Gun buy-back

The Government has banned semiautomatic rifles for private use, and gunowners will now experience an Australian-style gun buyback scheme.

The move had been expected for several days, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised fair compensation for gunowners.

Economist Bryce Wilkinson, from the New Zealand Initiative, says the convention is for the government to compensate people when it requires them to surrender property.

Bill O’Leary, from the Deerstalkers Association, believes paying anything less than the normal market price for weapons surrendered would be unfair.

‘‘Firearms are property, and the people who hold them bought them in good faith,’’ he says. ‘‘People should be compensated financially.’’

Australian ban

Banning the ownership of rapid-fire semi-automatic rifles, except for a limited number of uses, mirrors the move made by Australia in 1996.

Australia didn’t completely ban semiautomatic rifles and shotguns following the Port Arthur massacre of 35 people in 1996 but it moved quickly to limit their ownership to people who needed them for work.

At the same time, Australia tightened up gun licence background checks, required ‘‘genuine reasons’’ for having a licence, set high standards for gun storage, ended the sale of any gun except by a licensed dealer, and required people get a permit for each gun they wanted to buy.

Its national gun buy-back in 1997 was funded through a Medicare levy.

This paid gun-owners for the weapons they had to hand in, with the compensation also seen as necessary to encourage them to comply with the new laws.

Gun-owners received just over A$300 million (NZ$309m), according to the Australian auditor-general, though the taxpayer had to also foot the costly bill for administering the scheme, and paying some compensation to gun business owners.

Buy-back mistakes

While it was effective, resulting in more than 640,000 firearms being surrendered, Australia’s buyback wasn’t the most efficient process, with Australian taxpayers paying A$7.5m for guns and gun-parts not included in the law governing the buy-back.

That included the taxpayer buying completely legal guns, and antique firearms. Taxpayers even ended up paying for weapons that were already illegal, including aircraft cannons, mortars, grenade launchers, and anti-tank weapons.

Compensation varied from state to state at times for the same kinds of weapons, the Australian auditorgeneral found.

In 2003, Australia organised a second gun buyback – this time for