What does Act’s gun reform push really mean?
The expression “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” has never been more apt than Act’s proposal to reform New Zealand’s gun laws (NZ Herald, Jan 4). The word “reform” denotes making something better. There’s nothing in David Seymour’s proposals that would improve the current gun laws for the greater good.
The visceral image of Senior Sergeant Paddy Hannan holding an AR15 is both frightening and repellent, which is the appropriate response to a weapon that was explicitly designed to maim and murder enemies during wartime.
That is emotive language for an emotive situation, not helped by a Cabinet paper which stated that shooting clubs, with about 11,000 members, have been described as “largely unregulated” in application of the existing regulations.
If the goal is for the Act/National/ NZ First coalition to rewrite the Arms Act and pass the new version into law by the end of the term, the public needs and deserves clarity and transparency. Instead, what we have is a masterclass in “gobbledegook”, exemplified by Seymour stating “the aim is to provide for greater protection of public safety and simplify regulatory requirements to improve compliance”.
Really? The existing legislation (affirmed by all major parties) is succinct and effective and the police are far better equipped to spot potentially dangerous breaches, particularly in the criminal community, than moving the Firearms Safety Authority to, perhaps, the Department of Internal Affairs. Gun clubs and shooting ranges won’t suffer unduly by being denied access to large-capacity military-style semi-automatic rifles, compared to the level of risk in allowing the use of these weapons recreationally.
More of these weapons circulating equals more compliance and oversight and equals more opportunity for human error resulting in tragedy.
Just because we import the irritating but benign traditions of Halloween and Black Friday doesn’t mean we also need to adapt America’s manifestly stupid love of guns. We can fervently hope that we never reach anywhere near their reliance on carrying arms and the approximately 630 mass shootings there in 2023 using semi-automatic guns is a salutary lesson — one we learned so tragically on March 15, 2019, and should never forget.