In the ongoing aftermath of New Zealand’s ban on semi-auto weapons (one vote shy of unanimously adopted) rolled out after the Christchurch massacre the police are having issues. The sweeping gun control scheme that added a ban and buyback, on top of the licensing that was previously the keel of the nation’s gun laws, has not been the resounding success the politicos hoped. The knee jerk reaction of moving hundreds of thousands of firearms from the LEGAL pile into the ILLEGAL one has become a logistical strain.
“So far, they have struggled to store 11.” – David Seymour
The New Zealand gun owners who owned legally the now illegal weapons have until September to turn them in. The promise of some form of as yet unknown compensation is still there. The “buyback scheme” is still vaporware however, and the estimated cost has ballooned from the early $80-100 million to $300 million. That number could still fall drastically short of the actual value of the mandatorily forfeited property.
But, to David Seymour’s quote above.
Palmerston North Police were left embarrassed after someone went into their main police station and stole firearms on Anzac Day. The New Zealand parliament were in such a mad dash to “do something” that no one bothered to check if they had the means. A man, Alan James Harris, strolled in and helped himself to the pile of illicit firepower and 11 of those firearms are still unaccounted for.
Is the Palmerston station to be held accountable? Or is it the Government’s failure for not asking the nation’s law enforcement professionals if they could handle the sudden influx of firearms? What is the net effect going to be on gun crime, mass killings, and violent crime?
If their neighbors to the west, Australia, are any indication… unknown. While there has been no mass shooting since they enacted their ban in the 90’s, violent crime overall has been a mixed bag. Homicides trended slightly down. Assault was more sharply up. Sexual assault was steady. Robbery, both armed and unarmed has been up and down.
The fact that no one has committed an attack in Australia since the ban is a good thing, but attributing the ban as the preventive measure is political grandstanding. The fact is that New Zealand saw that massacre too, and at the time didn’t enact the gun ban Australia did, they didn’t have any massacres either. By the standards applied New Zealand should have had a few since they didn’t enact a ban, correct? But they didn’t, until a motivated lunatic took it into his head to change that.
The only thing ultimately protecting Australia, New Zealand, the U.S.A. or any nation, is a lack of motivated lunatics and a police force finding the few that pop their heads up.
I want a continued lack of motivated lunatics, because gun control won’t stop them.
Meanwhile in Venezuela… there is a population wishing it was armed right now.
