The General Manager of the NSW Firearms Registry, Superintendent Bruce Lyons, has blamed the recent spike in firearms thefts in the Far West on slack owners and coincidence.

This is despite the opinions of Broken Hill Police and the Shooters and Fishers Party.

Superintendent Lyons says it's not rue that the recent spike in Broken Hill gun thefts is the work of thieves who've had access to the Registry database.

He says it's probably just a coincidence that similar guns have been stolen from the homes of elderly gun owners in the past few weeks.

"I'm satisfied that that information has not come from the Registry," he said. "I think there's a lot of occasions where people just so happen to break in to premises looking for whatever they can get hold of, and sometimes guns are there in cabinets.

But Robert Borsak of the Shooters and Fishers Party says that's not only unlikely but impossible.

Mr Borsak says information he received from police whistleblower, David Good, revealed the Firearms Registry database had been compromised for two years before 2001.

Borsak claims during that time police had no way of tracking who had accessed the database at all, so police have no grounds for their confidence in the Registry's security.

"That's not possible for them to say that with any authority," he said. "The very fact there was no tracking of who logged on, who downloaded what or where it went means they cannot say with any authority that information wasn't stolen or wasn't misappropriated from the intranet.

"So for them to say that it's just a furphy. They simply do not know."

Superintendent Lyons also blamed gun owners for the thefts, saying it was more likely the weapons weren't kept securely, and that the owners could face charges.

"The first thing we've got to do is make sure that everyone who has a firearm is responsible with regard to how they look after it and how they store it," he said. "So many times firearms are stolen when individuals fail to lock their firearms up - we come across that time and time again. It's just through poor procedure that firearms are stolen".

But Detective Inspector Mick Stoltenberg of the Barrier Local Area Command says the victims of the Broken Hill thefts all had their weapons stored in safes that complied with the current security regulations.

"The owners are doing the right thing," he said. "Their safes do comply with the legal standard, but obviously things appear as though somebody out there is definitely targeting firearm theft in our area."

In the last two weeks, 21 guns have been stolen in four separate domestic robberies in Broken Hill. All targetted homes owned by elderly people, no other valuables were taken and the thieves all came armed with bolt cutters.