New Zealand to Create National Gun Owner Registry, Tighten Firearms Laws
NZ Prime Minister Ardern: “Owning a firearm is a privilege not a right.”
New Zealand government introduced legislation on Friday aimed at further tightening the country’s gun laws. The bill, tabled by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, will create a nationwide gun registry and criminalize certain firearm modifications, local newspapers report. If passed into law, it will require gun owners to register their weapons every five years.
The new law is in addition to the series of gun restrictions approved by the parliament following the Christchurch mosque shootings on March 15 that left 51 people dead. The country’s ruling Labour Party and the mainstream media launched a campaign against the country’s supposedly “weak laws on firearms” in the wake of the shootings. The government banned assault weapons such as the AR-15 and rolled out a buyback scheme, collecting more than 18,000 weapons.
“Owning a firearm is a privilege not a right,” Prime Minister Ardern declared. The proposed Arms Legislation Bill will stop guns “from reaching the hands of criminals,” she added.
Her remark was meant to highlight the difference between the gun-rights laws in New Zealand and the United States, Germany’s DW News noted: “Introducing the new bill, Ardern once more made clear the difference in attitudes toward gun ownership between her country and the United States, where the possession of firearms is seen by many as a citizen’s right as it is enshrined in the US Constitution.”
The New Zealand Herald reported the details of the proposed gun law:
[The Arms Legislation Bill] will hold the licence holder’s full name, date of birth and address, along with details of their licence number and any endorsements; details of firearms, restricted weapons and prohibited magazines including identifying markings and information on storage; and record all transfers, sales, purchases, imports and exports of firearms and other items. Private sales will still be permitted. (…)
It also introduces new offences and higher penalties and will see New Zealand accede to the United Nations (UN) Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition (the Firearms Protocol).
“We know that the majority of gun crime is committed by people without a licence, with firearms that have either been stolen or traded illegally,” [Prime Minister Jacinda] Ardern said as she announced the new gun laws in Christchurch today, six months after the mosque shootings in the city.
“Owning a firearm is a privilege not a right; that means we need to do all we can to ensure that only honest, law-abiding citizens are able to obtain firearms licences and use firearms.”
The April gun reforms took action to remove military-style semi-automatics while the new steps are aimed at stopping guns from reaching the hands of criminals, the Prime Minister added.
“Our focus since March 15 has been on ensuring that our communities are as protected as they can be from the potential for another attack like the horrific one we witnessed in Christchurch,” she said.
It is unclear how registering law-abiding gun owners will stop weapons from getting into the hands of the organized crime or how restricting firearms sales to ordinary citizens will prevent gun-related crime.
The bill also includes “provisions to enable health practitioners to notify Police if they have concerns about a licence firearms owner’s health or wellbeing,” Radio New Zealand (RNZ) reported. “If the person presented to the doctor with mental health issues, the doctor would be expected to pass that information on to the police,” the broadcaster said.
The bill goes further than just addressing mental health issues and proposes “a system of warning flags to show if a person might not be fit to hold a firearms licence,” the RNZ added. “Behavior that would raise flags included encouraging or promoting violence; hatred or extremism.”
According to the 2018 Small Arms Survey, New Zealand ranks 17th globally in terms of gun ownership, with an estimated 1.5 million firearms spread across a population of nearly 5 million. New Zealanders own an estimated 26 guns per hundred residents, compared to more than 120 in the United Stated or 19 in Germany, the survey claims.
[Cover image via YouTube]
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The lesson here is how quickly politicians of ant stripe will deny citizens permanently freedom at the slightest pretext. The first inclination of a politician is always to restrain their own constituents.
I figure you actually meant to type “any stripe”. But ‘ant’ as in pissant works too.
I met a far number of Maori while touring New Zealand on my bicycle. Many owned firearms. A few told me they routinely hunted Possum. I seriously doubt the guys I met will willingly hand over their guns.
The Maori tend toward distrust of the gov’t. I can’t imagine why.
“It is unclear how registering law-abiding gun owners will stop weapons from getting into the hands of the organized crime or how restricting firearms sales to ordinary citizens will prevent gun-related crime.”
I respectfully disagree. It is clear. It won’t.
Thank George Mason and the rest of the founding fathers that pushed the Bill of Rights through our first congress. That’s the only thing that keeps our government hyenas from doing to us what is done to people in other more “enlightened” countries.
So far, but the Bill of Rights has been stripped and trampled on for a while now. The left are working hard and in certain cases succeeding in limiting the first Amendment, and have done damage to the second amendment. Most of the Bill of Rights wouldn’t pass if it were up for a vote today. Given that attitude you are rest assured that they will continue their attacks against it and thwart it every chance they can.
I disagree that our Bill of Rights is “the only thing” that keeps gov’t from trampling our rights. One, because it has NOT, as oldgoat points out. And, because the Bill of Rights has no teeth to it – none of the Constitution does – if the people don’t hold the gov’t’s feet to the proverbial fire (or literal, as necessary). And the 2d Amendment is the ultimate tool for that prospect.
NZ Prime Minister Ardern: “Owning a firearm is a privilege not a right.”
Huh. We kicked the monarchist bastages out of our country and flipped that equation vise versa.
“The bill goes further than just addressing mental health issues and proposes “a system of warning flags to show if a person might not be fit to hold a firearms licence,” the RNZ added.”
Sure. Like that will never be abused….
If AOC had a sister……
If she was AOC’s sister she would be the very earnest but slightly dim one.
Just be greatfull she is not your PM as this rather earnest but slightly dim woman is in the process of destroying my country, the only upside is she is embroiled in a scandal entirely of her own making. https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2019/09/why_did_labour_work_so_hard_to_protect_the_staffer.html
As for the guns thank God your founders were smart men.
As for the guns thank God your founders were smart men.
Oh, I do. I do.
“a system of warning flags to show if a person might not be fit to hold a firearms licence,”
One of which will inevitably be any kind of criticism of the government for setting up warning flags….
It’s not like we’ve ever seen anything like that before. Oh, wait…
and that, your honor, was when the civil war started.
NZ is a land of sheep…. four and two-legged.
NZ isn’t Alaska, it’s true; but so far the appeals for gunowners to turn in their weapons, which are now illegal under the new laws, have been met with silence.
New Zealanders haven’t complied with the gun grab.
Since they didn’t have gun registration before passing the new anti-gun laws, the government has no official way to arrest the uncompliant gun owners, and are at the moment stymied in their gun-grabbing. The gun owners aren’t helping them at all. They know it’s a bad idea.
So maybe calling them all “sheep” is uncalled for. If you want to see human sheep, visit California!
But no major outcry from the non-gun owning population to openly support “gun rights”? Those are the sheep I write about… those that give up essential liberties for the promise of an all benign government to take care of them.
As for California… why do you think I am in Alaska and no longer in the People’s Democratic Republic of California.. the urine colored state?
(Ive made this same comment about the US if we ever get to another ban, so we’ll get to watch how this plays out in your country). The problem for owner’s who choose to keep their guns hidden is just that, you can’t go out in public, to a shooting range, or dare talk about them, because you technically are now a criminal. Can’t display them in your house or nothing because your life will be ruined if they are found and maybe threatened with massive jail time and fines if you don’t snitch on someone else. So you folks down under have got to find a politcal solution (and fast) to roll back these new restrictions. You face the same progressive enemy in government and media that we do. You will need to band together, pay for a huge messaging campaign, and get these fools out of office and then get a constitutional amendment in place that says the people hold the ultimate power over the government. Otherwise, what would be the point of keeping your banned guns?
Gun control measures are collective punishments.
The country’s ruling Labour Party and the mainstream media launched a campaign against the country’s supposedly “weak laws on firearms” in the wake of the shootings.
They must have weak laws on homicide, too.
No knee jerk reaction there in NZ… none….
NZ government was also big in wanting the USA to be nuke free years ago.
NZ is of so little consequence that their playing with utopian ideals is limited to their island… an island that ultimately depends on the USA for a future without English as a second language… or third if one puts Cantonese after Mandarin.
I seem to recall that Canada tried to impose a long gun registry just a few years ago, and it failed miserably. NZ has a much smaller population than Canada, maybe 15% of Canada’s ~30 million. Our pols should watch this to see how in goes. We have a population >10 times that of Canada and about 70 times that of NZ, and no one knows how many guns, maybe 400 million. Point is, it will fail spectacularly here. But make no mistake, that is what “universal background checks” is all about. When they get that, they will scream, “we can’t enforce it without a national registry. Fun times ahead.
The Canadian registration was a loser, but it is still there as an entrenched bureaucracy … another third rail. It did not work , it does not work, and never will but to get rid of it brings up fears of mayhem.
Bill Klinton should be the honorary president of the black rifle club, because he alone is responsible for about 10 million members since 1994. Perhaps Beta is trying to usurp that honor.
You mean: Defending your own life is a privilege not a right. The logic must also apply to the victims. Meanwhile criminals will steal for the privilege and everyone else will have to thank the Nanny State for taking so good care of them.
Right vs. Privilege.
Citizen vs. Subject.
Next question.
If the government doesn’t take their guns, they’ll be able to fight back. Can’t have that.
Yes,this way the government can be certain that when the Fifth Column (the Muslims) rise up on command to commit jihad and kill all the infidels, NO ONE will have the means to defend themselves. Good move.
None of the measures these leftists in NZ are proposing will stop the “wrong people” (criminals and terrorists) from getting their hands on whatever they want.
Firearms registries don’t work. Don’t take my word for it. Take the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner’s word for it. When conservatives were trying to scrap it he said they were having a firearms related murder epidemic (by Canadian standards, not Baltimore or Chicago standards I’m sure) in Toronto. The firearms registry neither deterred any of these murders nor helped the police solve them. Why? Because none of the firearms the murderers used were registered, at least not to the perps. They were all either stolen or smuggled into the country.
Gee, imagine that. Somebody who will commit the crime of murder will also commit the crimes of theft/robbery or smuggling.
Another thing criminals will do is hack into the firearms registry database so they know who has firearms, where they live, and exactly what firearms they have. That’s how vulnerable the Canadian registry was. A computer consultant who worked for the contractor who developed and maintained the registry actually demonstrated the security flaws to the company executives but nobody did anything about them. There were actually break ins where the thieves were targeting firearms owners who had registered their guns, and the guns were obviously the objective. Because basically the Canadian government had provided the thieves a map and a shopping list. Now NZ is going to repeat the same mistake. Stupid. Stupid.
New Zealand interdicts a lot of drugs but they know they don’t get nearly all of them. If you can’t stop drug smuggling you won’t stop firearms smuggling. Japan couldn’t do it. In the 1980s the Yakuza would pay a Sailor the equivalent of $100 to bring back just one round of .45 ACP from the Philippines. By the time I was stationed in Japan in the 1990s they wouldn’t have paid you a nickel for just one round. Because by that time the illicit Chinese and Russian black markets had gotten going, and all a Japanese fisherman had to do was head into the Yellow Sear of Japan and meet their counterparts and they could bring back enough Tokarevs or Makarovs with ammo and make a pretty tidy sum for one night’s work.
This, by the way, is how the Irish Republican Army got resupplied with arms and ammunition back during “the Troubles.” The Royal Navy couldn’t stop it, either.
Gun buybacks don’t work. The Australians just had in 2017 their second national amnesty and buyback/confiscation since the Port Arthur mass shooting in 1996 (at the state and territorial level they’ve had 28) and conservatively they still have at least 260,000 illegal firearms in the country. This in a nation of only just over 24 million.
And has everyone forgotten the terrorists in the November 2015 Paris massacre used real milspec, full auto, actual weapons of war? Probably Zastava M70 assault rifles. These are slightly modified versions of the Soviet AKM. They were first generally issued in 1970, they were the most widely issued infantry assault rifle in the Yugoslav army, consequently they were the most widely used during the Balkan war when the former Yugoslavia exploded apart, and they are still issued in the former Yugoslav states as well as kept in reserve storage in the tens of thousands. Plus I’m sure there were a lot that fighters on all sides never surrendered. Since the criminals who control the Muslim dominated banlieues maintain contact with Muslim criminal gangs in the Balkans they exist in the thousands in France as well.
You can’t buy a military style rifle in France or probably in all of Western Europe. But why would you want to when you can so easily pick up the real deal.
There is no other country in the world which holds freedom of conscience (speech, press, religion) as dearly as does the United States;
There is no other country in the world which holds the right to life (and defense thereof) as dearly as does the United States;
There is no other country in the world which holds the right of security of property (against meddling, seizure, co-option) as dearly as does the United States;
There is no other country in the world which holds the security of the individual (arrest, association, compelled activity) as dearly as does the United States.
The list goes on. Some other countries hold part of these rights and freedoms, but there is not a single other country which holds ALL of them – or even most of them – so reverently.
Comparisons of this or that right vs. this or that freedom vs. this or that privilege … such comparisons with the US are meaningless exercises in misdirection. Don’t be fooled by them.
the new steps are aimed at stopping guns from reaching the hands of criminals
No, they’re not. They’re really not.
They’re aimed at control, with the belief that control will allow the prevention of crime. A look at any fully-autocratic society will prove that.
As I have been saying for so many years, the key word in the term “gun control” is not “gun” – it is “control.”
“It is unclear how registering law-abiding gun owners will stop weapons from getting into the hands of the organized crime …” It won’t, but, as NZ found when they decided to ban “AWs”, you can’t enforce it if you don’t know where they are. Registration only does one thing well: Tell authorities where the guns are when they want to confiscate them.