Andrew Dickens: New Zealand has become muddled over guns

Andrew Dickens Afternoons

We seem to have got into a bit of a muddle over guns and it seems to be getting worse.
After the March terror attacks using the infamous AR 15, a semi-automatic military style weapon, the nation has reacted in all sorts of ways and I’m not sure any of them really work.
Last week we entered the final days of the government’s buyback scheme. With six weeks left we have so far collected 32,000 guns from 19,000 people which has cost us $62 million.
If people don’t hand in the other prohibited firearms and parts by 20 December they will get no money and will face up to five years in prison and the loss of their firearms licence.
Now 32,000 guns off the street is better than nothing but let’s compare that with Australia’s buyback programme in 1996 where over 660,000 firearms were retrieved from gun owners with a cost estimated at half a billion dollars.
Australia has five times the population so taking that into account New Zealand will be lucky to end out with a third of the guns.
Why is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the government didn’t structure it well enough because they were in a hurry. There’s also considerable pushback from the law abiding gun owning community who don’t like that their preference for guns will automatically criminalise them after December 20.
Whatever. For all those who don’t like guns, which is the majority, the result has to be seen as less than impressive.
Then we have the ridiculous situation surrounding the antique gun fanciers of Taranaki who have been told that they can’t advertise their upcoming exhibition show in their local paper because there’s a ban on all advertising surrounding guns. Stuff put the nationwide ban on all mastheads back in March.
Now this is even though every gun in the forthcoming gun show is legal. Imagine if Stuff decided to have a nationwide blanket ban on other legal activities. Such as banning any advertising from someone like say, Destiny Church. Wouldn’t there be an enormous freedom of speech fracas around that? It makes the Lauren Southern dust-up on free speech look like chicken feed.
And while all this anti-gun stuff is flying around we have police starting to call for the permanent arming of police officers after figures that said 179 officers have had guns aimed at them in the past 6 months.
So where are we New Zealand? Anti gun or pro gun? If you own them you know what side you’re on. If you don’t you seem torn.

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