I woke up late and the first fragments of consciousness convinced me yesterday had been a nightmare until the fog of waking lifted.
49 dead. 48 injured.
Now I just feel sick.
Remember last week when we were all being frightened about the ‘Jihadi Kiwi’ and the supposed threat from Islamist extremists?
Doesn’t the fear look shallow and crass in the sharp dawn of today.
Jacinda is on.
She is calming. But this is just so sad. So terribly sad.
She comes out with a very clear message. “Our gun laws WILL change”. This is what real leadership looks like!
3 have been arrested. I prayed this was a ‘lone wolf’, that doesn’t make it any less painful, but it is better than a tumour of corrupt individuals.
The anger at how our intelligence agencies seem to have utterly missed this is clear in the journalists questions.
Considering how the GCSB and SIS have had massive budget increases demands questions how this was missed.
Recent revelations that state agencies have wasted time spying on Māori, Environmentalists, Earthquake victims, Greenpeace, MANA Party and the Greens demands questions of how this was missed.
When you consider the vast amount of illegal surveillance the intelligence agencies used to spy on the so called Urewera terrorists, how a white supremacist managed to arm up and commit this atrocity demands answers now
It’s not good enough to say, ‘he wasn’t on a watch list’ when all the watch lists are focused on Māori, Environmentalists, Greenpeace, the Greens, Earthquake victims and the MANA Party!
I took my daughter to a climate protest yesterday and she felt empowered and excited at the hope and promise of that activism. Today I’ll take her to the exact same place for the planned vigil and we will stand quietly with her little hand in my limp fist in vigil to this obscenity.
Life rarely encapsulates the tragedy of fate’s yin and yang so starkly.
As we rock on our heels at the magnitude of evil that has been spat upon our Muslim whanau, we will kaleidoscope a spectrum from shock to grief to rage
But the best of us is better than this spite and we must not allow this stain to hollow our wholes.
As we lay down with numb souls, rest dear friends. Tomorrow’s grim grey will continue to test us as we struggle for our nations oxygen.
I’m a firearms license holder and sickened by what has happened. Things will have to change which is going to mean less freedom for most, to help protect from the extreme few.
I read this morning that the main suspect was Australian, a frequent visitor and had an A category gun license.
Some potential law changes :
1)military style semi autos likely to be banned/e categorised
2)visitor gun licenses harder to get?
3)individual firearms registration likely to be brought in- my concern would be guns which will go “underground” instead of paying to register (happened when semi autos became e category after Aramoana)
The gun used to be registered once. I still have my certificate. Permit no.142381 dated 1st May 1964. It includes who I am so the owner is registered too. I can’t see why they ever changed it.
D J S
It was the police that didn’t want the paperwork at the time.
I too , am a firearms license holder and have been now for 45 years.
I inherited my grandfather’s .22 at the age of 18 and had to complete firearms proficiency and hold registration for gun.
At the time I had no fascination with weapons at all and could not understand why I had been chosen to receive this ‘family heirloom’ .
He must of known something I did not and in my thirties I settled in the country and began my lifelong possum eradication task.
The laws were changed because the government of the day [mid 80’s ??] had a problem with disposing of the Army’s obsolete and heavy FN SLR rifles which no-one in the world would buy .
Solution : sell them to New Zealanders , which they did and changed the laws allowing semi-automatic weapons with limited magazines to be owned by the hunting fraternity.
To ease the administrative costs of policing the laws the guns were removed from a central register and only the licensed arms owner recorded.
Every renewal of the license requires final approval by the Police Firearms officer who must conduct a 1 on 1 interview with license holder and partner/next of kin , to confirm that the license holder does not have violent or aggressive tendencies.
Never a problem for myself because I have always viewed guns as necessary but inherently unpleasant tools.
A major concern with the issue of a license to the alleged attacker in Christchurch is how this interview was conducted and what background checking was actually done.
IMO , not a lot needs to change in our laws , other than an annual statutory declaration by license holders of the arms they own and details of any changes from previous years plus notification of all details of arms sale or purchase.
I do think that in addition to the one on one interviews ,all,new and re-newing license holders should undergo computer generated , random content , psychological profile testing ,as a matter of course.
Hate, bigotry , paranoia and racism are irrefutably major components of all the mass murder shootings that have occurred in ‘western’ society in the past 20 years.
We have the means to identify them objectively and it’s time we did so to prevent such people having access to the tools of killing.
As an aside , the same profiling should be applied to applicants for drivers License.
If he had a temporary license it’s possible he wasn’t interviewed here if he held an Australian license which is a loophole that should be closed regardless.
Multiple failures have occurred here, security services especially, they were given more powers, misused them almost immediately and weren’t watching what seems to have been in plain sight.
One thing that seems it would be worth the police noticing is someone who seems to need five or six semi automatic weapons which is information they would have if each weapon was registered.
One is enough for hunting purposes. Five should raise questions about the state of mind of the owner.
D J S
Nz Govts movement to strengthen current gun laws came as no surprise at all, I can’t help but wonder if they would be as hard on knives and baseball bats if these were the weapons used in the Christchurch killings, I doubt it. Gun control is just people control.
No way am I saying that what happened in Christchurch wasn’t a terrible terrible thing, I am tired of the Nz Govt punishing gun owners for another person issues.
Important you reminded us what is happening here Bomber, destructive hate is not just an import from Aussie and Trump. Remember Urewera as the state making victims of militant Maori; where do we leave the flowers for Tuhoe?
I hope the spy agencies aren’t just going to look at white supremists. There is an awful lot of vitriol being spilled by cabin-fevered conservatives such as Ban 1080, anti United Nations, “one New Zealand” groups etc. Basically, any site with fevered angry people needs to be on the radar.
Fuck off with your constant 1080 propaganda.
[Please restrain intemperate language. I will soon be declining to publish comments that contain abuse. – Scarletmod]
My apologies.
Let me explain: the lesson here is extremism does not know nationalities, religion or any one group.
Calls for surveillance on others you don’t agree with are cowardly.
I would hope security services monitor any individuals who make actual threats.
I would not like to see people’s rightvto disagree or protest chilled by surveillance.
They need to tighten up gun laws here in particular automatic weapons.
I hope they do not use this as an excuse to arm up the police further.
Also they need to look at police response times. The police and ambulance services need to get there quickly to save lives not wait 30 minutes to 1 hour as being reported for ambulance services to arrive.
The same thing happened with the dairy owner who died of the gun shot wound. Also Pike river, the police seem to be instructed to stop help getting into the mine in case they are at risk, not actually saving the lives.
While it is hard to call, maybe our police are being instructed to be too cautious in high risk situations with regard to allowing emergency services in?
The police and our rescue services are very brave and do an excellent job. However it is possible there needs to be a bit policy change put into allowing emergency services to be quicker into an area in a high risk event to save lives, when minutes can make the difference to life or death.
It is important to differentiate full fire automatic (already very strictly controlled and I don’t think used in chch) from semi automatic (some license controls) weapons.
I think you are being a bit premature and harsh here, the gunman was arrested 36 minutes after the call came in.
As for an hour and a half for ambos, I doubt that, in any event, ambos charging into an unsafe scene and getting shot are no use to anyone.
Police have a duty to ambos to ensure any scene is safe before entering, if an ambo got shot, what would your reaction be?
I applaud the very brave and professional Police and St Johns staff who handles this terrible event, especially the two who apprehended the gunman.
To quote you………”The police and our rescue services are very brave and do an excellent job. However it is possible there needs to be a bit policy change put into allowing emergency services to be quicker into an area in a high risk event to save lives, when minutes can make the difference to life or death”.
Perhaps if front line Police were routinely armed they could enter these situations when minutes can mean the difference between life and death.
I don’t think this is what the GCSB is for.
D J S
While we join in condemning these anti-Islamic fascist terrorists, are you going to reconsider your position on free speech for the more articulate fascists like Jordan Peterson, Bomber?
I join with sympathies to all those affected by this tragedy. Particularly for the 4 year old girl now in a critical condition in Starship Hospital. Love to this little one, may you get the nurturing you need, and recover
Jordan Peterson is no a fascist in any way shape or form. Peterson is an anti-fascist. He is despised by the alt-right.
I see the shooting in the context globally, hate caused by a clash of ideologies, lack of understanding and intolerance, and violence enabled with technology, accessibility and fear marketing. Urban violence against minorities by minorities, or specificaly murder of Palestinians, slaughter of Yemenis, genocide of Iraqis. Weapons manufacturers, racist surveillance states, incompetent governments, sociopathic business, sooky little men who can’t get their own way, you can all fuck off.
This morning Bomber i am just as shocked as last night.
I made CHCH my home two years ago and i don’t live far from Linwood.
I did not even know a mosque existed there.
Thanks for your blog and after reading it i just wanted to acknowledge your wonderful words.
As an ex Aucklander i felt homesick for the first time in two years but CHCH and most of the people here are used to dealing with adversity and have begun to react to yesterdays carnage and will unite in their grief for what has happened here.
I have not left my house since yesterday morning.
Outlaw guns and only Outlaws will have guns
Debate me
I’m just thinking that, when he got his firearms licence, was a simple google search done of his name? It would have showed some pretty nasty white supremacist stuff and likely a refusal to grant the licence.
I think it was about 3 years ago when I wrote here at TDB that NZ had imo ultra loose gun laws – looser even than in most US states(!). The ability to buy semi-auto assault rifles on a Cat A licence was incredible to me. That after market high-capacity magazines (including a 100 round drum style mag that thankfully wasn’t used in the ChCh attack) were available to the general public (no licence required whatsoever) even more so.
Could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure I got quite a few down votes from TDB readers for being “paranoid”.
If we dont ban semi autos now we will have a school shooting, Im not suprised at all that this has happened just saddened.
We’ve already had a school shooting, possibly the world’s first.
It happened at Waikino School, near Waihi, in 1923. An unhinged guy walked in with a gun, killed two and wounded six. After he was arrested, the cops found he also had a bomb (three sticks of gelignite with a fuse attached to a detonator. He also had a knife).
He was a Canadian expat, John Christopher Higgins, who thought the adults in the community had plotted against him. He wanted payback by killing their kids. Higgins died in a mental home some years later.
Some similarities to the mosque shootings: the killer was from overseas, it happened on a Friday, and while doing the shooting, Higgins “moved around in a seemingly deliberate and calm manner”.
I agree with you, Greg — unless these weapons are banned, sooner or later a school will be targeted.
Until now, I’d never given firearms much thought, have never owned one or wanted to fire one. Now, I’ve thought about them all right, and would like to see the lot banned except (grudgingly) for hunting weapons with the most stringent conditions applied to ownership. If hunters don’t like it, tough — this is about keeping innocent people alive, that has to come before a meal of freshly killed wild boar.
I’ve always firmly opposed the death sentence, but when I saw this scumbag check a wounded boy of 5 or 6 for signs of life as the child lay face down, then finish him off him with a single shot in the back, I surprised myself by wishing we did have the ultimate penalty. Equally surprisingly, I felt capable of ending the guy’s life myself if legal execution were possible.
This brute should never have had the opportunity to acquire such weapons, whose very purpose is to kill human beings. Call the lot in, form big piles of them, and let a car crusher process them. Big boys don’t need these types of toys.
RIP every gun victim.
Just to mention, law abiding kiwi gun owners are guilty of nothing here.
I agree the ready availability of semi automatic weapons needs addressing.
Turning one group against another is what this guy wants.
We are all New Zealanders, we are all hurting.
So bloody what? We have had endless knee jerk reactions re security laws, and the GCSB and SIS and Police needing extra powers, so what difference will a gun law change make, when criminals will get what they want beyond the law anyway?
It is more grandstanding and pretence by a weak, useless government that is fast running out of answers and control. But in any emergency scenario such a government can temporarily pretend to be ‘firmly in control’, more talk than action, just relying on agencies and their powers as they have them.
We will get you right wing extremists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaY6tJSL_p8&list=PLAytxvRXfcZ4CPzvwRrpnDEKDAOfh9A-B
I declare JIHAD.
The War has started:
https://archive.org/details/JihadNasheed
A chilling post Conch. Too much to take in.
Some of these posts are very informative about guns. I like the suggestions for reform.
A couple of other posts show people getting carried away. Marc you need to calm down. Sam, you don’t debate. You just slag other people off with that poor spelling. Improve your spelling and read over your stuff before you post it. At least that would slow you down, as well as improving your comments for your readers benefit.
Now Scarletmod will ban me for being bossy.
plus 100 @Janet
Am I the only citizens appalled at NZ Police’s kneejerk reaction to demand evey mosque in Aotearoa be closed ‘until further notice’?
This can be interpreted as victim blaming as both NZ Police and NZ SIS have done very ell out of the post 2001 muslims are terrorists tosh. Both organisations enjoyed large budgetary increases, increased manpower, and best of all for them, much more leeway in their sheetsniffing and stickybeak acts free of judicial oversight.
Never mind Kiwi believers in Islam are about the most law abiding citizens of Aotearoa, everyone else in police in Oz and the US got big staff increases and lotsa new tys so our spooks insisted they needed them too.
It feels to me that now that kiwi terror has been revealed to be whitefella and fascistic, something I doubt either police or SIS have devoted any resources to investigating, that the mosque closures sold as a way of protecting Muslims, are actually about ensuring that 18 years plus of propaganda down’t end up down the gurler. The usually far too compliant to this tosh ‘responsible ministers’ will have been told that the diversion of resources from Muslims, Maoris and the environmentally aware means that there are insufficient resources to keep an eye “on the ragheads” especially given that thier culture will demand payback (not true but one of the big memes of Islamophobia), so the smart thing to do would be to close mosques for a while.
Going to their mosque will be a vital part of our islamic brothers and sisters mens of gaining some psychological remedy, networking with friends and family in familiar surroundings.
All it would have taken would have been an appeal on Friday night for all kiwis to support our Islamic bothers and sisters by fronting at their local mosque, agreeing to a security search to ensure their were no wolves in sheeps’ clothing and I’m certain many thousands of kiwis would have fronted to protect kiwi Muslims with a wall of kiwis around the exterior of their house of worship.
What better way to demonstrate to our fellow citizens that they do indeed have support from just about all the rest of us?
Closing all the mosques was not an act of protection, it will feel to many that denying them access to their mosque is an act of oppression.
You can change gun laws, but gangs and others do not care about laws, they get them anyway, so poor argument.
Sorry Martyn this was no “lone wolf and” gun control is the low hanging fruit. We as a country need to acknowledge and address our inherent racism and that we have a thriving white supremacy movement in NZ or history will repeat.
Banning semi automatics in OZ has been a conservation disaster. Donkeys camels wallabies and roos are out of control as are goats. No one cares as 95 % of Aussies live in urban environments. Politicians don’t give a fuck and the desert keeps growing.Reptile populations keep disappearing. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Banning these weapons ( automatics are all ready banned in NZ unless you are a collector … now there’s a law that needs removing) will only increase the possum ,rabbit and goat infestations. Think about this people there is another approach other than encouraging an already burgeoning black market. A n outright ban in a country with a hunting tradition and tourism market is going down like a cup of cold sick. it simply will not work.This situation is squarely on the Police’s position on firearms and the incompetence of those who do the checking as well as the fucking spooks who insist on spying on the left and on Muslims.
Shona, we don’t have (wild) donkeys, camels, and ‘roos in New Zealand
Possums are controlled by trapping and 1080.
Rabbits are controlled by (some) shooting and bio-controls.
We don’t need military style semi-automatics – not unless Possums, Rabbits, and goats are shooting back at us.
Anyway, I doubt if most of the MSSAs are being kept by hunters. The (alleged) shooter in Christchurch wasn’t a hunter, as far as we know. The only thing he “hunted” were human beings.
If DoC pest-control staff require these weapons, a special, limited exemption can be made for them. Otherwise you have not presented a valid argument to allow public access to these lethal weapons.
don’t patronise me Frank I have been controlling possums for 40 years using a variety of methods and the . 22calibre Rutger is the most common gun in NZ and is used primarily for vermin control . So back up there pal.If any one thinks an outright ban will work they are a first rate fool . There are far more competent and workable ways of controlling weapon ownership like I said look the rules around weapon collecting. we have a hunting tourism industry. I DIDN”T SAY WE HAD FUCKING DONkEYS AND CAMELS you prat. I gave that as an example of a conservation disaster . And you are wrong possums are not just controlled by poison the varmints get bait shy real quick and you have to use traps and guns as well so up yours !
Childish.
You should not be allowed to own firearms, judging by your lack of maturity.
Shona
You don’t need anything more than a .22 for Rabbit/possum shooting. If you need a 5.56 man killing x Machine gun to hunt animals, then you suck as a hunter. And Deer n Pig DO NOT wear bulletproof vests last time I looked.
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