Opinion by Paul Revere
One wonders why people in governments are so keen to disarm the responsible. law abiding citizens?
They must know that this will not prevent violent criminals from owning and using guns and other offensive weapons to commit crimes.
In fact, law enforcement administrators do not seem to have much ability or desire to apprehend and remove criminals from society.
Any intelligent person will realize that the system does not protect them from being victims of violent crimes but it does prevent them from having effective means of protecting themselves and their property from violent criminals.
Politicians and bureaucrats only have two responses to any perceived problems.
1. Make more laws, rules and regulations and establish more bureaucracies to administer them.
2. Spend more of other people’s money in order to be seen to be addressing issues.
Most legislation seems to be based on an assumption that everyone is assumed to be guilty of the harmful things that only some people do.
Most regulations criminalise people for doing relatively insignificant things that do not cause any harm to other people or their property
Revenue Gathering
The police enterprise has become more focussed on enforcing regulations that generate revenue from fines, fees and permits than preventing or effectively dealing with people that commit violent crimes and robberies.
The “justification” for this revenue collection is that a person did something that could potentially have caused harm even though no damage or harm occurred.
Who is going to benefit from prohibiting responsible people from having firearms?
The responsible Licensed Firearm Owners will not benefit.
The general public will not benefit (especially in relation to the costs they will have to pay) because Licensed Firearm Owners are not a significant threat to their safety.
However, there has been decades of consistent propaganda intended to persuade people that guns and the people that own them are a serious threat to their safety and lives.
The propaganda utilised the illogical assumption that every individual in a group is assumed to be guilty of what a minority of the people in that group do.
The BAD Theory
All of the people are BAD because some of them are BAD.
The contradiction of propaganda by facts and evidence does not decrease the effectiveness of the propaganda because a lie told frequently and consistently becomes “the truth”.
The justification for punishing people for minor infractions of regulations is always that it is for the safety of the “offender” and everyone else. We ought to stop agreeing to be punished for doing trivial things that did no harm because behaviour that does not result in any harm to a person or property is not a crime.
Criminals will potentially benefit from this disarmament because the chance that their victims will be effectively able to defend themselves will be very slight. It already is because the existing regulations effectively prevent access to defensive weapons in the event of an emergency.
An Illusion
The justice industry benefits because its revenue, size and prestige is increased by creating the illusion that it is effectively dealing with “crime” by dealing with the common minor offences that ordinary citizens are criminalized and fined for committing and also generating more revenue to grow these bureaucratic empires.
IMO, the people that expect to benefit from prohibiting the citizens from having weapons are the GLOBAL ELITES who have become very influential in the political system.
Elite individuals in societies always come to believe that everyone else should be subordinate to them and comply with their agendas and ideologies “for the greater good”.
They become active participants in and financial donors of the political parties so that they can choose and promote their chosen representatives to become elected to serve them in governments.
They use their political authority to impose more rules and regulations on the rest of the people to make them more dependent on and obedient to “the government” and use the people’s money to fund their agendas and ambitions for more authority and power over those who are forced to pay.
Power Corrupts
Power always corrupts those who achieve it and disadvantages those that they have the authority and power over.
Authority and power are also addictive and the people that have it always desire more.
The global elites in politics and commerce are a very small minority and are aware that the masses could become a threat to their wealth, prestige, authority and power. They try to prevent this threat by imposing more restrictions to make the masses more fearful, dependent and obedient to “the government” that they have control of.
Criminals are not a serious threat to the power of the elites because they have the means to protect themselves and their property.
For example, the Swiss government provided 6000 armed soldiers to ensure the safety of the elites that gathered in Davos to discuss how the rest of the people ought to live and behave.
Threat From Commoners
The “common people” are a threat to the security, authority and power of the elite minority because they might eventually understand how badly they are being oppressed and exploited and rebel against their “rulers” as the abused masses did in the past.
The people that had to rebel, fight, bleed and die in the past to win their Natural Rights and democratic government from the political and economic elites of the past new that there would always be people who wanted authority and power over the rest and that they would become corrupted and abuse it if they were allowed too.
They understood that democracy could be taken from the people and replaced by an oppressive FEUDAL SYSTEM if the common people did not have an effective means of opposing it.
Our political system is evolving into another feudal system in which the economic and political elites have most of the political authority and control of most of the wealth and economic assets and they want to protect themselves from the rest of the people by DISARMING US.
The only way to effectively resist being disarmed is to convince people that they need to stop voting for the political celebrities that represent the elites in the major political parties.
The only real difference between National and Labour is that one party has power over us and the other does not.
The people of the smaller political parties have realised and are trying to oppose the excessive authority, power and corruption of the elites in the major ones but the assumption that our government has to be by National or Labour and their lack of financial resources impairs their success.
The following struck a chord with me – “democracy could be taken from the people and replaced by an oppressive FEUDAL SYSTEM”. it seems we are a big step there under the oppressive Ardern-Hipkins government. Do not forget Hipkins was party (an accomplice) to all of Ardern’s undemocratic moves.
It seems ironic the early Europeans sought to escape a feudal system in the UK by establishing an egalitarian society but both National (under Key) and Labour (under Ardern) have eroded that either by thoughtless management or deliberate ploys.
That’s very well written Paul.
We have some power to change this situation in the upcoming election thankfully. ACT are standing up for us but need more support before the election. I would say that they are our only hope at present.
These draconian firearms regulations are not justified.
Properly vetted and licensed owners of firearms are definitley not a danger to the rest of the people as the propaganda tries to convince us.
Criminals will not comply with these gun laws.
This ambition to disarm all law abiding citizens is present in the culture of the Labour, Green and National parties.
The elite minority of peoiple that control the 3 major parties gain their desired authority and power by convincing us to vote for their parties and chosen candidates.
They promise us protection from possible dangers and some more of our own money in return for our votes but they are never able to keep these promises.
We keep voting National or Labour just like we keep buying our favoured consumer brands and forget the we have other and better choices.
The elites in these major parties have become confident that they will get our votes and do not respect us any more.
When peoiple are using their autjhority and power to take away our freedom and property we need to respond by taking Their authority and power away from them.
RED, GREEN AND BLUE
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU
WE WILL HIRE SOMEONE NEW
Well said.
I was talking to a chap earlier this week .. and he pointed out that this government’s knee-jerk moves against Firearms Licence Holders have thus far had exactly THE OPPOSITE of the intended effect. The latest steps to massively increase the cost of being a Firearms License Holder .. will serve only to similarly massively compound the mistakes made so far.
These mistakes are as dumbfounding, as they are obvious, and unnecessary.
Cyclone Gabrielle is possibly the best forecast weather event in our history .. people were well warned, and generally listened.
The disastrous approach taken by this government in its Firearms Law Reform process .. and the obvious poor outcomes .. has been similarly well forecast .. the Firearms Community have done their level best to warn of their folly .. BUT OUR GOVERNMENT ARROGANTLY CONTINUES TO REFUSE TO LISTEN.
The first mistake .. was the knee-jerk prohibition of certain types of firearm.
Denmark took a decade to bring in changes, after their deadly shooting tragedy back in July 2011.
Importantly, they had no further, similar tragedies in the meantime.
Taking their time allowed people to have proper input .. come up with sensible, sound and (perhaps most importantly) generally agreed reforms .. and properly “come on board” with proposed changes.
Instead, our rushed law reforms alienated many of the very people that were needed to make those law changes effective.
As a result, the so-called Gun Buyback was a veritable failure, with a fraction of the freshly prohibited firearms recovered.
Instead of acknowledging this abject failure .. in typically arrogant fashion .. the government have repeatedly claimed it to be a great success.
The main, significant outcomes of this process have been:
(1) more guns in the hands of criminals / gangs than ever before (helping to enable more firearms crime than ever before)
(2) the senseless loss of thousands of low-risk, legitimately-held firearms – including a lot of significant history;
(3) reinforcement of the unfortunate lesson that registration may eventually lead to confiscation;
(4) tens of thousands of prohibited firearms in the community .. many in otherwise law-abiding and legitimate hands;
(5) a substantial degree of alienation of those who own, possess and use firearms.
One of the first rules of animal training .. is not to issue a command that you cannot follow up, or enforce.
This has been a fundamental mistake of the rushed and ill-advised Firearms Law Reform Process, so far.
Now, the government seeks to compound the mistake.
Increasing the cost of firearms ownership, possession and use will have the following adverse effects:
(1) INCREASE the black market for firearms;
(2) INCREASE the number of firearms held unlawfully, eg by increasing those held by persons who do not hold a Firearms Licence;
(3) greatly DECREASE the number of firearms that will be offered up for the proposed Firearms Register .. thus further dooming this initiative to failure (most affecting those firearms held “on the fringes”, that represent the greatest risk).
The government’s semantics around whether firearms are a privilege or a right means nothing to criminals or gangs. They can readily get them, and they will continue to have them.
Firearms Licence Holders already feel unjustly, unfairly, and unreasonably demonised, vilified, persecuted, and scapegoated.
How does further alienating previously legitimate, law-abiding Firearms Licence Holders help make New Zealand safer?
Quite simply .. as we are already seeing .. IT DOESN’T.
HEY, GOVERNMENT .. ARE YOU LISTENING?