Jacinda Ardern has chosen to alienate 10% of the Voting Public because one foreign criminal skirted all our existing safeguards. She thinks that she can do what Canada, Australia and the UK have all failed to do at a cost of millions of dollars.
The Government wants a national register for all firearms, tighter restrictions on who can get and retain a firearms licence, and a ban on visitors to New Zealand from buying any guns.
In announcing the second tranche of gun law reforms today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also said licences will have to be renewed every five years – half of the time in the current scheme.
But she has ditched the recommendation for an independent body to oversee gun laws and regulations, which was recommended in the 1997 report by Sir Thomas Thorp, the last major review of gun laws.
Instead the police will set up the national register, and an independent group of experts, including people from the firearms community, will advise police and report annually.
A Newspaper
She thinks that somehow, New Zealand is a special case and unlike in Canada, Australia and the UK our police will be able to get a National Gun register to work. She thinks this, despite the fact that the police do not know how many guns are actually out there.
Even worse, she thinks that a National Gun register will make New Zealand safer just like she thought that taking guns off law-abiding citizens would also make New Zealand safer. The National Gun register idea will have the same exact problem that the gun confiscation has. Criminals won’t be included in the register because they are…uhm…you know criminals.
So her two great plans to make New Zealand safe so far are to:
- Make law-abiding citizens hand over their guns. ( The criminals get to keep theirs)
- Put all the law-abiding gun owners on a National Gun register ( The criminals will not be included)
The police can’t manage the existing regime. They can barely get around to doing renewals every 10 years and yet we are supposed to believe they will be able to do renewals every five years? The passport renewals were every 5 years and that was a failure.
This is just a grab bag of what the police want. The only thing not announced so far is that Phil Twyford will make it all happen just like he did with Kiwibuild. (Sarcasm)
They’ve also ignored the Thorp report that suggested an independent body run it all rather than the police, who let’s face it, have already ‘lost’ firearms and couldn’t successfully run the last gun register.
The police have said that they can build the National Register at a cost of $2M which is suspiciously the same amount that the police said it would cost in Canada. Canada attempted to register all guns in the 1990s, but the original estimated cost of CAD$2 million blew out to $1 billion and was eventually scrapped, except in Quebec.
If the gun confiscation didn’t motivate the 250k Kiwi gun owners to have one voice representing them then this should do it. 250k voters is 10 percent of the voting public. That’s 10 percent of voters looking for a party to represent their interests. That’s 10% of voters who can ensure that a minor party gets over the 5% threshold. That’s 10% of voters who are highly motivated to punish Labour.
So far, the National party have given no indication that they are going to fight this but I understand that NZ First is opposed to the gun register because it simply will not work.
10% of the population’s votes are up for grabs. Which political party is going to be smart enough to grab them?
