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A Cautionary Tale: New Zealand Moves to Ban Semi-Automatic Guns
We saw it coming: after the horrific shooting on the mosques in Christchurch, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned the public that gun laws would change. The deed has been done.
Today, New Zealand began the process for banning “military style semiautomatic weapons, assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.”
These are the kinds of actions that government takes when people are afraid. Their decisions are knee-jerk reactions instead of ones giving serious consideration to the comprehensive question of mass shootings. We’ve seen our own anti-gun lobby try to capitalize on mass gun shootings and continue to argue that the guns are the problem, when we know that any person with a certain level of skill can turn handguns into weapons of mass destruction. But logic and common sense play no role here. Here is one comment from Ms. Ardern:
‘One of the failings of our system, of course, is that we can have a range of weapons that are of this power or caliber and simply not know how many there are.’ She said the buyback could cost as much as $140 million to implement. ‘That is the price that we must pay to ensure the safety of our communities.’
There is nothing safe about taking guns away from law-abiding citizens.
Her goal for the buyback program, of course, is to make sure that they get every single gun turned in, which is an impossible task. They will increase penalties for those people they discover have disregarded the gun ban. Currently penalties range from a fine to three years in jail.
According to Gunpolicy.org, there are between 1.2 and 1.5 million guns in circulation, and no national registry of guns. That is something for which to be grateful.
Since her party is in power and favors these changes, she believes the new law will be enacted by April 11, “with more changes to come.”
We have seen anti-gun groups insist that we only need to take people’s guns away to keep the public safe. And as many of us know, there is only one group that will be safe.
The criminals.
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Published in Guns
It takes very little looking to understand that regulating magazines is a waste of time and resources. If that isn’t enough, look up “stripper clips”. The rest of it is useless, too. Morons.
I just heard an interesting fact about the Texas Church shooting. That was 100% on the Air Force. They failed to enter his domestic violence convictions into the NICS System. Of course afterwords, the Air Force has produced thousands of entries.
All we have to do is resource the laws we have now and maybe work on something around mental health.
I have a couple of questions, which I will ask in separate comments to reduce the chance that I confuse myself.
What do the New Zealand sheep ranchers think of being effectively disarmed?
I have heard that New Zealand has a lot of sheep. I have also heard that sheep (in general, not specifically New Zealand) are relatively passive animals vulnerable to predator animals. My understanding is that sheep ranchers therefore use firearms to protect the sheep against predator animals. I would assume that the precision aim and multiple projectile capabilities of a military style semiautomatic rifle with a large capacity magazine would be extremely useful for such a task.
Are the guns currently illegal?
If every religious building made sure that every third or fourth person packed at least a tiny revolver, the problem would be solved. They would give up so fast, it wouldn’t be funny.
How many deaths (police and civilian) is the country willing to tolerate to ensure complete compliance with the ban?
To be effective, there must be 100% compliance with the ban (or “buy-back” if you want the more palatable term). You and I may think that is impossible (as you note in the OP). But, let’s presume for the sake of argument that it is possible. There will be some people who will resist, and will do so violently. There will be deaths of both police trying to enforce the ban, and among civilians (both the resistors and innocent bystanders). How many deaths is the Prime Minister willing to accept to ensure complete compliance with the ban?
They say there will be exceptions. I wonder how many farmers of one kind or another will make those requests.
I am horrified by the level of cynicism displayed by Prime Minister Ardern. Her use of this tragedy to punish her own law-abiding citizens is beyond disgusting, especially when the perpetrator was not even a citizen of her country. She ought to be ashamed of herself.
I have been searching on the internet about any resistance to the NZ gun ban. It seems that NZ are enthusiastically giving up their guns without any any issues at all. The Left / media are currently celebrating. I am depressed, I see our future. If Trump does this he will win the love of the left for a small amount of time.
The real reason for the high death toll was the architectural layout of the mosque and the lack of anyone in a position to counter the shooter.
From what I have read about the attack that resulted in the greatest number of dead is that the layout of the mosque left most people in a hallway with few or no exit. Therefore, maybe more deaths could be prevented by mandating different layouts for public buildings. So why shouldn’t building architecture have a higher priority than gun control, if your objective is to prevent large numbers of deaths.
Also, think about how different the outcome might have been had someone among the people trapped in the mosque had a high capacity gun with which to shoot back at the attacker. As others have noted many times elsewhere, the “defender” is more in need of high capacity magazines than is the attacker because the defender never knows when the defender is going to need to use the weapon.
I think the story of Esther gives us Biblical basis for an armed citizenry. The king did not send out his police, he allowed the citizens (Jews) to arm themselves.
These are the kind of creative analyses they need to be making, including empowering potential victims, not making them sitting ducks.
Double like!
I agree with your post, Susan, but I wish people would stop abusing the term “weapons of mass destruction”. We are talking about small arms. Blurring the lines between small arms and weapons of mass destruction is unhelpful and only increases the likelihood they’ll be banned and confiscated.
We will see if the actual citizens of New Zealand accept this or throw the Labour government out. Clearly the leftists are confident, but are they making overconfident mistakes like the Democrats?
I wrote about British politics around weapons and Jew-hatred, and pointed to developments in our domestic political space. Coincidence with this news on citizen disarmament in New Zealand comes a PowerLine report on the Democrats now boycotting AIPAC. Domestic politics are indeed moving at unimaginable speed towards European democratic socialism. The 2nd Amendment is no protection if they get to pack the Court, as they now seriously propose.
Every exemption creates a “loophole” through which the criminally inclined can get something the law-abiding cannot.
I should have put the phrase in quotes , since I was being facetious. You make an important point! Thanks.
The New Zealand shooter addressed the expected disarming of the New Zealand citizens in his manifesto:
Rufus, two comments.
This next limited transfer of power from the people to the State is useless only in the sense that it will fail to accomplish its stated objectives.
But its usefulness to its proponents lies entirely in that failure. By persuading the majority of the voters that the cause of the murders is an excess of freedom in the general public, rather than an excess of freedom of criminals and the criminally insane, the leftists have already established in advance that the only logical response to the failure of this loss of freedom will be a further loss of freedom. Once mercury salts are accepted as the cure, the dose must be increased until the symptoms of poisoning stop getting worse.
2. They’re not. They are smarter than the voters.
You’re correct, @markcamp. And we keep falling for it. So we could say we are complicit with the Left in relinquishing our freedoms, couldn’t we. Sigh.
I think part of the problem is, too many Republicans don’t understand enough gun policy, so they don’t know what to be alarmed or concerned about. One of the smartest things I’ve ever done is admit to myself that parts of it are really hard or I’m just not good at it. What’s interesting is when you going to twitter and start arguing with Democrats they literally never go to those areas I can’t remember or don’t understand. They are constantly just making stuff up and they won’t put out any white papers. They don’t want to solve anything, really, they just want to corrode gun rights because it’ll make them feel better. It gets them votes.
I also think that Republicans just don’t want to make a fuss. They prefer to lay low until each controversy disappears. It’s very sad.
Literally the only place where corroded gun rights works in the United States is New York City. I’ve heard Rudy Giuliani explain the whole thing. It takes five minutes. You need a certain kind of leadership and due to geographical issues, you can’t replicate it anywhere else.
They need to find a way to help Republicans that need a “lite” understanding of gun policy and Democrat party motives and tactics.
Some people never learn.
Withdrawing liberty to protect us is like bloodletting to cure us.
Very creative analogy!