More than 170,000 people have applied for gun licences during the NSW firearm amnesty in a scramble that almost caused a "bureaucratic meltdown". The Police Minister, Mr Whelan, revealed yesterday that almost 600,000 weapons were registered in the government amnesty which ended on July 31. The NSW Firearms Registry, which was forced to hire extra staff to cope with the rush, was flooded with more than 50,000 licence applications in the last two weeks of the... (GunPolicy.org)