Challenge to ammunition ban

The Council of Licensed Firearms Owners has gone to court to challenge the thinking behind a ban on certain military types of ammunition after the Christchurch mosques attack.

The council believes the ban will not make the country any safer.

It has asked a judge at the High Court in Wellington yesterday to review whether Police Minister Stuart Nash took into account incorrect information when making his recommendation that led to the banning order.

It also wanted the court to look at whether the owners should be compensated for losing ammunition that went on the banned list.

But the Crown has defended Nash’s recommendation.

Soldiers are armed differently to civilians and Nash made a perfectly rational policy decision, Crown lawyer Austin Powell said.

There is an obvious concern about ammunition that could penetrate body armour, such as police use, he said. His submissions continue today.

The change, which came into force on June 21, 2019, banned ten types of ammunition including tracer, armour piercing, and explosive.

The council’s lawyer, Jack Hodder, QC, told Justice Francis Cooke that the challenge was directed to the first two on the list, tracer and enhanced penetration ammunition.

The other eight were likely to be used for non-orthodox and extraordinary purposes, except in the military, he said.

But the first two were readily used by civilian firearm owners including for ‘‘plinking’’ (target shooting) and cheap brass from the casings. The parts could also be

Austin Powell Crown lawyer

used to convert to more useable forms of ammunition.

Hodder said there was not a strong chain of reasoning that explained why those types of ammunition were singled out.

It seemed Nash asked whether these types of ammunition were predominantly for military purposes, when he should have been asking how their prohibition would enhance public safety, Hodder said.

The banned ammunition should have been handed in by the end of September.

There was little evidence of how many people owned it or how much there was.

In the past some of it may have come from the New Zealand Defence Force but the defence force no longer supplied it, the court was told.

There is an obvious concern about ammunition that could penetrate body armour.