This file photo taken on August 8, 2017 shows Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Hoffman of the New South Wales Police speaking to the media at a press conference at their headquarters in Sydney. More than 50,000 guns were handed in under Australia's first national firearms amnesty since 35 people were killed in a mass shooting 20 years ago, officials said on October 6, 2017. The three-month operation ended last weekend, just before retired accountant Stephen Paddock massacred 58 people in Las Vegas in an act that propelled gun control back into the global spotlight. / AFP PHOTO / Peter PARKS
SYDNEY: Australians turned in 51,000 illegal firearms, ranging from 19th-century weapons to a rocket launcher, during a three-month amnesty that ended on Friday, and which prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said had helped avert Las Vegas-style mass shootings.
The cache, representing about a fifth of illegal firearms, was collected during Australia's second amnesty since its worst-ever massacre, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in the island state of Tasmania in 1996.
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