Gun buy back is a success but has generated a toxic sludge
56 250 dangerous weapons have been handed into Police as part of the gun buy back plus 194,245 parts . That’s many decent law abiding gun owners who have done the right thing despite the gun owner mouthpieces who claim that there’s still 100 000 guns out there.
When you consider the amount of gun parts handed in as well as total guns, I would suggest that number ACT and the Gun owner mouthpieces are waving around is significantly smaller.
New Zealand doesn’t want the toxic gun culture from America to take hold here. Their feral sense of rugged individualism is an almost religiously cherished identity and when you make changes they interpret as attacking their sense of identity, people start to radicalise.
That’s why the NZ Police must now apply this new law with kid gloves.
If you read the places Gun owners congregate online, it is a feckless imagination land of conspiracy fuelled paranoia combined with an astounding level of self martyrdom with claims that by losing their guns, they are the true victims of the Christchurch atrocity.
The current civil rights over reach the Government are wanting to push through must be resisted so as to not give righteous grievance to a group of alienated gun owners…
Firearms Prohibition Orders: Wide police powers to take guns from dangerous people
Wide police powers are being considered to prevent dangerous people from having firearms, being in a home that has firearms, or being in the company of people with firearms.
Those powers might also enable police to search a certain property and confiscate firearms without a warrant.
Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) would give police such powers, and Police Minister Stuart Nash has today released a discussion document seeking public feedback.
Nash and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern outlined the proposal during the post-Cabinet press conference today.
FPOs would be issued for high-risk people with a history of violent offending, gun crimes or family harm.
This would include not only gang members, but also people with extremist views or a history of abuse – though a conviction would be a minimum prequisite.
Key issues include human rights concerns including freedom of movement, freedom of association, the presumption of innocence and the right to be free from unreasonable search.
“FPOs would prevent people from being around others who have firearms, using them without supervision, or being at a location that enables access to guns,” Nash said.
That would mean someone under an FPO could commit a criminal offence by living in or visiting the home of a family member who legally has firearms at the home, or being in a car with hunting mates who have firearms in the vehicle, or being in the company of a friend who is legally carrying a firearm.
Police would be able to investigate someone subject to an FPO, including searching their property and confiscating firearms, parts and ammunition.
Asked if people with convictions for violent offences had fewer rights than those who did not, Ardern said it was a privilege to be able to come into contact with firearms and dangerous people should be deprived of that privilege.
…as someone who has just finished a 5 year battle with the bloody cops and their abuse of power, this joke of a policy idea gives so much power to the Police to make decisions that stop people from visiting their own family and has such loop holes in it you could plot a white supremacist atrocity in 2 years and drive on through it.
I doubt the Labour Party has the imagination for an idea as draconian as this so will assume it’s been cooked up by the cops. This isn’t about protecting the public from guns, this is about gaining new means to explore anyone associated with guns.
The NZ Police currently gain an enormous amount of search and surveillance powers from the prohibition of cannabis, with cannabis possibly about to be made legal, the cops need a new drift net to go on fishing expeditions.
The real question mark over the Christchurch atrocity is how the hell did our intelligence apparatus manage to miss the white supremacist plotting it? Why should we grant police extraordinary powers like this because the SIS, GCSB, Police Intelligence Unit and half a dozen other acronyms missed the actual threat because they were too focused on Muslims, MANA, the Greens, Greenpeace, Nicky Hager, Jon Stephenson and Māori protesting big oil?
Police should look to write warnings and destroy any guns found rather than a punitive arrest and prosecution model so as to not enflame events that could spin out of control.
Jacinda won the battle by removing a vast number of dangerous guns from our streets, but could easily lose the war if those who haven’t handed their weapons in believe they are seeing the manifestation of their most fettered conspiracies of the Deep State removing their ability to resist a socialist state.
As ludicrous as that conspiracy is, this is the toxic sludge citizens fed on social media news feeds have become.
Heavy handed forced compliance using law that breaches civil rights will give those alienated gun owners all the righteous grievance they need to radicalise, that is a recipe for social carnage, not social cohesion.
To be successful the gun policy needed to be crafted to get good law abiding people on side as most agreed it was a good idea to get ride of an excess of weapons . Due to years of slack control there numbers were a unknown number. . It was rushed short changed legal gun owners and now has turned good people into criminals. The worry is the guns not handed in are now probably not in the gun safe but are hiden somewhere on the property and are easy pickings for gangs .
In 2019 there were a greater number of mass killings than in any previous year, in the US. At 41 incidents, that’s heading towards one a week. Criminologist James Densley is quoted as saying, “This seems to be the age of mass shootings”.
In August, following as series of deadly mass shootings, Trump had said that, quote, “serious discussions” would take place between congressional leaders on “meaningful” background checks for gun owners.
Guess what happened. One phone call from the head of the National Rifle Assoc, and he “quietly rowed back on that pledge”. bbc article here
I’d guess Jacinda cooked her own goose with this heavy handed oppression of firearms ownership. Seems more reasonable to clamp down on the criminals instead of peaceable lawful citizens.
Success will depend on the outcomes for gun *violence* control – judge the hasty legislation by what it achieves, not what the politicians feel, or the number of firearms bought (which were mostly replaced by new ones). There isnt a great expectation of big gains in safety overall: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12277399
There is some out-there opposition to the process, for sure, reprehensible. That doesn’t mean all disagreement is from those quarters. This was hasty legislation, high on emotion but short on reason, and there are some trivial mistakes in the amended Arms Act that are at least in part a cause of some of the angst.
Minister of Police Nash has been at best very poorly informed, at worst deliberately misleading, when he has repeatedly said the prohibited firearms are “weapons designed to kill people – not deer or goats or possums or rabbits”. This is simply not true. Many are sporting centrefires, and also what the poorly worded amendments have also done is include thousands of bolt/lever/pump (ie manual, not semi-auto) action rifles, in particular .22s. Hunting rifles.
The Thorp Report, often cited as the source for these changes, actually recommended allowing centrefire semi-autos but restricting magazine capacity to 7 shots. Similarly, simply making the mag limit 12 rounds for non-semiautos would have excluded many of the hunting rifles caught up for little good reason. They arent the dangerous weapons’ that we were told were the focus.
To say these are firearms off the street is misleading too – only licenced owners are eligible for the buyback and the vast majority of those firearms are stored safely in Police vetted security. Not all, but nearly all.
Most of the buyback money (Nash Cash 🙂 ) has been used to buy replacement firearms. So net effect on total firearms numbers will be minimal. But it has been a windfall for the likes of Gun City
The Police have also caused a lot of confusion – all their ads show semi-auto centrefire rifles, whereas their own stats show over a third of firearms collected in are not this type. There are many out there who werent, possibly still arent, aware that their little bolt action .22 is now prohibited if it has an 11 shot or larger magazine
Its been messy legislation, poorly communicated, and exploited by Police senior management to achieve a prior wishlist. Some good changes, but bad management
People do have legitimate reasons for having semi-automatic weapons. Our mara kai were invaded by a herd of 30 or so wild pigs earlier this year, which would have been more easily and easily repulsed with semi-automatics.
All these new powers which are being given or offered to the police are a sign that the regime is rapidly moving away from the concept of “rule of law” and towards a police state. It is not a question of whether these powers might be abused. Rather it is the case that they are an intrinsic abuse of the fundamental democratic principle of “rule of law”.
The people of this country will not tolerate a highly militarized state fronted by a paramilitary police force which aims to disarm civil society and render it defenseless against the Five Eyes extremists who have total control over the regime’s security forces.
Stuart Nash, and Jacinda Ardern, should think long and hard about this one.
You are sounding like the MSM Martyn. Firearms aren’t inherently “dangerous”, no more so than a car or an axe. Stay away from emotive adjectives or if you don’t want to, go in boots and all, (like Mike Clements) and call semi-automatic rifles “Evil” (except the ones the state has right).
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of firearms ownership and lowest levels of firearms related crime in the world. This is not about firearms crime. Brenton Tarrent (as far as we know) was not a criminal until he pulled the trigger on March 15th.
This is about the states response to an unprecedented attack by a white supremacist zealot. As you rightly point out, they failed to prevent it or even see it coming. I don’t think a National government, the UN or any other government would have done any better. But this is really a question for the Royal commission to answer.
They failed a second time with the rushed response and changes to firearms laws, the lack of consultation and continue to make a mess of things with the current amendment, SOP 408 and the “buy-back”. None of this will make us safer, none of this will prevent another mass murder. None of this so far can be described as a “success”.