Police v Sovereign Citizens

Police in Western Australia and Victoria have begun what can only be described as a coordinated campaign to disarm those who identify as, or are publicly associated with, the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement. Firearms are being seized, licences revoked, and individuals investigated on the basis that their expressed beliefs indicate hostility toward the state and its agents. The underlying presumption is that such individuals present a potential threat to police safety. This follows several high-profile incidents in which self-identified sovereign citizens have used firearms against police officers, most recently in Victoria’s Porepunkah shootings, and earlier in Queensland’s Wieambilla killings.

Anyone who publicly declares sovereign citizen sympathies—or merely posts content that could be interpreted as supportive of the ideology—now runs the risk of losing their firearms licence. The structure is reminiscent of the way in which outlaw motorcycle gang members are treated under firearm legislation. In both cases, the police have relied on the discretionary “fit and proper person” test to exclude those whose loyalties are deemed incompatible with lawful authority. Yet there is a critical difference: bikie gangs are identifiable criminal associations with recognised hierarchies, insignia, and patterns of organised conduct. The term “sovereign citizen,” by contrast, describes no fixed organisation, manifesto, or unified ideology. It is a self-selected label applied to a wide spectrum of people, ranging from conspiratorial tax protesters to adherents of pseudo-legal theories about personal sovereignty. It is a movement defined more by rejection than by shared purpose.

This blurring of belief, identity, and criminal risk raises difficult legal and philosophical questions. Western Australian police have justified mass revocations of firearms licences—135 guns seized and 44 licences suspended or cancelled across 70 properties—not on the basis of prior criminal conduct, but on ideological association. The logic is preventive: those who deny the authority of the state cannot safely be trusted with the means to challenge it. Whether such reasoning is consistent with the principles of natural justice and the rule of law, however, remains to be examined.

What is a Sovereign Citizen?

The term “sovereign citizen” does not describe a structured organisation or a coherent ideology but rather a cluster of loosely connected ideas united by a rejection of some aspects of the rule of law and government. Those who identify as sovereign citizens often claim that there is a distinction between their “legal person” and their “living person,” and that the state can only exercise authority over the former. Others argue that statutory laws are contracts requiring explicit consent, or that only “common law” is legitimate. Many adopt tactics such as filing pseudo-legal “notices” or “affidavits of claim” asserting immunity from government regulation or taxation. They may deny the jurisdiction of courts, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of police, or cite imagined legal loopholes as shields against state authority.

It is not illegal to misunderstand the law or to indulge in wishful thinking about how legal systems operate. Believing that one can avoid legal obligations through a pseudo-intellectual formula is no more criminal than believing that the month of one’s birth determines personality. Not all religions can be right, yet society tolerates the simultaneous existence of mutually exclusive worldviews. Since when did being wrong become a danger to the community? There remains a long distance between misunderstanding legal principles and transforming that confusion into violence.

The Honourable P Quinlan, Chief Justice of Western Australia addressed the fixed views of sovereign citizens:

We see this in the phenomenon of the sovereign citizen movement, in which our fellow citizens deny the entire legitimacy of our legal system, based on a mixture of social and political philosophy and pseudo-law, which commonly draws on historical legal authorities such as the Magna Carta. All of it is, of course, wholly misguided. Nevertheless it is striking how sincerely and ardently held such beliefs seem to be and how impervious to reason they are; and, how the sovereign citizen takes it as axiomatic that his or her judgment sits on an equal footing with that of the court and, as a result of their sovereign status, should prevail.

Significantly, and in something of a paradox, the sovereign citizen almost always has a fervent belief in the importance of the “rule of law” as they see it. Indeed, the sovereign citizen is deeply committed to the rule of law. It is simply that the “law” for them happens to be the idiosyncratic subjective opinions that they hold (or have absorbed from social media).

But again, it is a mistake to think of sovereign citizens as simply bizarre outliers wholly unconnected to our legal system as a whole. They are, I want to suggest, simply the extreme end of a continuum that tacitly regards any decision of a court applying the law as merely one opinion among many

Honourable Peter Johnson SC, former NSW Supreme Court Justice also commented:

Multiple sovereign citizen litigants have advanced hopeless arguments that are doomed to fail, undeterred by the regular rejection of these arguments by courts. These litigants proceed like proverbial lemmings, one after the other, to jump over a curial cliff with substantial financial and costs consequences.

What has drawn police attention is not merely the pseudo-legal eccentricity but its occasional combination with anti-state hostility. Some adherents have described police as “terrorists,” “thugs,” or “agents of tyranny.” In the case of Dezi Freeman, the alleged Porepunkah shooter, online posts reportedly called for police to be “exterminated.” It is this leap—from defiance to dehumanisation—that transforms abstract delusion into physical threat. The sovereign citizen ideology becomes dangerous only when it fuses with hatred and the conviction that violence against police or public servants is morally justified. Yet it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest that every person who expresses sovereign-aligned beliefs sits anywhere near that precipice.

Fit and Proper Person

In December 2024, Western Australia passed a wholesale rewrite of its firearms laws, abolishing the old Firearms Act 1973 and substituting the Firearms Act 2024, which commenced in stages (fully in force from 31 March 2025) Under the new law, the “fit and proper person” requirement is embedded more comprehensively, not only as a threshold to grant a licence but as a continuing condition, and with explicit statutory criteria and powers for investigation.

One of the central new provisions is section 139, which states:

“139. Fit and proper person requirement(1) The Commissioner must not grant a firearm authority to a person if the Commissioner is of the opinion that the person is not a fit and proper person to hold the firearm authority.”

Thus, in the new Act, a person must satisfy the Commissioner that they are (and remain) fit and proper. But the statute does not leave this concept undefined and limitless. The Act lays out procedural machinery and potential “sufficient grounds” conditions.

Under Part 4, Division 2 (the “Fit and proper person requirement” division), the Commissioner may at any time investigate whether a holder or applicant is fit and proper (s. 146) and may request information or require interviews or health examinations to assist that inquiry (s. 147). Failure to comply with such a request may itself be “sufficient grounds for forming the opinion that the person is not a fit and proper person” (s. 147(4))

The Act also contains a non-exhaustive list of “general matters for consideration”, in section 150:

“150. General matters for considerationWithout limiting the matters to which the Commissioner may have regard for the purpose of forming an opinion as to whether a person is a fit and proper person, the Commissioner may have regard to any of the following —(a) the person’s conduct and behaviour;(b) the person’s physical and mental health;(c) the person’s views, opinions and attitudes;(d) the person’s way of living or domestic circumstances;(e) whether the person is of good repute, having regard to the person’s character, honesty and integrity.”

More sharply, the Act gives separate “sufficient grounds for opinion” clauses in subdivision 3 of that Division (ss. 153–156) that indicate circumstances which, if satisfied, provide lawful bases for determining unfitness. In particular:

• Section 154: if the person has a history of, or tendency toward, violent behaviour, family violence or intimidating behaviour, that may be sufficient grounds.

• Section 155: if the person poses a risk of misuse of a firearm — for instance using it unlawfully, harming themselves or others, or failing to exercise responsible control over it.

• Section 156: suspicion (on intelligence grounds or other intelligence information) that the person is a threat to public safety may also be sufficient grounds (and the Act allows reliance on intelligence reports) Additionally, section 200 provides for mandatory suspension of a firearm authority if the Commissioner is satisfied there are reasonable grounds to believe that the holder may not be a fit and proper person (suspending while investigation is ongoing)

Thus, under the new WA law, the standard is stronger, more explicitly invasive, and gives more power to investigate, probe health and attitudes, and suspend licences even before cancellation.

The new WA scheme marks a significant legislative shift compared to how courts have treated “fit and proper person” in the past. Historically, under older Acts and in other jurisdictions, courts resisted overly speculative disqualification based on beliefs alone, requiring a reasonable connection between conduct and risk. Case law emphasises that licensing discretion must be exercised with evidentiary support, not on mere suspicion or ideological dislike. The old regime (e.g. under the 1973 Act in WA and in comparable state statutes) left more room for judicial checks on licence revocation decisions based on character, reputation and conduct. But under the 2024 Act, the express inclusion of “views, opinions and attitudes” among the things the Commissioner may consider (s. 150(c)) grants lawfulness to considering ideological or expressive factors.

Because the Act permits regard to “views, opinions and attitudes,” a licensing authority could argue they are empowered to consider whether someone openly espouses sovereign citizen beliefs in determining fitness. Yet doctrine and administrative law still require that such considerations be rational, relevant and proportionate.

The inclusion of ideology among the factors in the statute does not mean that every belief or expression automatically leads to disqualification. The Act’s built-in criteria (violent behaviour, risk, intelligence suspicion) remain pivotal. Thus, while an applicant’s online posts claiming rejection of legal authority may be relevant under the new statute, absent evidence they lead to risk (e.g. threatening police, incitement, prior violence, or intelligence linking them to threat), disqualification may still be vulnerable to challenge for being arbitrary or disproportional.

Under this new framework, then, beliefs or public expressions that openly deny legitimacy of police, refuse to comply with statutory directions, describe police as enemies or illegitimate actors, or declare personal immunity from courts may now be material to a “fit and proper person” assessment. But the Act still requires grounding in risk — the kind of threat that falls within the explicit sufficient grounds criteria (history of violence, risk of misuse, intelligence suspicion). The trouble is that the new WA law gives the Commissioner wide latitude to treat ideological posture itself as part of the illumination of risk, whereas past case law would demand a more direct link between belief and hazardous conduct.

Conclusion

It will be interesting to see whether these recent firearm licence revocations are ultimately tested before the State Administrative Tribunal and the Supreme Court of Western Australia. The key question will be whether the public expression of ideological positions—particularly through social media posts that contain no explicit threats to police or other agents of the state—can lawfully render a person “not fit and proper” to hold a firearm licence. If the threshold for unfitness is now to be mere ideological non-conformity, the implications for administrative power will reach far beyond firearms law.

At present, the legality and proportionality of these confiscations remain uncertain because the public has not been told how extreme the relevant social media posts were. If the posts included violent threats, incitement, or declarations of intent to harm police, then confiscation of weapons would be entirely justified. But that is not what has been publicly reported. Police statements have suggested that self-identification as a sovereign citizen, or the posting of content sympathetic to that ideology, has been the primary criterion. If that amounts merely to a misguided understanding of the legal system—a belief that one can separate the “flesh and blood man” from the “legal person,” or some equally incoherent pseudo-legal theory—then the state is disarming people not because they are dangerous, but because they are wrong.

That raises a profound question: does holding an incorrect belief make one unfit to hold a firearm? If we begin to remove licences from everyone who misunderstands the law, science, or politics, there will soon be no licence holders left at all. Perhaps that is the unstated goal: to create a pretext for disarmament by conflating ideological eccentricity with public danger. The new power to monitor social media for “unfit” beliefs could easily evolve into a system of ideological screening—watching for those who express unpopular opinions or identify with fringe movements.

The forthcoming case law will be critical. Courts will have to draw the line between belief and threat, between opinion and conduct, between freedom of thought and public safety. The decisive question will be whether ideological expression becomes disqualifying only when coupled with a credible risk of violence, or whether mere objectionable belief is now enough. One can only hope that the confiscations to date have been grounded in real evidence of threat, not in an administrative assumption that dissent equals danger. If the latter proves true, the result will be counterproductive: the state’s attempt to suppress anti-government sentiment will instead validate the very narrative of tyranny that fuels such movements, driving them further into secrecy, resentment, and the dark corners of the internet where genuine danger begins.