Noncompliance Kneecaps New Zealand's Gun Control Scheme

[rogue06]

As discussed earlier, while gun crime in Australia has gone down, overall rates of violent crime, including homicide and mass killings, are just as high as ever. Like most anti-gun legislation, it's a feel-good law that does nothing to actually improve peace and safety.

https://thefederalist.com/2015/09/03...n-ban-conceit/

But it's okay if people are murdered via stabbings, beatings, poisonings etc. Just as long as a gun isn't involved.

[Tassman]

As discussed earlier, while gun crime in Australia has gone down, overall rates of violent crime, including homicide and mass killings, are just as high as ever. Like most anti-gun legislation, it's a feel-good law that does nothing to actually improve peace and safety.

https://thefederalist.com/2015/09/03...n-ban-conceit/

It does however stop mass shootings, which is the point.

"How Australia All But Ended Gun Violence". https://fortune.com/2018/02/20/austr...ntrol-success/

[Mountain Man]

Mass shootings, yes, but not mass killings. According to Wikipedia, there was just as many "massacres" in Australia in the 20-years before the gun ban as there were in the 20-years after. It's just that after the ban, the weapons of choice included knives, vehicles, and arson instead of guns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...s_in_Australia

There have been around 30 deaths from "massacres" since 2017. But hey, at least you can feel good about the fact that most of them weren't killed with guns. I'm sure the victims appreciate it.

[Charles]

But it's okay if people are murdered via stabbings, beatings, poisonings etc. Just as long as a gun isn't involved.

Straw man.

[Charles]

Perhaps because the people they interviewed who weren't happy never made it into the finished article?

You gotta be smart about how you read this stuff. It's like trying to figure out a magician's trick, never look where he's telling you to look.

And what would happen if that logic was applied to your own particular post? You see?

[Tassman]

Mass shootings, yes, but not mass killings. According to Wikipedia, there was just as many "massacres" in Australia in the 20-years before the gun ban as there were in the 20-years after. It's just that after the ban, the weapons of choice included knives, vehicles, and arson instead of guns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...s_in_Australia

There have been around 30 deaths from "massacres" since 2017. But hey, at least you can feel good about the fact that most of them weren't killed with guns. I'm sure the victims appreciate it.

Well “mass shootings” are all one can hope to eliminate by banning guns. The other forms of “killings” have not resulted in mass deaths.

[Mountain Man]

Well “mass shootings” are all one can hope to eliminate by banning guns. The other forms of “killings” have not resulted in mass deaths.

Um, what part of 'according to Wikipedia, there was just as many "massacres" in Australia in the 20-years before the gun ban as there were in the 20-years after. It's just that after the ban, the weapons of choice included knives, vehicles, and arson instead of guns' did you not understand?

Face it, your gun ban is just a piece of feel-good legislation that didn't actually do anything to improve peace and safety for the average Australian.

[Tassman]

Um, what part of 'according to Wikipedia, there was just as many "massacres" in Australia in the 20-years before the gun ban as there were in the 20-years after. It's just that after the ban, the weapons of choice included knives, vehicles, and arson instead of guns' did you not understand?

Face it, your gun ban is just a piece of feel-good legislation that didn't actually do anything to improve peace and safety for the average Australian.

I think your arithmetic is suspect. Where exactly does the Wikipedia link say: "there was just as many "massacres" in Australia in the 20-years before the gun ban as there were in the 20-years after"?

[Mountain Man]

Look Kat the list and count the number from 1973 to 1993, and then from 1993 to 2013.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...s_in_Australia

It's around 15 on each side. Plus another 12 since 2014. That's massacres alone. In terms of overall violent crime, including homicides, Australia is just as dangerous as ever, and suicide rates are unchecked.

https://thefederalist.com/2015/09/03...#disqus_thread

But yay, you banned guns. Fat lot of good it did, but go ahead and pat yourselves on the back.

[Sparko]

Thanks, but responses in this thread plus behind-the-scenes are reminding me why I left. I really only returned for this thread to correct the woeful misinformation about my country's gun buyback.


Rogue, the two accounts had different passwords. Furthermore TWeb's password recovery feature worked for one account and not the other, seems like a weird bug.

You had two different email addresses on the two accounts.

[Sparko]

Article from a couple of hours into the first buy-back event seems positive...

Long queues at Government's first gun buy-back event:

Acting Canterbury District Commander Mike Johnson said police were "really pleased" with the turnout.

"Police recognise that this is a big change for the law abiding firearms community and we are hearing really positive feedback from people as they come through today that they are finding the process works well for them."

Ray Berard, who moved to New Zealand from Canada 25 years ago, said he "almost" got what he paid for his AR15 because he had kept it in good condition... He believed there was no need for military-style firearms in modern society... "[You can] do a lot of damage to a lot of people ... if you're mentally unwell and you have a weapon that can shoot 100 rounds a minute. How do you police that?"

Recreational hunter Nathan Dougherty said he felt good about the buy-back "because it's the right thing to do"... "At some stage the community has to say there is a risk where these weapons shouldn't be held and let's take them all out ... I'm really OK with that. [The March terror attack was] such a terrible thing to happen that we all need to play a part in making society a little bit safer. We give up something but we make each other safer."...

A competition and recreational shooter, who was second through the door and asked not to be named, said the buy back had gone "really well". He believed he had received a fair price for his mint condition, Russian-made AK47, which he had customised and used to shoot wallabies. "Some of my friends said it would a debacle and I wouldn't get a fair price but I think the price was good enough. I'm not going to buy another gun. I've still got two in my safe anyway."

All of the gun-owners they interviewed seemed to be happy with the price they were being paid for the weapons, even those who had been initially worried about this (which makes me wonder as a tax-payer if the govt is paying too much for them). Apparently this first buy-back event runs all weekend.

""We've had 169 people come through today, we've been handed over 224 firearms, 217 parts and $433,000 has been paid out."

224 guns is a success? Out of over a million?

And they paid on average $1,933 per gun? That doesn't sound right. Your government is going to pay around $3B at that rate.

And if it was anything like the gun buybacks in the USA, people usually turn in junk or unwanted guns in order to get money to buy more guns.

[Sparko]

Perhaps because the people they interviewed who weren't happy never made it into the finished article?

You gotta be smart about how you read this stuff. It's like trying to figure out a magician's trick, never look where he's telling you to look.

Most wouldn't have even shown up.

[Cow Poke]

""We've had 169 people come through today, we've been handed over 224 firearms, 217 parts and $433,000 has been paid out."

224 guns is a success? Out of over a million?

And they paid on average $1,933 per gun? That doesn't sound right. Your government is going to pay around $3B at that rate.

And if it was anything like the gun buybacks in the USA, people usually turn in junk or unwanted guns in order to get money to buy more guns.

Did you figure in the nutjobs and criminals who will show up to voluntarily sell back their guns?

[Starlight]

Out of over a million?

No. Most types of guns aren't subject to the buy-back. This is not a ban on guns in NZ.

It's a change in the laws regarding some types of gun, namely those regarded as having the greatest potential to kill large numbers of people in a short span of time. So semi-automatics with large magazine sizes are the primary target of the buy-back. Other types of guns remain legal.

Because the NZ govt has never tracked who owns what guns, nobody knows exactly how many guns would be subject to this buyback. One of the groups who opposes the buyback is suggesting numbers as high as 200-300k guns subject to buyback, so I would say that should probably be regarded as an extreme upper limit estimate with the real number probably being half that or even a tenth of that.

And they paid on average $1,933 per gun? That doesn't sound right. Your government is going to pay around $3B at that rate.

The government anticipates it costing $200m. Other sources have suggested up to $500m.

And if it was anything like the gun buybacks in the USA, people usually turn in junk or unwanted guns in order to get money to buy more guns.

They're getting paid based on the condition the gun is in, so if they turn in junk, they get a junk price. Nobody has a problem with them using the money to buy more guns, as the point isn't to get rid of guns in general. It's simply to get rid of the more dangerous types of guns that are most easily used in massacres. Guns used for hunting and on farms will remain a vibrant part of the culture here. Unlike the US, the idea of guns for self-defense has never been legal here and isn't part of the culture, and is regarded by most here as an utterly moronic idea that would make everyone far less safe.

I personally don't carry a gun in public even though I have a permit (unless I am going into a dangerous area).

Is the US so crime-ridden that there are some areas where you need a gun to be safe?

There's not a single street in my city I wouldn't be perfectly happy to walk alone down absolutely any time of the day or night and feel perfectly safe. Granted I'm an adult male and the situation might be different if I was female or a child. In my entire country, I can only think of one part of one city I haven't been to much where it has a sufficiently poor reputation and I know sufficiently little about it such that I'd ask someone there about how safe they thought it was before I went walking through it at night alone. And to the extent that the occasional drunk person in such locations might be a safety risk, the idea that having a gun might be a solution for such encounters is really baffling to me.

Maybe you should move to a safer country if crime is such a concern for you? Raphael did.

it sounds like you are already having some tyranny in New Zealand.

The US libertarian Cato think-tank ranks NZ as the #1 freest country in the world. Tell me more about this harsh government tyranny NZ suffers under.

[Starlight]

Did you figure in the nutjobs and criminals who will show up to voluntarily sell back their guns?

Wouldn't that be a good thing? Like, a very very very good thing? I mean, if there's anyone the govt would love to no longer have guns, it's those sort of people, isn't it?

The situation is that nobody has an accurate estimate of the number of guns New Zealanders own, nor an accurate estimate of the number of guns that fit the categories for the buy-back project. Numbers like over a million guns total, and maybe 200k eligible for buy-back are sometimes thrown around but we don't really know - if both the relevant numbers were half or a tenth of those figures I wouldn't be surprised.

Are you asking if Sparko's mistaken number of over a million guns eligible for buy-back (he's confused an estimate of total owned guns in NZ, with estimates of the small proportion of guns that are being banned and bought-back) includes the small proportion of guns owned illegally? Well his numbers are totally wrong because he's grabbed an estimate of the wrong thing, so your nitpick is irrelevant.