Media Release
COLFO
Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO) spokesperson Hugh Devereux-Mack says raising firearms license fees by up to 400% during a cost-of-living crisis will prohibit many people from renewing their firearms license, but some will keep hold of their firearms.
“Police are reaching into the pockets of firearms owners to fund excessive paperwork processes that are abysmally operated and do not improve public safety.
“It got so bad the Government was forced to pass law extending licenses because firearms owners were waiting over a year for renewal.
“We understand the need for fees to be moved up as they haven’t moved for more than 20 years, however an increase in fees for this mess is an insult. Kiwis out on the farm and people keeping pests away from our native birds and flora are being asked to pay so the Police can hire more Wellington pen-pushers.
“The gall of Police to ask for more money to pay for its hopeless service is beyond belief. License wait times have skyrocketed to the point where Police failure has made criminals of ordinary Kiwis.
“Police regularly require people to take time off work to undertake interviews and compliance checks. In these hard times, raising fees could push many firearm users to forego their license, stock up on ammo, and store their firearms in a safe place for the summer.
“For some firearm owners the ability to gather food and put meat on the table is through access to firearms.
“If Police continue to treat firearms owners as taxable criminals, it will drive firearm-owning kiwis to abandon the licensing process altogether. That’s a terrible outcome for all New Zealanders.
“Licensed firearm owners are again being punished to support a system that will not keep New Zealanders safer or curb rising gun crime.”
For further information contact: Hugh Devereux-Mack. 027 362 0853
Well spoken Hugh and COLFO. Keep up the top work.
Another attack on licensed firearms owners by poultice who are wholly funded by taxpayers and should not be trying to recoup costs from people who have already paid for them. Well past time police were taken out of the firearms administration role all together
Cuddles Coster, taking a leaf out of Elon Musk’s book, just tweeted “I am a New Zealand Police officer and my pronouns are Hopeless / Failure.”
We, the long suffering taxpayers, already fund the police and some of us own guns lawfully. If the police want us to have a licence to own our guns or a permit to import parts for our firearms “to keep us safe” then it is their duty to provide us those as necessary as part of their service to the community which we have already paid for. What next will they seek to recover costs for attending a burglary or road accident? What about a ram raid or domestic violence call out, must be heaps of money to be recovered from the victims of those crimes.
We should not be expected to fund police bureaucracy and inefficiency to the extent of the current proposals. The new registry is going to be a colossal waste of money (I have seen the figure of $500 million mentioned several times and don’t forget the Canadians wasted 2 billion dollars on their now scrapped registry) and achieve nothing except act as a shopping list for corrupt police officers to sell to the gangs or as a list for future confiscation in line with WEF edicts.
Where is the independent firearms authority that Ardern promised us? Oh, silly me, it was just one more in her long, long litany of lies that she never meant.
Can’t wait for when my hyper inflated licence and registration fees are paying for gangs to get shopping lists of firearms and where to steal them.
Why does Labour try these unworkable systems go back to your knitting
I can see gangs boosting their armouries with guns being flogged off from current legal firearms owners not renewing their licenses because of cost.
Police have really lost the plot on firearms. They have have adopted a fortress mentality and are trying to regulate and over regulate the people that they police have vetted to be fit and proper. Presumably this is to deflect the ordinary men & women of New Zealand from focusing on the real responsibility for that god awful Mosque attack. The Royal Commission finding was very clear that Police should not have given the assassin a firearms license. All subsequent police actions with respect to firearms have involved blame shifting. Firearms owners have had enough. Hugh D-M is right. Police are pushing so hard that they are going to drive guns “underground”. A simple example of their stupidity is the fees they propose for a permit to import gun parts. They claim that a fixed full cost, recovery fee would be $540 – $590. Get that it costs police over $500 to issue an import permit for a simple gun part. Bureaucracy gone mad.
I already hear rumblings of illicit firearms for sale. How many owners will dispose of their legitimate guns purely to spite the Cops and their headlong rush to disarm to law-abiding and arm the law-breakers?
This is a great way to cull down pro-gun voters, which is crucial for the longevity of the current Arms Act and any future expansions of it. It also takes out the next generation of shooters, asking a 16 year old to bear the costs of some of these recommendations is a big ask, and that’s not even taking the cost of living crisis into account. This will also potentially decimate the university hunting clubs which bring in a bunch of new participants to the various disciplines within hunting as well as target shooting. And the fact the Govt wont let a private entity run this setup means there’s no incentive for the organisation to perform efficiently so that basically means they get a monopoly to charge whatever they want, and take as long as they want, and nobody will be able to question it.