Australia is now ranked as one of the world's major gun importers, coming sixth in the United Nations-sponsored annual global Small Arms Survey, high enough to see it categorised in the top tier of gun importers.

Australia was also revealed to be the 13th-largest exporter in the world and ranked 25th in the transparency of its arms trade, scoring 12 out of a possible 25 in the survey's transparency barometer.

As an importer Australia came in behind the United States, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Germany, but ahead of Iraq, France, the Netherlands and Britain.

The most recent annual survey, based on data from 2014, shows a steady rise in gun imports between 2011 and 2014, despite the strict gun laws introduced across the nation after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.