Government urged to start work on firearms register

WELLINGTON: The Police Association wants the Government to hurry up establishing its firearms register in order to stem the flow of guns to criminal groups.

A 24yearold man was arrested on Tuesday night in connection with shooting at a police officer that morning in the Whangarei suburb of Otangarei.

It is the second shooting at a Northland officer in a month, and less than six months after Constable Matthew Hunt was killed in west Auckland.

Legislation passed in June paves the way for a gun register, but Police Minister Poto Williams said while work was under way on ‘‘firearms licensing and administration’’, there was no fixed date for any decision, let alone implementation.

Without a registry, the union for police officers said guns were flowing into gang hands without a trace.

‘‘If we track what’s happened overseas when gun registers came into place, the number of firearms being stolen dropped dramatically. We know most criminals get their firearms by stealing them from lawabiding firearms owners, so let’s get that up and running as soon as possible,’’ Police Association president Chris Cahill said.

Across the country, officers had either had a gun drawn or shot at them on average once a month in the last two years, he said.

To reduce the existing pool of black market guns, police also needed to place a greater focus on seizing them and following up on all gunrelated information they received.

More longterm, Mr Cahill wanted more work to stop young people from thinking that joining a gang was their best or only option.

It would be ‘‘to address why young people are joining gangs in the first place’’.

‘‘Especially in provincial New Zealand, there’s not the opportunities for other careers, so there needs to be a real effort to give them an alternative.’’

Far North Mayor John Carter agreed social issues played a critical role in the conditions that underpinned recent police shootings.

‘‘Yeah absolutely, but not just in Northland — across the country. We need to change our focus on welfare, we need to bring these people back into our community. We’re not doing that enough . . . it’s an example of the failure of our welfare system not working for our communities,’’ Mr Carter said.

Born and bred near the scene of Tuesday’s shooting in Otangarei, Martin Kaipo has seen the place change over the decades.

An exgang member himself, he now runs a local community organisation. He said Otangarei was beset by low employment, and riddled with gangs and drugs.

‘‘Methamphetamine is probably the biggest influence around. Unemployment would be another factor. We’re low socioeconomic communities. There’s high dependency on unemployment benefits.’’

Mr Kaipo said a lot of these young men were looking for leaders — but with a lot of elders no longer around, criminal influences were stepping in.

The new MP for Whangarei, Labour’s Emily Henderson, said the Government was well aware of the concerns around firearms.

‘‘I think the entire Labour Government shares that concern and we’ve demonstrated that fairly clearly in the last little

while . . . I don’t think I have to push this government to worry about gun control.’’

Ms Williams said her job was to ensure legal firearms were not repurposed in criminal settings.

‘‘As Minister of Police, I will continue the work begun in the last term of Parliament which had one overriding objective — to stop firearms falling into the wrong hands,’’ Ms Williams said.

That work related to the system of firearms licensing and administration, and a response to the public discussion document on Firearms Prohibition Orders.

‘‘At this stage, there is no fixed time frame for when those decisions are likely to be made. The delayed election has pushed out previous timeframes.’’ — RNZ