Police have launched a new firearms investigation unit and announced a national amnesty on illegal guns next year as concerns grow over the alarming surge in shootings over the past month.

Another shooting in Jacana, north of Melbourne on Wednesday night was the 16th incident in Victoria in the past 26 days. Victoria Police announced the new illicit firearms team would be based within the anti-gang Purana taskforce, with the main objective stopping guns from getting in the hands of criminals.

The firearm amnesty will be held next year as part of an agreement struck in Canberra between state and territory police ministers and the federal government, after Victorian Police Minister Wade Noonan told his counterparts that gun crime must be elevated to become an issue of national importance.

He lobbied for the Australian Crime Commission to urgently improve its intelligence about where illegal firearms were being sourced, and how many were in circulation.

The ACC and other law enforcement bodies say that most illegal weapons are from a "grey market" of firearms that were legal before the 1996 national buyback but not surrendered.

Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said on Thursday an intelligence briefing had identified a potential gap in investigations about the source of illegal firearms.

Criminal networks that trafficked firearms stolen during burglaries at houses or businesses may be avoiding detection because the force had investigated cases in isolation, he said.

The team will not investigate shooting incidents, which remain under the control of the armed crime squad, or the broader criminality of gangs, which are investigated by Santiago taskforce.

Mr Patton, reiterating a message spruiked by several senior officers in the past month, moved to reassure the community by saying the shootings overwhelmingly involved people who knew each other, and were mostly related to criminal payback or drug debts.

"It's not John Citizen randomly walking along the street who's getting shot."

Mr Patton lamented the unwillingness of victims in many of the shootings to assist police, which had resulted in few charges being laid.

A growing number of criminals were getting their hands on guns, he said, and cutting that access would markedly reduce the rate of shootings.

"How easy it is to get them would depend where you actually sit in the criminal world, but quite clearly from the spate of shootings we've had in recent times, there is accessibility there."

He said changes to law which come into force on December 1, including a lower threshold of what constitutes firearm trafficking, would make the team's work particularly worthwhile.

Mr Noonan said he welcomed a review of the state's firearm laws, as flagged by Victoria Police on Monday.

He said the national firearms strategy discussed at the Law, Crime and Community Safety Council meeting acknowledged Victoria was not alone in battling a plague of gun crime.

Mr Noonan called for ongoing federal government support for Operation Trident, a multi-agency team that tackles crime at Melbourne's ports, as he suspected these areas were being used to smuggle guns.

"This issue is not unique to Victoria, these guns move across borders, and all the states and territories acknowledged that there's a need to understand how they are getting into the Australian market, and to understand how many there are in circulation."

In Victoria's latest shooting incident a shot was fired on Wednesday after a road collision linked to an alleged aggravated burglary in Jacana, north of Melbourne.