With 12,616 firearms registered in the new Firearms Registry, Southern gun owners are a close second to Canterbury gun owners who have registered 14,289 firearms.
Te Tari Pureke Firearms Safety Authority executive director Angela Brazier said the Firearms Registry was about "preventing firearms from getting into the wrong hands".
"Digitising the licensing system enhances our ability to detect unlawful and criminal activity.
"Along with preventing the sale and purchase of stolen firearms, the registry provides a better way for Police to trace where firearms used by criminals have come from."
Ms Brazier said disrupting the flow of firearms to criminals worked in tandem with other policing initiatives that targeted organised criminal groups and gangs.
She said the separate but complementary strategies were making it harder for criminals to possess and use firearms and are making communities safer.
New Zealand Sporting Shooters Association former president Chaz Forsyth, who lives in Dunedin, said the registry worked in the theory but not so much in practice.
Mr Forsyth said for the registry to be of any use, a firearm would have to be left at a crime scene and that rarely happened.
He said the registry could only record firearms from people who were compliant anyway and non-compliant people would keep their firearms unregistered.
However, Ms Brazier had hoped the registry would help trace from where criminals got their firearms.
Mr Forsyth said there were only about 20 resolved instances each year where firearms were sold from licensed firearm owners to unlicensed people.
"I frankly don’t think it’s very common because you jeopardise your firearms licence and you’re also breaching about four sections of the Firearms Act if you sell a firearm to an unlicensed person and ... I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it."
He said his cost benefit analysis of the registry did not deem it useful.
