Police Association president Colin Riley said police first responders should be armed with "longarm rifles to better protect the public".

"Our first responders need proper equipment, there is a gap in their capability now," Mr Riley said.

"It's a changing world.

"The public would have no reason to be alarmed by police with long arms - in fact it should make them feel safer and secure."

About 800 Victorian Police have this year been given semi-automatic rifles to combat terrorism and gun-related crime.

Mr Riley, who was a member of the special operations group at Port Arthur in 1996, said he envisaged the rifles would be kept under lock and key in police vehicles as they were in New Zealand.

Tasmania Police officers currently carry pistols that have a range of out to 10 metres, while military-style rifles can reach up to 300 metres and are more accurate and stable.

Only part-time members of the Special Operations Group have "all that capacity" now, Mr Riley said.

"It's been on our radar for some time because there is no option - I don't want to cause fear -  but there is potential for another incident," he said.

Mr Riley is hopeful that the coming state budget will include extra funding for a permanent, full-time SOG, or tactical response team, which was disbanded about six years ago.

Tasmania is the only Australian state with a part-time tactical response capability.

"If we had a full-time group they could conduct searches of high risk offenders which are done by uniform officers," Mr Riley said.

He said police in Christchurch would feel the fallout from the Christchurch killings for at least the next twenty years.

"Port Arthur affected everyone - you just feel so helpless," Mr Riley said."Police live with the traumatic scenes they see every day and it has a cumulative effect."

Greens leader Cassy O'Connor has called for Tasmania's gun laws to be strengthened in the wake of the massacre of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch.

"The difficulty is that they (the government) looked the shooting lobby in the face before the election and agreed to weaken gun laws," she said.

"They know its enormously unpopular and unjustifiable."

Premier Will Hodgman said he would do nothing to "weaken our gun laws in any way".

"Tasmania's firearms laws are among the toughest in the world and that is how they will remain," he said.

"I can reassure Tasmanians once again that we have no plans to change firearms laws, and our overriding principle will always be that we will not do anything to weaken gun laws."

Labor leader Rebecca White wants the parliamentary committee examining gun laws to reconvene.

"It's been a debacle for the past 12 months," Ms White said.

"The government needs to be transparent."