Gun control reforms to launch within weeks

There will be a greater chance of catching a would-be terrorist as sweeping arms control changes take effect in coming months, Police Minister Chris Hipkins says.

A series of fundamental changes to arms control – recommended by the Royal Commission into the Christchurch mosques terror attack – will be in place before the end of the year, with a new police firearms unit, the first stage of a firearms registry system opening, and gun clubs and ranges facing new regulations.

The changes have been contentious among firearms users. But Hipkins said in an interview the coming ‘‘milestones’’ were being better received by the gun clubs, and would tighten a system the royal commission said was ‘‘lax, open to easy exploitation and was gamed’’ by the Christchurch mosque terrorist. ‘‘There is no such thing as a 100% foolproof process,’’ Hipkins said.

‘‘But if you look at the cumulative effect of the changes, more thorough vetting around the licence renewals, changes to clubs and ranges, bearing in mind that the individual was involved in a shooting club and there were some potential red flags in there that were missed . . . There will be more chance of picking up someone like that.’’

A new, $208 million firearms ‘‘business unit’’ within police would launch before the end of the year, assembling the 200 staff across the country that run the firearms licensing system.

Hipkins said he expected police to take a ‘‘risk-based approach’’ to handling firearms licences, putting high-risk gun owners at the forefront.

The Government would be considering raising the fees for applying and renewing licences to fund the police unit. At $126.50 for a new licence, Hipkins said it was a

comparatively low fee and a ‘‘tiny fraction’’ of the actual cost of processing. A firearms registry would be in place next year but before then firearms owners would be able to begin entering their details into a new online system, called ‘‘MyFirearms’’, set to launch before Christmas.

The register would be ‘‘very, very robust’’, Hipkins said, and would not suffer the data breaches that have occurred with the existing paper-based licence records. In June, a raft of firearms owners’ details were stolen in a burglary of the former Auckland central police station.

Hipkins said ‘‘the big unknown’’ was how quickly firearms owners would register their guns with the new system.

He expected there would be a ‘‘difficult to reach’’ group that might not register their firearms without hard work. ‘‘You have got a lot of people who have held firearms for their entire lives, they might have a .22 in a locked cabinet, that has not been out of the locked cabinet for a decade or more. It won’t be because they don’t want to comply. [It is] because there is a degree of complacency.’’

New regulations for firearms clubs and ranges would be published in the coming week, with a deadline of June next year to comply. The first round of suggested regulations were ‘‘a bit of an over-reach’’, Hipkins said.

‘‘It is a million little things that when you are a volunteer running a shooting range, it all just piles up. And we have managed to claw that back to say actually what are we trying to achieve with these regulations?‘‘

ACT MP Nicole McKee, a former spokesperson for the Council of Licenced Firearm Owners, said clubs and ranges were yet to see the new regulations and the reforms were a ‘‘mess’’.

‘‘There was a massive overreach in the proposals that came out, and the minister may feel confident, but nobody else is,’’ McKee said.