Press Release Sporting Shooters’ Association of New Zealand.
“Creating a massive empire with hundreds of new staff is not the answer to solving the woes of the police Firearm Safety Authority” says Neville Dodd the president of the Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand. This in response to revelations that a police internal survey of arms control staff found many flaws in the system, not least the lack of training and support for staff:
Neville Dodd said, “We have been saying since 2017 that the system was failing, including the diversion of funds to other Police functions, as documented in the Police Annual report of 2018. The Commission of Inquiry into March 2019 proved us right when it concluded that police had failed in their duty to properly administer firearms licensing.
He said the problem now is that rushed law changes made by the Labour government have made everything so complicated that few people really understand the law and its regulations. As a result licensed firearm owners have lost trust and confidence in the police and non-compliance is sure to become a real issue, especially following the massive fee hikes proposed by the new FSA* Empire builders.
For successful domestic arms control what is needed is simple laws that are easy to understand and follow, with less red tape and a rebuilding of trust between the police/regulators and the firearm owning community. Laws must be aimed at targeting those who perpetrate crime rather than those who live peacefully in our communities.
“This can only be achieved by collaboration between all parties, where the police are supporters of the firearm community rather than the oppressors they have become since 2019,” said Neville Dodd.
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The Police intend to create another bureaucratic inefficient structure. It will waste public money and achieve nothing. as Neville Dodd says “Laws must be aimed at targeting those who perpetrate crime rather than those who live peacefully in our communities.”
That’s exactly what the government’s rushed laws following the 2019 Mosque shooting failed to do. Labour rushed its agenda through, National naively followed like a headless chook and only ACT spoke common sense.
Good for you Neville Dodd and SSANZ. Keep exposing the short-sightedness of the government and officialdom around firearms. You set a fine and active example for other organisations.
What is even worse than the ineffectiveness and excessive cost of these new regulations is the likelyhood that many law abiding people will be criminalized for not complying properly or at all.
The confiscation of semiautomatic centre fire rifles, that cost about 100 Million dollars, did not make anyone any safer but it did criminalize people who refused to comply and kept these firearms that are now illegal.
No-one has any idea how many of these firearms are “out there” or who has them.
If and when any are sold they will almost certainly be bought by criminals.
Licensed firearm owners are well aware that these regulations are prejudiced, discriminatory and intended to coerce honest people into giving up their firearms by making compliance excessivley difficult. The trust and desire to cooperate with people in gove4rnment and the police has been destroyed.
Many people will give up but others will just stop complying, stop being licensed and not register what they own.
Instead of reducing gun related crime, the outcome of this dishonest legislation will be the criminalization of people that would prefer to be law abiding and an increase in gun related crime.
It is unrealistic to believe that people who retain firearms and do not comply withy the regulations will be identified and dealt with by the police becuase they are not able to disarm members of gangs and other people who are known nto be violent.
Many unlicensed people already own firearms and many people still own prohibited ones because GUNS ARE NOT DIFFICULT TO HIDE.
There seems to be a culture of wanting to criminalize people who are not a threat to other people or the property of other people by imposing more and more bureaucracy and regulations on all of us, while doing very little to deal with real criminals that harm other people and their property.
It seems as though there is an intention to generate revenue by imposing regulations that almost everyone will fail to comply with from time to time and have to pay up even though they did not cause any harm.
Arresting, trying and punishing people who harm others or the property of others costs money and does not generate any revenue so it tends to be avoided.
The management and administration of our justice system increases the incidence of crime rather than reducing it.
The people imposing this legislation might have good intentions but what they do not seem to understand or care about is that they are:
CRIMINALIZING PEOPLE WHO WOULD PREFER TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS.
DRIVING GUN OWNERSHIP AND USE UNDERGROUND.
CREATING A BLACK MARKET IN WHICH MORE FIREARMS WILL BE OWNED BY POTENTIALLY VIOLENT CRIMINALS.
WASTING EXCESSIVE AMOUNTS OF WORKING PEOPLE’S MONEY ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF A SYSTEM THAT WILL CREATE MORE CRIMINLS WHO HAVE GUNS.
Charles has got it bang on. The more complex rules and regulations are the more people will jack up, the simpler the regulations the more people will comply and less guns will go underground.
I am not confident that laws alone will serve the community to prevent certain crimes from taking place, particularly the amok killings which, besides providing tremendous copy for the fourth estate seem notably beyond any laws, being illegal.
That the fourth estate has been argued to promote imitative actions such as suicide ‘clusters’ and arson clusters, is a worry too. Several authors have suggested that multiple killings may well be triggered by such attentions from the media. I can cite sources if requested.
Only honest people obey laws.
By definition, criminals ignore law, regardless of their severity.