“The full registration of firearms will be a wasteful and dangerous exercise and ACT will repeal it”, says ACT’s Firearms spokesperson Nicole McKee.
“Yesterday, Police confirmed that a firearms register would be in place from 24 June. This is the result of the Arms Legislation Act that was rushed through Parliament in June 2020 by Labour and NZ First.
“ACT was the only party in Parliament to stand up for firearms owners and vote against the Bill then, and we will continue to stand up for firearms owners now.
“Firearms owners know that this is not a good use of taxpayer money. Overseas experience has shown that full registration of firearms doesn’t work. The cost of Canada’s firearms register blew out to over $2 billion, achieved only limited participation from firearms owners, and was then dumped in 2011.
“Our Government has initially allocated $208 million, but who knows what the final cost will be.
“Like the gun buyback, responsible firearm owners will be forced to comply while gang members carry on their merry way and ignore it. There will be no change to the number of illegal guns on the street.
“The Thorpe Report in 1997 stated that unless there is 90 per cent compliance it is never going to work.
“New Zealand has tried a firearms register in the past but it was abandoned after Police failed to maintain it. Police asked for the paper-based register to be abandoned in the 1980s because it had an error rate of 66 per cent.
“Police will say that their new system, once live, is reliable. But the current digital registration system for pistols, restricted weapons, and collector items also has errors.
“Various privacy breaches by Police of firearms owners over the years shows exactly why a firearms register is a terrible idea and why ACT has opposed it from the start. A firearms register, if leaked, will become a steal-to-order list for gangs and criminals. If privacy breaches keep happening then New Zealanders will be less safe.
“ACT understands that some police officers who don’t perform well are moved into the firearms licencing division to get them off the frontline. We need a competent administrator so these failings stop occurring. It’s clear the Police are just not up to the task.
“Gun crime in New Zealand is out of control, but creating a register will do nothing to fix this and once again shows the Government’s focus is on law-abiding firearms owners rather than gangs.
“The Government must abandon its attempt to register every firearm in the country. Centralising this information within an agency which has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted to manage it, cannot be allowed to proceed.
“ACT will repeal full registration of firearms, parts and ammunition, but retain registration of pistols and restricted weapons.”
Go Nicole, seems to be the only politician making any sense on firearms laws.
Prejudice is unjustly discriminating against all people because of what some have done.
Some people have misused firearms but most have not.
Prejudice and discrimination against all people who have firearms is illogical and unjust.
There is no basis for the assumption that an owner of firearms will misuse them to harm other people or their property,
This assumption is a violation the legal principle that everyone should be presumed to be innocent in the abscence of proof of guilt.
Why should law abiding people who have firearms have to prove their innocence, in the abscence of any evidence of guilt?
I have witnessed influential members of the Labour party referring to responsible owners of firearms as “THOSE HORRIBLE GUN PEOPLE”.
It is very much like racism.
Why do so many people like to hunt, fish and have firearms?
It is simply a part of our CULTURE AND HERITAGE and the DNA we inherited from our ancestors.
We do not have to justify or apologize for hunting, fishing, gathering or having firearms.
These CULTURAL TRADITIONS are not crimes because they are not causing harm to other people or their property.
Is it rational to suspect that everyone who owns firearms is likely to misuse them when the factual evidence contradicts this illogical assumption?
How many people feel seriously threatened or endangered because others own and use firearms?
We are all concerned about the minority of people that are criminals, who would harm us or our property, but the majority of people know that most owners of firearms are NOT CRIMINALS.
Do the majority of the people want their money spent to administer and enforce these regulations that discriminate against responsible owners of firearms and limit the resources that are available for protecting them from criminals?
What real value will taxpayers recieve in return for this spending of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF THEIR DOLLARS?
As usual, the politicians and bureaucrats in this current government have not asked the people what the majority would like and are willing to pay for because they have no respect for the people or the principles of Democracy.
Criminals are people who ignore and do not comply with laws and government regulations.
They have not complied with the previous firearms regulations and will not comply with these more prejudicial, extreme and costly ones either.
Discriminating against and “criminalizing” responsible people who have and use firearms will not improve our public safety.
These new regulations are more likely to be detrimental to public safety because people who have not complied for one reason or other will be criminalized, hide their property and not be able to legally sell firearms to people who have complied.
This will most likely create a “black market” in which criminals have access to even more guns.
The people we employ to work for us in our government have been borrowing more and more money to fund their activities because the productive workers cannot provide what they want to spend.
This borrowed money has to be serviced and repaid by the productive workers who are struggling to earn enough to support themselves and their families.
Our politicans and other government employees do not care how much they take, borrow and spend because IT IS NOT THEIR MONEY.
These employees of ours do not care how LITTLE VALUE we receive for what we are forced to pay because IT IS NOT THEIR MONEY.
They do not care how much debt they create because THEY WILL NOT HAVE TO REPAY IT.
Most of us would agree that our government employees have not been managing education, health care, law and order, the economy or most of their other responsibilities very well.
Most of us know that we are not receiving value for what we are paying.
It is most unlikely that the people who are mismanaging so many other things will provide value for the costs of these new, excessive and undesired firearms regulations.
It should be obvious that asking our politicians and bureaucrats to listen to the majority and provide real value for our money that they spend does not work very well.
We can, if we wish, hire better employees that will srve us better when we vote in October.