Tributes are flowing on Facebook for the man shot by police in Upper Hutt.

The gunman behind yesterday's armed incident was Pera Smiler.

Dahlia Smiler is one of those paying tribute, saying sometimes just because a person looks happy, you have to look past their smile to see how much pain they may be in.

She writes no-one knew behind those beautiful eyes there was a tortured soul.

Police are yet to confirm the gunman's identity.

A relative of Pera Smiler said she wonders if police could've used rubber bullets when they shot at him.

She said he was an amazing guy, and it's sad how things have turned out.

She's seen news stories online about overseas police using rubber bullets during shootings.

The woman said it's hard on police officers involved in the shooting, too.

Expert calls for a tightening of NZ gun laws

Following yesterday's events, Professor Kevin Clements from the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies said that New Zealand's gun laws needed to be tougher.

"Our laws are certainly loose, they are much, much looser than Australia for example, which does register guns, as well as gun owners."

New Zealand should do what Australia did after the 1996 Port Arthur shooting and have a buy-back campaign, Professor Clements said.

"That's managed to take about a million guns out of civilian arsenal. [As a] consequence of this gun deaths dropped by about 50 per cent and stayed around there.

"We've got 1.1 million firearm licenses in New Zealand, for 230,000 licensed firearm users. I think it would be very helpful if we had a buy-back programme or even an amnesty where people could give their old guns back and have them destroyed and take them out of circulation."

Preventing registered guns from falling into the hands of known offenders or gangs was an issue, he said.

This could be prevented by reducing the total number of guns in circulation and ensuring they are registered to specific owners.

This way, any gun used for criminal activity could be "identified and sourced back", Professor Clements said.

Yesterday, armed police were sent to Main St in Upper hutt after receiving reports of a man with a firearm outside McDonald's.

The man aimed the firearm at officers and was shot, a police statement said. He died a short time later despite immediate medical attention.

Officers were still working to establish exactly what had happened and were speaking to a large number of witnesses, police said yesterday.