallmarks of a rubber-stamping process,” rather than “a genuine vetting process around the use and control of dangerous equipment.”
“There is no current capacity for checking the mental health or substance abuse background of firearm license applicants,” he said.
The Rapid Review into Victoria’s Firearm Laws in December 2025, led by police commissioner Ken Lay, recommended strengthening oversight of the licence lifecycle – namely, enabling GPs and psychologists to notify Victoria Police should a licence holder’s health condition render them unfit.
The review also recommended mandating a health reporting pathway between relevant agencies to strengthen ongoing suitability assessments for licensing.
The Victorian government accepted the review recommendation in May 2026.
However, Mr McGregor said the review failed to consider that medical practitioners don’t have access to information confirming whether a patient holds a firearm license, except when the individual volunteers it.
“It would be more appropriate and less resource intensive to consider placing the onus on firearm license/renewal applicants to provide medical evidence supporting their eligibility as a ‘fit and proper person,’” he said.
Mr McGregor’s recommendations follow a suite of calls for gun licensing reform, including NSW’s Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, introduced following the Bondi Mass Shooting, and WA’s legislation requiring GPs to conduct gun licensing assessments introduced in March this year.
RACGP Victoria Chair Dr Anita Muñoz said emphasis must be placed on the licensee’s personal responsibility to declare mental illness or substance abuse that would render their possession of a gun unsafe.
Dr Muñoz told The Medical Republic that if Victoria introduces similar legislation to WA, a clear framework must be implemented specifying which questions GPs should ask during assessment and the threshold for deeming a patient unfit to hold their licence.
“One of our questions should be: which is the best clinician to do [these assessments]?”
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These assessments may take time, and Medicare rebates would be unavailable, and reasonably, “there [would be] an out-of-pocket cost for a clinician’s expertise and time,” she said.
“We have psychologists who are very highly trained in occupational medicine and in the assessment of mental health symptoms to determine what symptoms are consistent with safe use of firearms.
“It’s not just mental health we need to consider, but there are other physical conditions that may make somebody unsafe to hold a firearm, particularly some neurological, musculoskeletal, vision and hearing conditions,” she said.
Concerns included the impact on doctor-patient relationships, with patients potentially omitting truths about their medical histories or completing assessments with unfamiliar GPs out of fear of losing their licenses.
If patients perceived their GP as responsible for their licence removal, this could pose safety concerns if the patient became angry or aggressive, or lead to negative feelings towards their GP, Dr Muñoz told TMR.
“I think that is too much responsibility for a general practitioner to bear,” she said.
“We place a GP in jeopardy of being held responsible for upholding regulations on behalf of the state, and I think that there are ways that we could look at implementing this idea that aren’t as fraught with these kinds of flaws,” she said.
Dr Muñoz said it would also be helpful to know whether licence confiscation or removal would be temporary, and whether a patient could have their licence restored after receiving adequate treatment.
“We also have to recognise that there are many instances of firearms tragedies and deaths that are not directly related to worsening mental health symptoms, but may be associated with conflict or the use of substances and domestic violence incidents,” she said.
AT’s access to firearms remained undisclosed after a family violence incident was reported to Child Protection in November 2024, one month before his death.
Although Child Protection used the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM) to conduct a risk assessment, current MARAM practices do not mandate practitioners to proactively verify an individual’s firearm access with Victoria Police.
Mr McGregor also recommended the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and Victoria Police to explore updating information sharing protocols to better access firearm licensing data for risk assessments in child protection and family violence investigations.
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