GUEST BLOG: Nick Rockel – Happiness is a Warm Gun

She’s not a girl who misses much
Do do do do do do, oh yeah
She’s well-acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane

I wouldn’t associate ACT with warmth, other than a certain fabled, notoriously hot, destination where surely they’re heading and many would like them to go right now. But they sure do love guns.

Not me.

Nope, I’m your typical leftie who thinks the whole place would be better off if we didn’t have them. But I’m also aware that some folks enjoy using guns for sports, pest control, hunting, and by and large they don’t cause a lot of trouble.

Sure occasionally one of them thinks their mate looks like a deer and shoots them, but compared to things like cars they cause relatively few deaths here. My view has tended to be – have your fun if you must, I’d rather we didn’t have guns, but for the most our laws seem to be working ok.

That she’ll be right attitude came back and bit us hard on March 15 2019, when the nation was shocked that one man full of poison and hate could devastate an entirely peaceful and decent community, massacring so many – with legal weapons.

A lot of us were proud of the pace at which our government of the day, lead determinedly by PM Jacinda Ardern, moved to reduce access to the most dangerous weapons. Those capable of massacring many human beings in a short time frame.

Guns that have no legitimate purpose in Aotearoa. If you’re using a machine gun on a pig or a possum that’s pretty messed up.

As you might recall the political parties in parliament put petty partisanship aside, and acted in unison in the interests of the country. Well except that one weird kid.

That one weird kid.

The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy
Working overtime

You know the guy, David Seymour, the chap who stood in the foyer of parliament boasting that ACT would vote against even that small safety measure and in so doing missed the vote.

I mention it now because had that been a Labour or a Greens party leader you’d still be hearing about it. Forget couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, this guy couldn’t cast a vote in parliament – literally his only job.

Lisa Owen’s style is not my favourite on RNZ, but she does a good job here:

Sadly that one weird kid will soon be the deputy Prime Minister and he has a bunch of his odd mates with him too. Thanks in no small part to the support of niche voting groups like disgruntled gun enthusiasts. As with all the coalition parties ACT are no doubt keen to keep their commitments to supporters, even if the vast majority in the country don’t necessarily support such change.

Sadly this phenomenon of a further right leader supplanting the centre right option is not unique to Aotearoa. Winston might compete on racial rhetoric but as you watch this clip from Jonathan Pie last night it’s clear to see that Nigel Farage is very much the UK’s very own David Seymour:

What did ACT promise?

On the ACT party page on guns the commitment is for something called “Fair Firearm Laws”. The opening line, “ACT made a commitment to licensed firearms owners that we would start again and rewrite the Arms Act. Now we are making good on that commitment.”

It also says “in 2019, ACT was the only party to stand up for what was right and vote against Labour’s rushed firearms law reforms”, although as we know a certain someone missed the vote on account of being a bit tardy.

The page is basically a big moan about how hard done by poor wannabe gun owners are, how Jacinda’s actions were knee-jerk, and worst of all that criminals are still breaking the law with guns. That last bit is pretty idiotic, and a red herring. It’s like saying people still speed so we should get rid of speed limits, hmm looks like young Simeon has that in hand. Or that people still die in car crashes so we should stop making safety belts compulsory.

Actually perhaps best not to mention that to ACT, it sounds like just their sort of thing – cracking down on pesky regulations that limit people’s freedoms. And you’ll never feel more free than when being expelled at high velocity through the front windscreen of a car following an otherwise survivable crash, unrestrained by government bureaucracy. So much freedom.

The coalition agreement between ACT and National contains the following provisions relating to firearms.

• Rewrite the Arms Act 1983 to provide for greater protection of public safety and simplify regulatory requirements to improve compliance and pass it through all stages during this term of Parliament.
• Transfer responsibility for the Arms Act 1983, policy and regulation to the Ministry of Justice, and transfer the Firearms Safety Authority, administrator of the Act, to another department such as the Department of Internal Affairs.
• Review whether the Firearms Registry is effectively improving public safety, beginning by June 2024.
• Immediately begin to repeal and replace Part 6 of the Arms Act 1983 relating to clubs and ranges.

Enter Minister McKee

This week has seen Nicole McKee, Minister for Civilian Re-armament, sorry Assoc. Minister of Justice (firearms), front and centre.

“It is time we take a good look at the whole system and make the necessary changes to ensure that it is fit for purpose for New Zealand today and into the future. We need to find simple, workable solutions that deliver tangible safety outcomes for New Zealand communities,”

said McKee. Which sounds good, but also an awful lot like the weasel words we get from the likes of the NRA.

“It provides a unique opportunity to take a systematic and considered approach to our laws, in a way that hasn’t been done in over 40 years. Rather than the rushed ‘government-knows-best’ approach that we have seen in the past, we will be consulting with New Zealanders to allow their views to be heard.”

So now they’re interest in what they public think? After all of the passing everything under urgency nonsense, now they want to follow a sensible approach? You’ll forgive me if I’m a tad cynical.

Mind you that’s not to say that I wouldn’t trust the public more than the likes of Simeon Brown, Chris Bishop and Shane Jones to make decisions. I doubt even the public would, for example, be looking to increase speed limits around schools.

Well some impatient jerks would no doubt, but is that who we’re running the country for? A small percentage of the population who are grumpy and don’t want anyone else’s safety concerns getting in the way of their fun? That was a rhetorical question, it’s pretty obvious that’s exactly what’s happening.

So we have the reckons of three scrutable ministers, keen to keep their financial backers happy no doubt. The half baked ideas of the public on how to regulate, or more to the point not regulate, guns. The one group they want to remove from the picture with all of these decisions are the experts.

Scientists and researchers, basing their decisions on evidence. Get those guys out of here, those party poopers will spoil everyone’s fun. Bloody ivory tower brainiacs

What problem are we solving?

So what’s the problem these changes are trying to solve? The only rationale I can see making the acquisition of guns easier and the tracking of guns harder.

I’m sure that as with any law some modernisation is required, but I somehow doubt that Nicole McKee is so excited about changing gun laws just to make things clearer.

When I hold you in my arms (ooh, oh, yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (ooh, oh, yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm (ooh, oh, yeah)
Because

Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun (happiness, bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Well, don’t you know that happiness is a warm gun momma?
(Happiness is a warm gun, yeah)

This is about making life easier for gun owners, as a priority over the safety considerations of the rest of us. It’s the sort of thing the gun lobby would promote and I’d love to know what links there are between such and ACT.

I’ve no evidence of such but the government, as they seem to be doing with other things, is prioritising the demands of industry lobby groups over the public interest.

Whether there’s a financial aspect is ultimately neither here nor there because the result is that whether it be roading, tobacco, mining, oil and gas exploration, or guns they’re doing the bidding of the lobbyists regardless.

What if the Minister is the lobbyist?

Nicole McKee has long opposed restrictions on guns, in this article, published just two days after the Christchurch killings, she was already resisting attempts to restrict semi-automatic weapons.

At the time Nicole was the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners (COLFO) spokesperson, and said, “there was a stringent vetting process for firearm licenses that included interviews with referees”. Just two days after the terrorist action occurred.

She told Guyon Espiner on Morning Report that she didn’t believe military style semi-automatic weapons should be banned.

“We have several legitimate uses for them in this country, we have them for sporting uses, we have them for on rural properties, we have work places that use them for culling. So there’s actually quite a number of reasons that we have them.”

Don’t you think that’s appalling? Imagine if it was someone you knew killed, or simply that you’re a human being with basic decency, and reading that – good grief, read the room.

Even National’s Gerry Brownlee said in the same article that he supported a ban on military-style semi-automatic weapons. “I won’t be changing from that position. I find it bizarre that people can say they need automatic rifles for sports hunting. That doesn’t quite fit into my understanding of what you would consider sport to be.”

If you have the time it’s really worth checking out this clip from the chaps at BHN:

Nicole told the Herald this week that she would be sidelining her personal views on the matter. Which may well be the biggest “Yeah Right” in all of NZ history.

The Herald article, which is paywalled, quotes the Minister saying,

“I’ve got to make sure it’s not my personal views that go forward but rather collective views. Good legislation involves everybody, and bad legislation is usually when somebody goes off and does something by themselves.”

“With my background in firearms safety and education, I’m well placed to look at what would be the public safety interest. But I’m never going to be arrogant enough to think that I have the answers to everything. I need to be able to pull on everybody else’s expertise from all different areas to get enduring law.”

As a former gun lobbyist, advocating for fewer regulations and restrictions around guns I don’t think McKee should be anywhere near this process, if in fact one is needed.

But then you can add to that a long list. Be it the coalition MPs who seem rather sympathetic to Big Tobacco, or Shane Jones making decisions with more interest in scratching the backs of fishing or fossil fuel groups, than any other considerations.

I know many Kiwis have been frustrated by incredibly long waiting times for gun licensing applications. I get that frustration, I’d be a hypocrite not to after my interactions with the RealMe service this week.

Whatever I think of guns if the law allows people to have them applications should be processed in a reasonable amount of time. I wouldn’t mind if the delays were for vetting but realistically it’s just bureaucracy, forms sitting in a pile or a virtual queue, while the prospective gun recipient gets more frustrated. So what can we do?

Well we could hire enough people to do that work, and clear the backlog. But ACT wouldn’t like that option, it costs money. So what do we do? Scrap, sorry simplify, the existing restrictions so people don’t have to wait?

My concern is it’ll end up easier in this country to get a gun than to update your RealMe account, and for once I’m not using exaggeration for effect.

I’ll be watching this one with interest. I don’t trust Nicole McKee, ACT, or the coalition, to actually consider the views of anyone but the gun lobby. Do you?

 

“Nick Rockel is a left wing writer who spent far too long working in IT and now writes “Nick’s Kōrero”. An almost daily substack of political satire, news, and views, from Aotearoa New Zealand. He lives in West Auckland, and has 5 kids, 2 dogs, and 1 wife. He Substacks here.