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Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand Inc.
‘Deeply troubling’: Our shocking gun statistics as gang warfare and firearms violence erupt
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/gang-warfare-behind-gun-violence-thats-claimed-nearly-100-lives-in-just-four-years
Ignoring the inflammatory headline in the above article, and the Christchurch terrorist attack, the figures quoted equate to 10 firearm homicides per year. Which is not so far different from the average of 7 per year in the previous 9 years. However, Sporting Shooters NZ acknowledge that the increase in gun homicides may be attributed to the alacrity with which gang members brandish their ILLEGAL FIREARMS and pull the trigger.
The government buyback of lawfully owned firearms has clearly failed to make New Zealand safer, as will the planned gun register, because it similarly targets the wrong people. Criminals will still gain access to guns.
As Sporting Shooters Media Director Rob Cope -Williams says “You can’t make a country safer by passing laws that ignore the criminals in our society. Sadly our government does not understand this.”
As reported on TV 1 News on 2 May, laws passed in the 1990s aimed at disrupting gangs have been largely ignored by police without a single arrest made in one case.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/05/02/nzs-laws-to-combat-gangs-have-almost-no-impact-study/.
Further proof that laws made in haste, like the recent firearm laws do not achieve their objective.
SSANZ applauds the work undertaken by New Zealand Police over the past year in seizing firearms from gang members and arresting those responsible. We now need the government and justice system to get tough on these criminals, who put ordinary Kiwi lives at risk.
Perhaps we should follow Australia’s lead and set up a detention centre on an offshore Island for these monsters.
