It's a privilege."The number of firearms in Australia has risen by 25 per cent since the shooting at Port Arthur, according to data compiled by The Australia Institute.Alice Grundy is part of the Institute’s team who've researched gun ownership.“What we found is that there are over four million licensed firearms in Australia, and this was a number that nobody else had.”There were an estimated 3.2 million guns in the country before Port Arthur.About 650,000 were destroyed in a buyback following the tragedy and the number of registered firearms dipped as low as 2.2 million by 2001.Despite the rise, there's been a decrease per capita from approximately 0.18 licensed guns per person before the shooting to 0.15 today.The rising number of guns doesn't concern the CEO of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, Tom Kenyon."Well there's more people in Australia than before Port Arthur as well, I mean it was 30 years ago So the number of firearms per person and the number of people with firearms is actually declining as a percentage of the population."But Alice Grundy from The Australia Institute says there are concerns about unintended consequences, including firearm theft."We know there’s quite a bit of firearm theft in Australia