New Zealand’s 240,000 licensed firearm owners feel vindicated by the acknowledgement of National Party leader Chris Luxon that a firearm register won’t stop gang crime.
After the spate of gang crime in Auckland on Tuesday, Mr Luxon said National would reallocate the $210 million for a firearm register into firearms prohibition orders that would allow Police to target illegal guns.
Council of Licensed Firearms Owners (COLFO) Chairperson Michael Dowling agrees.
“No excel spreadsheet can prevent the crimes seen in Auckland on Tuesday night.
“Gangs know how to keep locally acquired firearms off a register, and how to smuggle them into New Zealand, so it will not reduce illegal firearm use.
“A register is a make-work scheme for authorities to feel good, and to carry on the demonisation of licensed firearm owners such as farmers, pest-controllers, and sportspeople,” he said.
A firearm register will not help track or remove firearms from criminals because it relies on serial numbers that Police have admitted are almost always removed from stolen or smuggled firearms.
In an Official Information Act response given to COLFO, Police acknowledged that “source tracing is very difficult where seizures of firearms from gangs almost invariably have serial numbers removed.”
“Gangs and other criminals already file off serial numbers from their illegal firearms. This means the register would be merely a list of legally owned firearms, not a list of the tens of thousands of illegally owned firearms,” said Dowling.
Dowling said a firearms register does not address the primary issue, which is the violence and harm gangs are inflicting with firearms.
“Even if we could track the origin, it’s cold comfort to the victim. We need to make sure the shooting does not happen in the first place.”
Dowling said the Government’s firearm protection orders were a far more useful tool, but that warrantless search abilities must have judicial review as similar powers had been abused by enforcement agencies overseas.
For further information contact: Michael Dowling. 027 442 3310
I know for a fact (because of the hundreds and hundreds of people we spoke to) .. there are now prohibited firearms in the hands of previously legitimate and law-abiding Firearms Licence Holders (who now feel scapegoated / marginalised / persecuted / alienated / victimised) .. that the Police would have to go over properties with metal detectors to find. And I’m talking farms.
Stupid, rushed laws .. that erode what people see as their rights and freedoms .. brought in without following democratic due process .. do not foster compliance .. indeed, they engender the opposite.
(People don’t just roll over in the face of unfair / unreasonable / undemocratic / aggressive oppression. Some people have a spine .. and will become resolute in the face of such oppression. These are the people amongst the population of the Ukraine .. who have stayed to fight, and free their country .. and who may die in the process. The kinds of people who have brought about NZ’s Firearms Law Reforms generally would have been on the first bus outta the country.)
What this means .. is the NZ government and police have lost what they most needed, to even achieve compliance .. and that is cooperation.
So, what have / will we achieve:
(1) stupid, rushed laws .. that miss the mark .. and will not make NZ safer (as every thinking New Zealander can already see);
(2) non-compliance – of course, by gangs and criminals .. but now also by legitimate and law-abiding people who feel scapegoated / marginalised / persecuted / alienated / victimised;
(3) a proliferation of now-prohibited firearms .. held by previously legitimate and law-abiding people .. that were once held in police-approved storage .. but can no longer be. Many of these have already found their way into the hands of criminals .. and many more will in the coming years (as this is the logical / only channel for their trade / disposal);
(4) a waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars (eventually ballooning into billions);
(5) the eventual realisation of the stupidity of the situation .. and the eventual unwinding of some of the changes (eg the Firearms Register, doomed to be a waste of time).
I just hope this whole mess will one day be studied in whatever school the clowns who become our politicians go to (if they ever indeed go to a school) .. as an abject lesson in how NOT to go about political change. The subject should be called something like “How To Avoid a Clusterfu#k 101”.
Good one, Ardern & Co!
Right on Stewart but you missed the point.
Criminalizing all owners and users of firearms is exactly what the omnipotent moral busybodies who have become powerful and influential in the political parties desire.
If anyone bothered to join National or especially Labour and attend a few of their secretive party meetings they would meet and begin to understand their enemies.
In each electorate, small groups of active members (often less than 12) meet secretly to choose, support and promote their chosen representative to become elected to our government.
Their priority is to beat the small groups of active members of the other parties in the next election by convincing voters to choose their candidate and list MPs.
The foolish voters think they are choosing someone that will represent and serve them if elected because they have no idea of how the political parties and minority of people that operate and fund them operate.
The culture of the influential minority of people in the main political parties tends to be feminist, racist (anti-white), atheist, totalitarian, politically correct, “woke” and definitely anti-firearms because of the participation and influence of those aging political activists of the 1970s and 1980s who joined and took control of them.
The culture in the government controlled “enterprises” has become the same because these omnipotent moral busybodies have been deciding who gets elected to represent them in our governments for several decades.
The promotion of the fear of gang members having guns is really just a way to justify more legislation to criminalize the possession of firearms in general.
The threat of being criminalized is real but the solution is not to respectfully plead for fairness and justice because the politically influential minority will not listen.
The only solution is for more LFOs to join and become active members of the main political parties, attend their secretive little meetings and confront the prejudiced people that are discriminating against them.
As C.S Lewis wisely warned us, these omnipotent moral busybodies are far more dangerous than gang members, guns or the other things they promote fear of in order to increase their political power and authority over the rest of us.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
If we do not oppose and take the political influence and power away from these nasty busybodies they will take away our remaining, independence, privacy, liberty and property.
At last sense from National over firearms. Don’t forget National with Judith Collins as leader, voted for the rash, rushed buyback law in 2019 following the tragic mosque shooting by an Australian terrorist.
In contrast Ardern is in USA crowing on television on how successful NZ was with firearm laws. She is either lying – or oblivious and ignorant – to the spate of Auckland gang shootings.
Rupert, you are so right. The buyback laws were quite the opposite in effect, to what the prime minister and police bureaucrats intended. Gangs as a result of poor law, have added to their arsenals.
Stewart your comments are so wise. The rash ill judged actions of police bureaucrats and politicians has done immense damage to the relationship with the firearm owning public. The current gang shootings must be making it obvious to the public at large, about the prime minister’s competency and indeed her integrity – and the complete and utter failure of her firearm laws.
Nor should it be forgotten the part of the Police Association and its strident president Cahill, of the police heads themselves and a compliant media who have lost the kill of investigative journalism.
A register will achieve a few things though, the gangs that have infiltrated the Police will know exactly where to go shopping and those that have infiltrated Customs and the dock workers will help smuggle in even more drugs and firearms in the one million containers coming across Ports of Auckland alone (1% are x-rayed), every time strengthening their international ties to really bad dudes and deepening their understanding of our defences. Happy times.
Well said Stewart Hydes. In the early nineties Insp. John Coote of the NZ Police was invited to Canada to brief them on NZ’s firearms licencing system. He advised them that the NZ Police had proposed abandoning the registration of long guns that had been in place in NZ for many years because it was essentially pointless, solved or prevented no crimes and simply served to tie up police resources that could more profitably be used elsewhere. The Canadians ignored John’s advice and wasted C$2 billion proving that he had been correct before abandoning their registration scheme.
Now certain muppets within the police, Cahill, I’m looking particuarly at you, are pushing for NZ to waste time, effort and money on a new register which will have no effect on gangs using illegal guns that will never be registered to shoot at each other and only serve to waste police resources and taxpayer funds. The mind boggles at such epic stupidity.
Can’t see anything changing the minds of these useless elected twits they will forge ahead with firearms registration reguardless of cost to taxpayers and the hopelessness of it, I can see even more firearms going underground.