While other community groups and sporting associations fight an endless fundraising battle, NSW gun and shooting clubs are receiving $600,000 a year in funding under the so-called Safe Shooting Scheme, introduced by the Carr government two decades ago.

In the financial year ending in 2016, 65 shooting clubs across the state received a total of $599,955 in grants.

The scheme was started after the NSW government agreed to introduce the tough gun laws that John Howard negotiated across the country after the Port Arthur massacre. Back then it was explained that the grants were needed so the clubs could adhere to tough new safety laws.

Critics claimed the grants also served to keep the Shooters Party on side. Today the Shooters remain a potent force, sharing the balance of power in the upper house and threatening National Party seats across the state - and the funding remains in place.

Under the Safe Shooting Scheme, NSW taxpayers gave $4,612,719 to gun clubs across the state from 2010, but the funding did not end there.

According to research by Gun Control Australia, shooting organisations and facilities have received a total of $28 million in funding since 2010 under various one-off grants and schemes, including the Safe Shooting Scheme, Improving Sporting Facilities Scheme, the Sports Development Program and the Local Sports Grant.

The NSW budget this year allocated $2.4 million to upgrade the Sydney International Shooting Complex at Cecil Park.

"There is no other way of explaining it than a government-funded reparations scheme for shooters," said Gun Control Australia's chairwoman, Samantha Lee. "For years the government has been compensating shooters for the imposition of sensible gun laws and in return for political backing."

"No current or past government minister for sport and recreation has called into question the massive flows of funds into these grants schemes and development grants," she said.

Gun Control Australia is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into how the spending is governed.

A spokesperson for Sports Minister Stuart Ayers referred Fairfax Media to the Office of Sport for comment.

In a statement, the Office of Sport said the aim of the Safe Shooting scheme was to increase opportunities for the community to safely participate in the sport of shooting, improve the safety of shooting facilities that are used by the community and assist people from groups that traditionally face barriers to participation or access to shooting facilities as well as provide applicants with the technology and infrastructure required to comply with regulations.

Robert Borsak, an upper house MP with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, dismisses the suggestion that the funding is designed to keep the party on side, noting that he often votes against government legislation.

He said it was was in the public interest that shooters had safe facilities to use, and noted that under the Safe Shooting Scheme, clubs could only apply for public funding for half the costs of their projects.

But the Shooters Party's effective use of its balance of power and its close relationship with both Labor and Liberal governments has long been a source of controversy.

When she served in the NSW upper house, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon revealed that between 1998 and 2001 shooters clubs received over $5 million in funding.

The Shooters Party has managed to wind back some of the tough gun laws introduced after Port Arthur, and secured access to National Parks and Crown Land for shooters.

Former premier Bob Carr established the Game Council in 2002 in order to regulate hunting, but critics claimed the body served as a defacto publicly funded lobby group for shooters.

It was finally disbanded in 2013 after an independent review found that, "more than a decade after it was established the Game Council has no overarching governance framework; lacks a strategic planning framework; lacks some of the skills, tools and resources to ensure effective compliance with its regulatory framework; has no internal regulatory compliance program, has no approved enterprise-wide risk management framework and has an inadequate policy framework".