Is the gun buyback worth the money?
After the mosque shootings, I was all for stripping the country of any firearms that could result in a massacre similar to the one in Christchurch on March 15.
Any action seemed like good action. Bugger the cost.
Now I’m not so sure. Although I have no problem with tighter restrictions on semi-automatics, I have some sympathy with owners of the now-prohibited firearms.
The vast majority are responsible, law-abiding citizens who contribute to society and have done nothing to warrant draconian measures designed to prevent them owning particular firearms.
They bought their guns legally and believed the law would uphold their responsible ownership.
After the shootings, gun enthusiasts and hobbyists were equated with redneck attitudes and nasty, racist opinions.
If you owned a semi-automatic rifle like the one used by the gunman, you were seen to be potentially or already sympathetic to his malign cause.
That feeling was unfair and unfortunate and generated an
acrimony unconducive to cooperation.
Then I went to the first buyback event in the country, held at the Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch on a perfect Saturday morning, July 13.
I saw a procession of good blokes wanting to do the right thing and obey the law.
Some, of course, just saw it as a good way to raise some cash on the firearm they hardly used, but most were there because the rules were the rules.
What was also clear from that first buyback day was that Christchurch was really not much safer after it than before.
The same process has, at the time of writing, occurred around the country at 45 venues, and many more are to come. The scenes of good, law-abiding citizens surrendering their weapons and making very little difference to the safety of the community will be repeated.
Certainly the current scheme is taking many guns out of circulation and the risk of firearms falling into criminal hands through burglaries and thefts has no doubt been reduced.
Nearly 700 firearms were reported stolen from licensed gun owners last year, according to data released to Newshub.
Of that total, 436 were rifles and 186 were shotguns but only three were military-style semi-automatic (MSSA) rifles like some of those used in the mosque shootings.
Police seizures of firearms during the same year were more disturbing. They recovered 1598, of which 40 were MSSA-type firearms. Hardly any had been reported stolen.
This raises the question of whether the money the Government is prepared to spend on the buyback and other gun reforms would be better spent on making sure gun owners keep their firearms secure.
Another profitable avenue might be for more resources to go into rooting out guns held illegally and being sold on the black market. Going by the seizures, which are the tip of the iceberg, many of those firearms are still in circulation.
It might be thought that seizing
more guns will reduce homicides by firearms.
A mammoth Stuff project completed this year revealed that over the past 15 years, including the mosque shootings, there were 105 gun-related homicides, killing 167 people.
At least two-thirds of those homicides involved either a .22 rifle or shotgun. Very few of the perpetrators were licensed and semi-automatic firearms rarely figured.
The point is that plenty of measures could be taken to make the community safer without requiring a labour-intensive and expensive buyback programme, expected to cost the Government about $150 million. Others are predicting it will cost much more.
For many this is a small price to pay for a safer society. And if they are right, who would argue?
But what if the result of the new gun laws is an insignificant gain in safety? Maybe the money could have been better spent.
Other worthy destinations for the money are easy to find. The $150m could buy a lot of drug treatment programmes or social houses or more teachers for poor areas. Any such social spending should help create a safer society by concentrating on prevention rather than cure.
Part of the trick in achieving a less lethal society is identifying individuals who present a risk and doing something about them.
This goes back to the notion that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. We need to stop the people who kill people from getting hold of guns or any other weapons in the first place.
People like the mosque shooter will find a way to kill if they are determined enough but spending a chunk of the $150m on better intelligence-gathering and other monitoring might well reap better results than buying guns back from law-abiding citizens.
It’s a bit late for regrets at this stage of the gun reform process and too late to go back.
Maybe it will work out but if it doesn’t, the present scheme will be seen as a knee-jerk reaction that has alienated far more people than was needed and not made society much safer.