The shooting death of Senior Constable Brett Forte in the Lockyer Valley has raised serious questions about how someone with a violent criminal past managed to obtain a powerful weapon and kill a police officer.

Police have not confirmed exactly what firearm gunman Rick Maddison had, but they did say it was an automatic or semi-automatic weapon.

Senior police have said Maddison, who died after a siege and shootout with police, had a violent criminal history — which means he would not have been allowed a firearm, let alone a high-powered one.

It is not yet known how Maddison came in possession of the weapon, but some experts believe it was probably imported illicitly.

Dr Samara McPhedran, an expert in firearms policy from Griffith University, said it seemed Maddison was using some type of fully automatic firearm.

"Those have been banned in Australia for over 60 years, so that does raise some very serious questions about where the firearm came from — at this stage it's impossible to speculate," Dr McPhedran said.

"We do know there are many different sources of illegal firearms that criminals obtain and that ranges from illegal manufacture, illegal import, diversion from the legal market."

Queensland police have said they will investigate how Maddison came in possession of the weapon.

"There is a definite a need to better understand not just how criminals are getting their hands on firearms illicitly, but also we need to understand more about gun violence in general — we haven't really done much work on that in Australia," Dr McPhedran said.

"We can't say a great deal about people's criminal trajectories to illicit firearms use and violent crime more generally."

Australia lagging in reducing gun violence

Dr McPhedran said Australia was behind other countries such as Canada, the UK, parts of Europe and even in the US in reducing gun violence.

"Other countries have had some successes in terms of strategies and interventions to do that. Now legislation is a part of that, but it's not the only path," she said.

"Effective gun violence reduction strategies involve measures like increased seizure and disruption of criminal networks and firearms in criminal possession and it involves the recognising the correlates of gun violence.

"Perhaps it's time for us to ask why other countries have taken that approach and we have lagged behind."

Robert Nioa, the president of the Queensland Firearm Dealers Association, has agreed there needs to be more attention paid to how criminals are accessing weapons.

"We've seen recently evidence that fully automatic guns and handguns are coming in over the border through customs. And yet we haven't seen any serious efforts by governments to address illicit import of firearms," Mr Nioa said.

"I think that one of the big issues in relation to firearms legislation, is that there is this obsession with governments focusing on farmers and licensed individuals and not enough efforts put into stopping criminals getting illicit firearms."