Media release – COLFO
Police have pulled costs out of thin air to create its consultation document for increased firearm license fees, says the Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO).
COLFO spokesperson Hugh Devereux-Mack says the consultation document released by Police explains costs using vagaries and assertions, ultimately not fulfilling their requirements set out by the Arms Act.
“Police can’t substantiate what real costs firearm owners are being asked to pay for yet want to charge them up to 400% more.”
Section 81 of the Arms Act sets one of the criteria for cost recovery as ensuring the ‘relationship between costs of activity and fee are clear.’
“Instead, the document gives vague explanations for cost recoupment like ‘updating the Police database,’” says Devereux-Mack.
“Is this an hours’ work from an IT consultant or is this a full-scale overhaul of the system? We can’t tell, and the Police admin team probably don’t know either.”
Other absurd cost explanations include fees on a dealer’s license for ‘amount of regulatory effort required,’ and an ‘additional administration cost’ if Police decide a license fee is to be paid in instalments.
Devereux-Mack says it’s not the first time Police have written a nationally significant consultation document using guesswork.
“The consultation document on stricter protocols for clubs and ranges invented problems to solve and introduced new fees for the paperwork thrust upon club officials.
“Police have discovered that stoking public fear of firearms allows them to force arduous compliance measures on firearm owners and charge them an extortionate rate for it.
“In this latest consultation they’ve even separated the fees for a firearms safety course, integral to getting your license, from the fees for the license application itself. This allows them to increase the fees for both and make more money.
“Firearms owners might not mind if that money went to an efficient licensing system and made New Zealanders safer, but with ballooning police response times and violent crime on the rise, it’s clear the New Zealand Police are focused on the wrong issues.”
“Police continue to create excessive bureaucratic processes that do not increase public safety.”
For further information contact: Hugh Devereux-Mack. 027 362 0853
Make no mistake, Police are under the govmnt orders & directives.
The long term agenda is to disarm the public. One way to eliminate many users is to raise compliance fees beyond what an ordinary person can afford or justify such an expense on a family or individual’s cost of living budget.
No doubt we will see the green madness eliminate , petrol/diesel cars the same way.
Set the fees beyond affordability,while stripping more tax for govmnt coffers at the same time It’s all part of white anting the foundations of our long established cultural ways, most likely for a new set of masters & overlords, be they ethno -tribal or communistic dictators, Much as we have a taste of both presently as power is shifted by Ardern to cogoverning moedi tribes & herself & her cabal acting as dictator without mandate of the people.Just a simple example is, lifting $55 million of Public Funds to bribe media entities to preach her agenda in order to qualify for funds.All under a thinly veiled smoke screen of the”harmless” sounding: “Public Interest J ournalism Fund”.Such is the wool being pulled over our eyes ,while behind closed doors futher plots,[education school indoctrination], are hatched to further weaken democracy & society in preparation for the final act of 50/50 co governance with Tribal Iwi.
Is this really the NZ we want to hand down to our youngsters?? The price of freedom is eternal vigilance & action against evil awaiting our slumber & inattention.
Ardern promised an independent firearms authority which would have been a sensible and effective way handle the day to day administration of licencing, permits etc. leaving the police force to concentrate on their core business of dealing with criminals. Of course Ardern was only lying and so we are stuck with the bureaucratic police cluster stuff-up for the time being at least
Below is a copy of my last submission to Government about proposed changes which will affect the owners of firearms. It might encourage others to make a submission on more changes to firearms legislation which I believe will deny the owners of firearms their basic rights and freedoms.
” Firearms Registry Consultation. To whom it may concern.
In the Oct-Nov issue of NZ Outdoors Magazine is an article written by John Howat in 2005, 17 years ago. It is clear in this article that the present changes to the Arms Act and Firearms Regulations are part of a long term agenda by unelected people in the United Nations, European Union and elsewhere. They are funded by self appointed, unelected, super rich people who want a One World Government. There is plenty of information about them. They publish under various names like the World Economic Forum, Club of Rome, Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and more.
New Zealand is supposed to be a sovereign nation. We should decide our own laws, not rubber stamp instructions from Globalist elites.
I first obtained a firearms licence at age 16 in 1965. I am now 73 years old and have used firearms professionally and recreationally for 57 years.
The old Arms Act was not perfect but was adequate. The proposed changes are not necessary and should be abandoned. There is no evidence the proposed changes will make New Zealand a safer place. The changes are being politically driven from within NZ Police and from outside. The rules, regulations, permits, legislation etc about firearms are not a core activity for police. They should be the responsibility of the people with expertise about firearms, i.e. The people who own them, use them, repair them, modify them, import them, export them, supply ammunition, etc. Having police police firearms and writing the rules will bring police into disrepute. It already has bought police into disrepute. There are too many conflicts of interests. Having police in charge is irresponsible. I could argue my case and would if I genuinely thought it would make a difference. Based on my experience with the submissions I have made in the past I do not believe their is willingness to change the present agenda. So I won’t waste my time or your time any further. I trust I may have sown seeds for some of the readers of this submission who understand the difference between democracy and authoritarianism and who one day might be brave enough to practice democracy and reject authoritarianism. Yours sincerely Jim Hilton 027 824 8112 11 October 2022″
On looking at the regulatory Impact statement (RIS) and the Departmental Disclosure Statements (DDS) issued over the years on firearm legislation, they seem to be unaccompanied by anything like evidential factual material to reinforce or even support their claims. Absent support material, even of benefit/cost analytical work, it seems strange that the oft-cited public good is the main justification for such measures.
It all looks sloppy to me.
Why doesn’t the government and police, come clean – forlorn hope? – and admit they want to disarm the law abiding licenced firearm owning people, while turning a blind eye to the rampant crime shootings, assaults, ram raids etc.?
You expect a politician, particularly a communist one, to “come clean”. You will see purple pigs flying in the sky before that happens.
I am now 88. I started full-bore shooting, that is .303, when I was 13. And .22 at the same time. I was using a shotgun from about the same age and bought my first .22 rifle at 16. I still have it. I have owned and used legally shotguns and or rifles in Britain, Ceylon, New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and New Zealand. I have never been charged, or even questioned, by the police, anywhere, in respect of any firearms offence. In my view the licencing of firearms should be administrated by an expert authority independent of the police which may accept advisory input from them.
P.S. I shot full-bore in a competition at Bisley when I was about 17 or 18.
In asking the public to comment on their set questions in the discussion document, police are only paying lip service to consultation. For a start how can people comment on the fairness of the proposed cost recovery figures when the police don’t explain how the figures were derived? For example what is the hourly rate charged for time worked on any given part of the process of issuing a licence or permit.
A generation fought, died and sacrificed so that we could have freedoms and democracy.
This govt makes full advantage of those sacrifices whilst denying everyone else the same.
Giving the Police Commissioner the power to make and alter laws is anything but democracy.
Imposing massive fees on people who have committed no crime just because they can is an offense to any free country.
Many people rely on hunting as part of their food supply. In the process they contribute to the control of introduced animals.
Firearms users contribute to the economy with every dollar they spend on their chosen sport. They provide a wild animal control service free of charge, whilst this same govt bleats about the spread of animals such as wallaby. Their solution it seems is to spend vast sums of taxpayers money on poison instead.
The crime rate for licensed users is very very low. As had been shown repeatedly around the world, when licensed owners are restricted, the criminal element gets bigger and their crimes increase.
We are seeing the same happen here.
Stop blaming the people who are not the problem.
Do your job for a change and remind yourself as to who exactly you were elected to represent.
Just seen this comment elsewhere:
No! They didn’t pull the figures out of thin air!
They plucked them outta their ****!
How can it possibly cost more to “re-issue” an existing gun license than to “re-issue” a drivers license?
Regardless of cost or any other way of getting rid of firearms there are clever people around (crims) who will just build one. I had a high school kid come to me years ago wanting to know how to rifle the barrel of a replica German Luger (.22 caliber) he had made piece by piece in a high school engineering shop.