The Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO) has supplied an OIA to the President of the NZ Police Association, Chris Cahill, which reveals a claim he made on live television was severely incorrect.
On TVNZ Breakfast’s show of May 15, 2023, Cahill claimed that “the majority of criminals get their guns from unscrupulous firearms owners who buy them on their behalf, and on sell them”.
An Official Information Act response from Police, dated March 2020 (included below), has revealed the claim is seriously incorrect.
Police said that of 1,263 firearms seized in 2019, less than 17 were able to be traced back to a person who held a firearms licence. All 17 firearms had been reported stolen.
Even considering only the 559 firearms where Police identified a serial number, just 3% were traced back to a licensed owner.
The data strongly indicates licensed firearm owners are not the source of firearms for the majority of criminals as Cahill had claimed during the televised interview, which was also spread online.
COLFO has sent the OIA and an accompanying letter to the Police Association President as formal notice that he should not make that claim again in public now he is in possession of evidence to the contrary.
COLFO is yet to receive a reply.
For further information contact COLFO spokesperson: Hugh Devereux-Mack. 027 362 0853
Chris Cahill has long been a strident, and shrill voice for police.
He is a public relations disaster for police who surely realise his anti-public firearm ownership phobia is prejudiced.
Cahill is renown for making unsubstantiated claims, besmirching licensed firearm owners. He should support his claims with verifiable facts, just as COLFO does.
Spot on,damaging nonsense needs exposure
Eagerly awaiting reply from police…
How can anyone retain credibility when they are so blatantly biased and attempt to skew the facts for their own agenda. Shame.
Increasing rates of crime clearly show that the police are not doing what we pay them to do.
They must be too busy harrassing law abiding citizens to generate revenue from minor offences to tackle real criminals and besides, real criominals could be dangerous.
Police mistakes contributed to the horrible Chrischurch mass murder but did the police apologize.
No, they blames responsible owners of firearms who had done nothing wrong.
Now there are moire incidents in which criminals misuse firearms.
The police are paid to protect the rest of us from armed criminals but they do not.
Do they apologize for not being able to deal with criminals?
No, they blame responsible owners of firearms who have done nothing wrong.
The influential “DECIDERS” in our main political parties want to disarm the people so that we are all defenseless.
The senior bureaucrats in the police enterprise have the same agenda.
The propaganda is that everyone will be safe if responsible people who DO NOT COMMIT CRIMES are prohibited from legally having firearms and only givernment employees and criminals continue to have firearms.
This discrimination against responsible citizens whoi have done nothing wrong is not fair, reasonable or sensible.
It is also a great waste of taxpayer’s money.
The People in the ACT party would like to make the police do what we pay them to do and get tough on real criminals instead of blaming people who have done nothing wrong.
They would also like to treat law abiding, respoonsible owners of firearms fairly and reasonably instead of discrimination against them.
PARTY VOTE ACT for honest and sensible government.
In a little over a week the biggest transfer of lawfully owned firearms to the grey market will begin with the new (and pointless) firearms register going live on the 24th June. It is unlikely that many of those grey market guns will end up in criminal hands because their lawful owners are not about to become real criminals it is just that very few of them trust the police and government enough to actually take part in the registration scheme which, as we have seen both here and overseas, is nothing but a shopping list for eventual confiscation on some flimsy pretext.
I really feel sorry for the many gun shops and businesses who will see their business suffer for no good reason.