this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Licensed firearms owner here. I have an opinion on this but I don't claim to represent all other license holders.
There 240,000 or so licensed firearms owners in NZ, so there are a lot of different opinions amongst that population. And, contrary to how it often seems to be represented in media, we are not an organisation or lobby group. It's just simply a population of people who for one reason or another have a use for firearms in their work or sport.
It's really unfortunate that the American style association between shooting sports and right-wing "freedum" rednecks has been imported here - and I'm 100% certain that it has been deliberately exaggerated to make shooters easier to discredit. A lot of us have quite disparate political beliefs - shock horror, I know more than one person who hunts and also votes Green...
COLFO are doing their best to represent the concerns of licensed firearms owners, but as I say, we are a disparate group and not actually that easily represented. There are common themes, but it's not like we are some kind of organised lobby group. The themes I have seen are:
Licensed shooters are generally a responsible, law-abiding group - this much is guaranteed by the licensing process. We will probably just suck up this additional inconvenience and cost just like we have had to with all the other ones, because we have no choice and the public and media are not on our side.
But I think it's unreasonable for you to expect us to be happy about it.
How do people in the various gun using communities see vehicle registration as a comparison, which is another situation where we both licence the operators and require registration of what they operate? Is it also useless for the same reasons, or is it different in some way?
As I said previously, I can't claim to speak for all licence holders. But it's an interesting comparison.
Consider what the purpose of vehicle registration is. Does vehicle registration stop vehicle theft? Or stop bad guys from driving around, even if they don't have a licence? Vehicle registration laws are doing really well against the dirt bike gangs at the moment aren't they?
So, as far as I can see, the main purposes of vehicle registration are taxation and monitoring. Taxation through the regular licensing fee, and monitoring through the registration number.
Ok, good. So the monitoring reduces vehicle crime right? Well, it gives the authorities a few things:
All good so far.
But, firearms are not vehicles. They are used in quite a different context, and I don't think the comparison holds up well.
So really, what we are left with is more process, more taxation to pay for a service we don't feel that we benefit from, and a register of information who's main purpose for existing appears to be enabling Police to audit licensed owners looking for reasons to punish us, or to ban and confiscate our sports equipment, some of which is highly treasured.
Imagine if vehicles weren't currently registered and the government passed a law to introduce vehicle registration. Imagine how the majority of drivers would feel about being made to pay for a system that offered them few benefits and many perceived downsides.
Now imagine that the excuse that was used to introduce that law was that someone had used a vehicle to cause a lot of harm, but that person had been given a licence without being properly qualified under the existing laws. And supporters of the change dismissed anyone who disagreed with them as a "car nut" and "American car culture".
If you magine how you, as a safe and legal driver would feel about that situation, you might feel a little empathy for the shooting sports community.
Thanks for the insight. Just on this:
Where do illegally use firearms come from presently, though? My impression was that it's already really hard to smuggle them through customs. Although they can be stolen it's a hell of a lot easier to get them legally, and for a licensed owner simply to sell them (and no clear way to trace out back to that person) without caring who gets them or how they're used. Black market trading would continue for as long as there are still lots of illegal guns out there, but that won't continue forever if there aren't sufficient sources for new stock. Also once someone's found to have illegally sold weapons registered to them, it's unlikely they'd keep their licence for future legal purchases.
Are legal owners specifically worried that increased scarcity of guns in criminal groups, once they can't get them through more legit sources like a dodgy licensed owner, means there will be orders of magnitude stronger incentives for gun-wanting criminals to track down and steal their guns?
I don't claim to know the answer to that for sure, given that I don't deal in illegal firearms:) But I have my suspicions.
I'm sure that some have come from licensed people doing deals with criminals for whatever reason. In 240,000 licensed people I'm sure there are a few dodgy ones, it would be naive to pretend otherwise. But organised crime in NZ mostly means gangs. We're talking about people who seem to be able to import and distribute vast quantities of meth; last time I checked, Customs weren't very fond of that either but they seem to get it through. We're a small country with a large coastline, and there are a lot of boats coming and going.
It seems to me that the firearms that are commonly available in NZ are both expensive, and not really what your average gangster is probably looking for, especially now that semi-automatic actions are illegal. I would imagine that if you're already in the underground importing business, getting a few handguns or military-pattern rifles tucked in with a shipment probably isn't too hard.
No, I don't think so. I mean, I'm sure some people think that, and there is some concern about poor data security leading to the whole database ending up in the wrong hands and becoming a "shopping list" for criminal gangs. But I don't think that's the majority of the reason for most people.
(Edit: formatting)
Maybe but that's something I think I'd be keen to seek more info on.
My impression is that drug imports are cost effective because you can typically sell a tiny volume for a vast amount of money, making up for the risks. The equivalent volume in guns would perhaps be possible to smuggle in, but also make them extremely expensive compared with alternative non-smuggling options. Especially if you risk Police confiscating all guns found in or around your possession as soon as you're caught using one of them, and you can't just get your mate with the licence to go out and buy you replacements. If that were the case, at least, there would be very few internationally smuggled guns circulating.
(Edit: typo)
I get where you're coming from. I live rurally, and while I don't have a gun myself, every one of my neighbours do. They're good people, and I'm not interested in waging a war on guns or anything. They're a necessary tool out here, for a bunch of reasons.
And I don't expect you guys will be happy about it. It sounds like a pain in the arse.
But I'll go back to the example of cars that the spokesman brought up. I'm not happy that I have to register my car. It's expensive and a pain in the arse. The vast majority of us registered drivers are good people, who don't at all represent the minority that endanger or hurt others. Besides, an awful lot of the worst behaviour is by people who've stolen the car or don't have a licence or registration.
But my car is something that can easily hurt or kill someone if I'm even slightly careless with it. I know I won't be, but I know others will be. And there will be many drivers, licensed or not, who deliberately commit crimes with cars. So we need some way to have accountability where we can, and the licence and registration system greatly improves that. The stolen cars, etc. make it an imperfect system that often fails to catch criminals, but it's a lot better than nothing. So it's a price I'm willing to pay to operate a lethal machine.
If you change cars to guns, it has the exact same logic. But guns are far more commonly used to commit very serious crimes than cars, despite being far less prevalent. So the incentive to have a system to track ownership is far greater.
If there weren't monsters like the mosque shooter - who was a registered gun owner - or criminals, we wouldn't need shit like this. But there are, so we do. There are so many rules in society that only exist because a small minority of people are arseholes. Car registration and gun registration are just those kinds of things. Especially because they can kill very easily. That's why I support the registration of both.
Edit to everyone else reading this thread: I'd love it if people didn't downvote comments just because you disagree with them. @[email protected]'s comment, for example, is a reasonable and thoughful response. I think it's good to hear the other side and we should support them sharing their views here.
I think I've responded to a lot of your points in the reply I posted to the other commenter, and I don't want to just spam the thread with my opinion over and over... But I did want to say thanks for creythe thread in the first place, and thanks for being chill about the topic. It's pretty hard to have a reasonable discussion about this kind of thing in a lot of places without lots of unnecessary name calling, so I appreciate your approach here :)