Once again the Firearms Safety Authority has introduced a system that is not fit for purpose, open to abuse and cannot be verified by the very people whose information it holds.
On 24 June, a requirement that ammunition purchases be entered into the Dealer Transaction System came into effect, except that the functionality was unavailable that day so the actual introduction was a day late.
Such incompetence hardly builds any public confidence in the robustness and accuracy of the system. And, as detailed below, that lack of confidence is well founded.
Four days later it was reported in the New Zealand Herald that a gun shop owner had been sentenced for selling both firearms and ammunition to unlicensed customers. Worse, he recorded the sales against other people’s firearms licences without their knowledge, as evidenced in the article:
In October 2023, he sold 100 shotgun shells and 80 rifle rounds to a female customer who did not hold a firearms licence. The buyer was actually an undercover police officer who told Cleverdon that the ammunition was for her boyfriend who did have a licence.
To put the sale through, Cleverdon fraudulently used his own firearms licence number. He also advised the unlicensed buyer that, if questioned about the ammunition, she should claim to be acting as a courier.
The next month, November 2023, a male undercover officer purchased 60 rounds of rifle ammunition using the expired firearms licence of a female associate.
Knowing the licence was expired and belonged to someone else, Cleverdon fraudulently recorded the details of the woman as the purchaser.
The gun dealer advised the undercover officer that, if questioned about the ammunition, to claim ignorance of the contents of the package and to say that Cleverdon “didn’t sell them to him”.
The undercover officer returned to Wills Outfitters in December 2023.
This time he wanted to purchase a Browning .243 rifle and 20 rounds of ammunition.
Again, Cleverdon used the expired licence number of the undercover officer’s female associate to record the sale in the national firearms registry online, which had only been established six months earlier.
It didn’t work, so the undercover officer then provided a valid licence in someone else’s name which Cleverdon used to fraudulently record the purchase.
Nothing in the new Dealer Transaction System precludes these same actions being taken – as long as the licence is current, the sale can be recorded – and there is no way for an innocent third party to check what, if any, ammunition sales have been entered against their licence. This is at odds with firearms transactions entered into the same system – these will show in the licence holder’s MyFirearms portal.
This has the potential to cause a lot of police over-reaction, and anguish for responsible licensed firearms owners whose licence is being used fraudulently whilst they have no method of tracking transactions ostensibly made in their name.
Furthermore, the entire system is completely insecure – there is no secure login – all that is required to make a transaction is the dealer’s name and licence number, information which they have to provide to you if you make a mail-order transaction with them or purchase a prohibited item that requires a permit.
Anyone with a grudge against a dealer, another firearms licence holder or even the system itself, is easily able to enter fake transactions that could have wide-ranging detrimental consequences for those unknowingly targeted.
The system is both insecure and unfit for purpose and should be withdrawn immediately. Any replacement needs to be designed with input from both firearms dealers and firearms licence holders.
Please, if you are a reader who could be impacted by this utter incompetence, write to Nicole McKee as the responsible minister and ask her to act immediately to fix this glaring incompetence.
And in the meantime keep yourself safe by not buying ammunition until the system is properly secure and you can check that your licence is not being misused.
