MONDAY’S siege in Sydney that saw three people shot and three held hostage before the gunman turned the firearm on himself was a terrifying reminder of the Lindt cafe crisis just over a year ago.

It comes as another man was shot dead in Victoria at close range last night, three days after a man was killed in a suspected shooting at a Melbourne motel and four days after a man was shot dead at a property in Ipswich, Queensland, with police called just after 2am.

Last month, a man accused of a shooting in Canberra allegedly boasted to police that the victim would be dead if he had pulled the trigger, because he had significant experience with firearms, despite not having a licence.

There were 207 firearms deaths in Australia in 2013, a rate of 0.93 per 100,000 people, higher than in 19 other countries, including the UK, Bolivia and Zimbabwe.

While we often shake our heads in horror at America’s problems with gun crime, it’s clear we are far from immune from the deadly influence of firearms.

THE YEAR IN GUNS

While the tightening of gun laws following the Port Arthur massacre drastically reduced the number of guns in private ownership, it’s believed the figure has now climbed to even higher than before the devastating shooting.

There are currently around three million registered firearms in Australia, according to gun control researcher Philip Alpers from Sydney University’s School of Public Health. This compares to less than 2.2 million registered firearms in July 2001. He estimates that there are about 200,000 illegal handguns on the streets, many of them stolen.

Here are just some of the shootings in Australia this past year:

• March 2015: A father and son were killed and one man was injured while out target shooting in a murder-suicide in Rockhampton. Greg McNaughton and his son Tim died while Lindsay Hart was taken to hospital.

• May 2015: Josh Taylor, 19, suffered a single bullet wound to the side of his head in Sydney’s northwest during a game of Russian roulette. His family only learnt of the news when his friends began posting about it on social media. He had a titanium plate inserted in his skull and now uses a wheelchair.

• June 2015: Fabian Brock, 25, was killed by a gunshot to the head while driving in Darwin. He crashed his vehicle through two fences after he was shot. Rodney Kenyon, 24, appeared in court by video link from prison in June on 26 charges including murder. Halfway through proceedings, he raised two middle fingers to the camera.

• July 2015: Police reported a single shot fired in a Noosa drive-by at 2.30pm in the afternoon. They said they did not believe it was a random attack and were looking for a black station wagon. Witnesses said they had heard an argument at a home on the street.

• August 2015: A woman in her 30s died after a shooting at an apartment complex in West Perth. Ryan Miller from Radio 6PR said the shooting happened at around 2am after an argument and that a witness heard a man crying afterwards.

• September 2015: A mentally disturbed man was shot dead by police just before midnight after firing at officers during a five-hour siege. Alex Kuskoff, 50, was described by neighbours as kind and gentle. Police said he was “highly agitated”, refused to co-operate and threatened to shoot officers.

• October 2015: A 25-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the leg in Geelong, Victoria, at around 5am. Neighbours said they heard yelling, before police and paramedics arrived in the normally quiet area and arrested a “wasted” man. One neighbour said the tenants had been trouble since they moved in. Detectives were seen collecting what appeared to be sawn-off rifle butts.

• October 2015: A 54-year-old father was killed and his son injured in a drive-by shooting believed to be connected to Melbourne’s criminal underworld. Homicide detectives said they believed the target was someone other than the victim, Rachad Adra. A young man linked to the home was connected to people caught in a major heroin and ecstasy bust last year, including a close associate of a former bikie enforcer.

• December 2015: A 35-year-old man who allegedly shot a 41-year-old friend in the leg during a “social gathering” on the Fraser Coast did not enter a plea to attempted murder, common assault and dangerous conduct with a weapon and was denied bail. Police prosecutor Sergeant Kathryn Stagoll said it was alleged Ryan Joel Borg, fired a number of bullets towards a group at the party after an argument.

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Most firearms deaths are suicides. Gangs, bikies and drug rings typically use handguns for protection and the most common weapon used in attempted murder in 2014 was a firearm (38 per cent), ahead of knives, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In 2010, around 5000 individuals and organisations reported being the victim of armed robbery, the third most common violent crime reported after assault and sexual assault.

Assoc Prof Alpers told news.com.au that while homicides are in decline, attempted murder is still an issue, although that data is not collected at a national level.

“Urbanisation and improved healthcare mean while they may still try as often, they succeed less frequently,” he added.

In New South Wales, weapons offences have risen 8.7 per cent per year over the past five years, to 11,471 in the year to September 2015. The New Daily reported in November that incidents involving firearms rose 83 per cent in NSW from 2005-6 to 2014-5. Charges for possession and trafficking of guns in South Australia saw a 49 per cent rise over four years.

At the end of 2011, there was a “spate of shootings in Sydney”, including five separate incidents in the space of four hours, the NSW Bureau of Statistics and Crime Research revealed in a report. It found there had been a 41 per cent increase in drive-by shootings in the previous 24 months.

Since then, there have been an average of 20 drive-by shootings every month in the state.

Victoria is similarly affected, with a 52 per cent increase in firearms offences to 3645 between 2009-10 and 2014-15. In Tasmania, there was a 26 per cent increase in firearm-related offences between December 2012 and 2015.

Victoria police chief Steve Fontana this week expressed fears about the rapid increase in shootings in the past eight months. The state’s Crime Statistics Agency Chief Statistician Fiona Dowsley said in December: “Weapons and explosives offences and drug use and possession offences have again seen statistically significant increases this quarter.”

Assoc Prof Alpers added: “Every now and then, there’s a peak of shootings in, for example, Sydney and Melbourne ... they are momentary peaks, year by year. These momentary peaks in, for example, Western Sydney, often turn out to be domestic, which adds to the confusion.”

Australia’s gun lobbyists hold powerful positions in and close to Government and some fear their influence will help to slowly erode our tight regulation. In 2012, the Queenland government arranged a weapon advisory panel to look at cutting “red tape” around gun ownership, but the state’s police union warned “more people would die” if the laws were relaxed.

Most importantly, the number of illegal and often stolen firearms filling the streets is huge, and gun-related crime is rising in many parts of the nation.

We need to look seriously at this trend, before the next siege takes place.

emma.reynolds@news.com.au