Cam Slater: Proof of Police Gaslighting on Guns

For years the public and the firearms community have been gaslit by Police and their lickspittles in the media over gun crime. The gaslighting ramped up after the Christchurch massacre. We’ve all been told that the Police need to crack down on licensed firearms owners because they tell us they have proof that guns are getting to criminals via legitimate and licensed firearms owners. No proof is ever proffered, only hearsay anecdotes designed to prove the case.

But now someone has made a study of gun crime for his PhD thesis. It is revealing and alarming at the same time. It shows categorically that Police, politicians and media have been gaslighting us all.

A long-time recreational shooter with an academic interest in firearms law thinks a newly-launched weapon registry is a waste of money

A study has found there could be four times the number of illegal firearms circulating than police estimate.

Their proliferation, however, and that of legally-held firearms, appears in the study to have little to do with the incidence of violent crime.

The work, undertaken by a University of Otago assistant research fellow with more than 40 years’ experience studying firearm use, is the first in the country to explore regional differences.

These include firearm ownership, rates of offending and firearm use over three decades.

Chaz Forsyth, who is also a police volunteer for inspecting small-arms ranges, says firearms featured in less than 1.5 percent of violent crime and under 0.2 percent of deaths.

His research, published in January as a PhD thesis, found most violent offenders nationwide use either cutlery or blunt instruments such as helmets, boots and fists.

Regionally-identified levels of socioeconomic deprivation has a far greater correlation with the incidence of violent crime than the availability of firearms.

Newsroom

Let us be very clear here: we’ve been lied to, in order to justify the biggest confiscation of arms in New Zealand’s history and to justify hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted on the gun register. The Police claims about what the register will achieve are literally shot to pieces by this research.

With the exception of most of the Canterbury region, the South Island has the highest percentage of licensed gun owners per capita, at over 10 percent. It also has the lowest percentages of robberies anywhere in the country.

Forsyth believes the police’s new firearms registry, in which licensed owners are required to record all of their arms, won’t stop illicit guns falling into the wrong hands.

In fact, he says, it could have the opposite effect.

“My belief is with major changes in firearm laws, the number of firearms becoming illicit tends to increase sharply, for whatever reason – apathy, malice towards the new law or whatever.”

His thesis evaluated changes in contemporary attitudes and beliefs about firearms and firearm users across the country.

It focuses on urban and rural contrasts, the roles played by social and demographic considerations and changing societal perceptions.

It concludes unlicensed urban dwellers have a low understanding of firearms laws and uses in New Zealand and are influenced by negative media reports regarding firearm-related crime.

Negative perceptions about firearms tend to fade quickly, however, in the weeks following a reported incident.

Newsroom

In other words, most people know stuff all about guns, and what they do know comes from the media and Police and is almost entirely wrong.

Worse still, there appears to be zero correlation between gun ownership in the community and violent crime.

We’ve been lied to, comprehensively and for a very long time.

He says according to the administrative data, there are about 250,000 licensed owners and users of firearms in New Zealand, mainly recreational hunters.

The number does not include non-licensed possessors of firearms.

“These data suggest there are between 1.2 and 1.6 million firearms in New Zealand with perhaps up to 200,000 more firearms held illicitly.”

A four-year-old police estimate put the number of illicit firearms in New Zealand at roughly 48,000.

The figure has not been updated since and a police spokesperson told Newsroom they had no way of estimating how many are in circulation.

Newsroom

And the new register still won’t help with that, because even Blind Freddy knows that criminals won’t be registering their illicit firearms. Strangely the Police think combatting gun crime is like breath-testing teetotallers to catch drunk drivers.

Forsyth disputes the claim that adding full firearm registration will better equip authorities to make New Zealand safer.

“The problem is only the licensed people will be inclined to register their firearms, and those not so inclined have already indicated their unwillingness to comply with laws.

“So it is hardly reasonable to expect their compliance in this regard either.”

He doesn’t believe there is a link between full firearm registration and downwards trends in criminal violence.

“Heaping new laws upon old, when the existing laws were neither properly operated nor enforced, seems like failure.

“Creating a new bureaucracy costing $1 million a week seems expensive when no information has been provided to show its cost-effectiveness, a normal practice before the spending of public money on things like roading improvements and public health is another surprise.”

He accepts it is near impossible to know precisely how many illegal firearms are in circulation as their owners kept a low profile and did not engage in research projects.

Newsroom

The truth bombs keep just right on on dropping. Licensed firearms owners have every right to feel very aggrieved with how we’ve all been lied to.

We have had a great licencing regime in New Zealand, and Justice Thorp knew that a gun register would not work and never had worked in the past. But the Police knew best, failing to learn expensive lessons from around the world, like Canada’s failed registry. They stupidly believe that they will deliver a world first. Just like socialism that has failed, it is simply because they didn’t do it right anywhere else.

The rest of the article is more gaslighting by Police spokespersons, yet again claiming something they fail to prove, saying:

“Intelligence shows diversion of legal firearms to criminals by licence holders is occurring.

“We know it is one way in which criminals are accessing firearms. The registry will give us a much better picture of suspicious-looking transactions – for example, if a licence holder purchases a series of firearms from many different gun shops in a short period of time.”

Newsroom

Not a skerrick of evidence is supplied to prove this now demonstrably false narrative. If they presented that argument in a court of law, a sensible judge would dismiss it outright.

The case for all the recent gun laws is now a busted flush. Will the politicians take this onboard and end the money-wasting and empire-building by the Police?

Unlikely, I know, but chance’d be a fine thing.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE