VICTORIAN shooters want their “bunny gun” back.

The Combined Firearms Council of Victoria says .22 calibre, self-loading rifles — off the market for 20 years since the Port Arthur gun reforms — should never have been included in the bans.

“The repeating .22s were a great thing for farmers and rabbit shooters who wanted to be able to take out four or five rabbits in quick succession,” council president Bill Paterson said.

“They were always traditionally used for that but were caught up in the Port Arthur bans.

“We are saying it should be reviewed — they are a pest-mitigation gun and if you look through the history, you do not find people using .22s as assault guns. They are more of a tool.”

Mr Paterson said the council was pursuing the issue due to public demand.

“We became aware that there was a real public appetite for these guns through our website,” he said.

“We’ve had a lot of shooters coming to us saying, ‘When are we going to get .22 self-loaders back’, for all sort of uses and that’s what made us realise there was a real issue there.

“We’ve written to the police commissioner and our next port of call will be to get it up through the Justice Department and looking to get support with politicians for a change to the legislation.”

Yarra Glen vineyard manager Andrew Smith said he would be interested in obtaining a self-loading .22 rifle for controlling rabbits should they be made available to category A and B licence holders.

Mr Smith has a primary producer gun licence and uses netting, scare guns and a bolt-action shotgun to control mainly Indian myna birds. H said the .22 self-loader would be ideal for rabbits, which ringbark vines, particularly in dry years. “You’d only use a .22 for ground-based pests — for control of rabbits it would be quite good.”