Many law-abiding gun owners were not too worried about phase one of the government’s law changes to ban semi-automatics. Even though they were knee jerk and ill-thought-out, with only token consultation with the licenced gun community, many thought that it was a one-off. The government had virtue signalled to the world that it was taking action in response to a terror attack and that would be that. Until this point, the level of trust and cooperation between our police and licenced gun owners was the envy of the world, but that is rapidly changing as phase two comes into effect.
Now the government and the police are wanting to create a national gun register.
Police HQ want the register despite having starved and mis-managed the arms registry we’ve had for 30 years for pistols and MSSAs. They let it become notoriously unreliable despite having all the powers they needed to ensure it functioned pretty much as the registry they now want to make universal.
But I don’t blame them for that dereliction. The existing registry was just not useful enough to justify much expense. Registry uselessness was most dramatically shown in Canada’s abandonment of their registry after spending more than C$1bn on it.
The logic of uselessness is not complicated (from Canadian experience):
1. What is its purpose? – so Police can know whether a person or premises have dangerous firearms when they must approach them
2. How does it work? – they look up the name or address on the register
3. Will they do that? – sometimes, if they have time to prepare
4. Will they rely on what they find? – No, because of:
1. The number of firearms not on the register
2. No way to be confident that firearms are in the recorded location
3. The imprudence of relying on a person or place as not having firearms.
5. If operational police in Canada came to see it as useless, what will be different here?
A New Zealand national register will have the exact same issues. No cop worth his or her salt will be able to rely on it as no gun register, no matter how complete, can tell them if a premises has an unregistered firearm.
There is no way to find out where all the firearms in New Zealand are. Phase two has made the situation even worse. It has almost certainly driven thousands of firearms underground, as previously law-abiding gun owners resist what is looking by the day, to be the start of an agenda to disarm the population.
The proposed register then is going to be almost useless. It is going to be insanely expensive and it is going to worsen the relationship between the police and the gun-owning community when mutual respect and trust used to be the norm. It will also divert police resources from productive areas such as crime-fighting for no gain at all. It has already provided the impetus for a fledgeling gun lobby and we can now expect American style partisan campaigns as gun owners start to flex their political muscle.
[…] Above all, the phase 2 Bill is political grandstanding. It takes deliberately offensive steps against rural and shooting sports people (and indirectly our military) to posture before the world commentariat. Almost nothing in the phase 2 Bill combats terrorist threats. It is cynical opportunism, designed to serve as a political peg for partisan speeches – to blame innocent firearms users for the murderer’s evil.
The murderer’s suppressed writing says he chose his relatively inefficient mode of murder (firearms instead of bombs) precisely to stir up the politically motivated suppression of firearms users that has resulted. His theory was the governments would eventually provoke revolt from ordinary people.
Revolt will not happen. Instead, decent people who are routinely patronized, bullied or mistrusted will just cease to cooperate with Police (and sadly they’ll also trust each other less).
stephenfranks.co.nz/
