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1. CAMERON LUXTON (ACT) to the Associate Minister of Justice (Firearms): What information, if any, has she seen concerning firearms seizures?
Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice (Firearms)): Data released by Police under the Official Information Act has revealed that only 123 of the 6,571 firearms seized by police between January 2020 to November 2023 could be traced back to permits recorded on the police National Intelligence Application. The fact that the vast majority of seized firearms cannot be matched with a permit is deeply concerning and raises questions about the effectiveness of the firearms registry. These firearms that are illegally held by gangs and criminals will not be captured by the firearms registry, yet law-abiding, licensed firearm owners still have to bear the burden of additional regulation.
SPEAKER: Excuse me. Actually, that was a very long answer, so I’ll ask the Minister in future just to contain them slightly.
Cameron Luxton: Was any other data released that calls into question the effectiveness of the firearms registry?
Hon NICOLE McKEE: Yes. Sixty-five percent of firearms seized by police in 2023 and 62 percent of firearms seized in 2022 had no recorded serial number. This suggests that criminals are either using firearms that are either illegally imported, manufactured, or intentionally stripped of serial numbers, making them untraceable. The firearms registry would be unable to capture these illegally held or manufactured firearms.
Cameron Luxton: What other data has she seen?
Hon NICOLE McKEE: Ninety-four percent of people who were present at or subject to a search by police in which firearms were seized last year did not possess a firearms licence. The gangs and criminals are carrying and using firearms illegally, and they’re circumventing the firearms registry. Licenced firearms owners are not the problem. That’s why the Government is committed to targeting firearms illegally held by the gangs.
Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Will the Minister bring an open mind to her review of the firearms registry, or has she an utterly predetermined approach to the usefulness of it?
Hon NICOLE McKEE: The intention of the review is to be able to look at all data that is presented to those that are reviewing it. That would be an open mind.
Cameron Luxton: Why has this Government committed to reviewing the firearms registry?
Hon NICOLE McKEE: This Government has—in the ACT and National coalition agreement—committed to reviewing the firearms registry, starting before June 2024. The registry needs to be evaluated to determine whether it is improving public safety, in comparison to other options such as targeting illegally manufactured or imported firearms. We also need to determine if any changes to the registry could make it more effective in preventing firearms from falling into the hands of criminals. A comprehensive review will improve insights into the effectiveness of the current registry.
Hansard
The cheek of Duncan Webb, one of the most closed-minded, nasty and vindictive Labour MPs asking if Nicole McKee will have an open mind is rather surreal.
The bottom line is this. The politicians reacted with emotion on false information provided by Police who have an agenda to disarm all New Zealanders and they’ll lie and munge data to suit their agenda.
I’ll give you one example…Police and Labour, along with their unquestioning hand-maidens in the media, ran hard the line that “straw-buyers” were a massive problem, that amazingly a register would solve.
Nevermind that the Police can only point to just two actual cases of straw-buyers amongst the thousands of firearms transactions over the years. No, because the Police said it was a problem the politicians thought that a register might solve that problem because the Police said so.
Not one of them stopped to contemplate that this allegedly vast problem has only two recent examples and that they were caught doing it WITHOUT the register being in place!
Another example is the irrational crackdown, and sting operations the Police are running to nab people transporting guns. A big problem they claim. Yet the only instances of guns being stolen from vehicles are actually guns stolen from Police vehicles.
Nevermind that the Police are breaking the law by pulling over people and asking to inspect how their guns are being carried. They actually have to give you seven days notice of such an inspection, but people stupidly comply with the illegal requests of the Police.
If you are a gun owner, the Police are not your friends.
Same for the Firearm Safety Authority, a Police “business unit” that manages the register. They’ve been touting how successful it has been because they’ve now registered 100,000 guns.
The figures are rubbish. I know of one collector in Auckland who has registered his collection, and his firearms total 6% of the total claimed for Auckland…and mine is another 1%, so between us we have 7% of those registered in Auckland. The Auckland numbers will be just a handful of collectors who have activated a trigger event.
Most run-of-the-mill gun owners are simply refusing to engage unless they have to and are putting it off as long as possible.
As for the register, well, that’s several articles just by themselves…with the massive problems that collectors in particular are having. I’ll give you one example…my Vickers gun could only be added to the register using the Police system drop-down menu items that described it as having a box magazine. The only box involved in a Vickers is either the one it is transported in or carries the belts it actually uses. But the register is right, no argument can be entered into…so the accuracy of the register is already suspect.
Not to mention collectors who call to register firearms where the dolt on the end of the phone picks the wrong gun and attaches that to the licence holder, who subsequently gets an officious phone call about an illegal firearm registered against their name, which they insist is a possible crime. It doesn’t matter to these fools that it was their own staff member who made the mistake.
Facts, not feels, will eventually defeat this register, as it has in every other jurisdiction in the world. No gun register has ever been successful, and the morons at the Firearm Safety Authority just won’t listen, so they need to be made to listen by people like Nicole McKee.
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. Cam blogs regularly on the BFD - where this article was sourced.
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