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Saturday, June 24, 2023

Tim Dower: Is owning a gun a right or a privilege?


Hard to believe it's taken so long to get this new firearms register up and running.

Then again - it's a government IT project and we all know there's a well-established track record of these things going way past deadline and of course way over budget.

On top of that, it's likely to be clunky, overly complicated and not very well thought out so don't be at all surprised if it needs a multi-million dollar overhaul within the first couple of years.

And don't be surprised either if it has no impact on the rampant crime wave we're enduring.

Police themselves say there's been a marked increase of guns being used for criminal activity.

That's in spite of the fortune we spent on gun buybacks, after the Christchurch mosque attacks.

And they say a lot of the weapons they're seizing these days are being traced back to legal buyers.

Some get stolen in burglaries, but some have also been on-sold to people who simply shouldn't have them.

So, the logic for collecting all this information on legally licensed gun owners and the weapons they're holding is that some of these weapons end up in the wrong hands.

The Council of Licensed Firearm Owners doesn't like it; they say legitimate owners are being singled out for police failures.

I see their point, but maybe because licensed owners are mostly legitimate owners with legitimate intent - maybe they've lost sight of the potential carnage a gun can be used to inflict.

So, while those owners say they're being scapegoated, do they not have a major part to play in making sure these weapons don't get into the wrong hands?

Is owning a gun a right or a privilege? Like driving, I'd say it's a privilege.

A privilege some people shouldn't have.

So, on the face of it, keeping good records of what weapons we have, who has them, and where they are, has to make sense.

All we can hope is that the people who've built it haven't ballsed it up and that police use the information they get from it to come down hard on people who shouldn't have guns.

Tim Dower is a New Zealand journalist who works for Newstalk ZB as a newsreader and substitutes talkback announcer. This article was first published HERE

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a right. Because of a clever psy-op, law abiding Kiwis and Aussies were tricked out of this right and are regretting their stupidity and misplaced trust in their 'benevolent' governments ever since.
You can guarantee that any 'fix' these clowns are working on will be a massive cluster, but don't worry, taxpayer to the rescue.

Anonymous said...

I find the article an interesting read.

I am of an age, that recalls in early years that one could purchase a firearm, the act of gaining a license was not part of the "deal". I am also aware in those day, that firearms were [1]- on sold, without recourse to matters Legal, or [2] - stolen, by whom/who no knew, but I know the Police of the day recovered many a firearm, that could not be traced back to original owner.

That changed, with Police given over riding power to manage the Gun Register and over the years we have been "led to believe", that mistakes were made.

I do not think the Police are totally to blame, as Kiwi's can be complacent when it comes to the Law (DUI, is a good example), so it would be a "sure thing", that (again)- "that firearms were [1]- on sold, without recourse to matters Legal, or [2] - stolen, by whom/who no knew".

Sadly the "knee jerk reaction by Ardern & Co" following the Mosque attack was unprecedented. Why, we have a "track record" of people using firearms to shoot others, [1]- Aramoana, Dunedin, [2] - National Park village, then we have had the incidents of [3] - intentional shooting by one against another,
[4] -previous gang altercation where firearms were used [5] - against Police Officers, with the deaths of two, of recent times.

In these instances, no Law Abiding Firearm Owner was targeted, by Govt & or Police to render Laws to reduce gun ownership and/or the reduction of a and/or specific firearm.

So we now have a expensive $$$$ Firearms Register (yet again) being "rolled out".

Owning a firearm, for what ever purpose is and has always been a "privilege", and those up to the Mosque shootings would have had to comply with then Fire Arms Laws, that included safe storage, because failure to do so, would have had a reaction from Police, with the potential "of immediate threat" to lose both License & Gun.

If any one reading this thinks that Kiwi's are hard done by, in relation to firearms, you need to research what has and still occurs, with firearm incidents in Canada - it paints a chilling picture and yet they have similar Laws in regards to firearms, purchasing, ownership and on sales, with the legal gun owner being "more strident" in protecting their firearms realm.