Noncompliance Kneecaps New Zealand's Gun Control Scheme

[seer]

that really depends on exactly how annoying your neighbours are....

A tactical nuke might work...

[Raphael]

For the record.
I have been hijacked at gunpoint. The situation was such that if I had a gun and had tried to use it, my best mate who was in the car with me would have shot. When the hijackers searched me, had they found a gun, it would have been stolen and I would have been forced into my parent house (I was hijacked outside their house) at gunpoint for them to search for more guns.
My father-in-law has been involved in a shoot out.
My brother has been involved in a shoot out.
I have had friends (and family friends) who have been beaten and tortured in order to get access to the gun safe. I've had family friends beaten and tortured because they didn't own guns (devout Seventh Day Adventists)
I have an elderly family friend whose hand were smashed (i.e severely broken) because he shot at the thieves breaking in.
And I haven't even started on those who have been murdered yet......

Owning a gun doesn't automatically make you safer. Sometimes it makes you more of a target.

(That being said, I still think our new gun laws are knee jerk, badly thought out reactions by the bunch of useless incompetents we currently have in parliament)

[Sparko]

Exactly. There is no good argument for private ownership of nuclear weapons even if you interpret the 2nd Amendment as broadly as possible.

Now hand grenades are a different story.

[Sparko]

For the record.
I have been hijacked at gunpoint. The situation was such that if I had a gun and had tried to use it, my best mate who was in the car with me would have shot. When the hijackers searched me, had they found a gun, it would have been stolen and I would have been forced into my parent house (I was hijacked outside their house) at gunpoint for them to search for more guns.
My father-in-law has been involved in a shoot out.
My brother has been involved in a shoot out.
I have had friends (and family friends) who have been beaten and tortured in order to get access to the gun safe. I've had family friends beaten and tortured because they didn't own guns (devout Seventh Day Adventists)
I have an elderly family friend whose hand were smashed (i.e severely broken) because he shot at the thieves breaking in.
And I haven't even started on those who have been murdered yet......

Owning a gun doesn't automatically make you safer. Sometimes it makes you more of a target.

(That being said, I still think our new gun laws are knee jerk, badly thought out reactions by the bunch of useless incompetents we currently have in parliament)

Yeah no situation is the same, and I personally don't carry a gun in public even though I have a permit (unless I am going into a dangerous area). I keep mine at home in my bedroom. If someone breaks in, I would grab that gun and be ready to defend myself. The situation might turn against me if they had the drop on me or if I hesitated, but odds are, I would be in the better position than if I didn't have a gun.

[rogue06]

Violent crime rates in Europe remain much much lower than in the US, while gun crime is hardly comparable. While a small number of criminals use guns, law enforcement tends to take a very dim view, and deals with it without prejudice but with the full arm of the law. Officers in Europe are armed.



Where's the list of mass killings that involved firearms?

Your list contains a large number of entries that involved sophisticated terror networks, that use sophisticated bomb makers. These aren't the run of the mill school shooter or lone wolf terrorist like Christchurch and Norway. Which tend to prefer guns, guns that kill a lot of people.

In terms of overall gun deaths per unit of population, the US is in a scary state, it's 20 times higher than in most European countries and higher than Iraq. The only countries that are substantially higher are countries in central America - countries people are fleeing.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...t-of-the-world

It seems that if you have an argument, or a crime, that involves guns, it tends to result in worse outcome for people involved than if guns aren't involved.

Dirty little secret here... most of those "sophisticated bomb makers" make things that any kid taking chemistry or a shop class could whip up. Shoddy hardly describes how poorly constructed many of these things are. There is a reason that a substantial number of these bomb makers (and those placing the bombs they make) end up blowing themselves up.

Now.. as to "Where's the list of mass killings that involved firearms?" For some reason you decided to ignore this part of my post:

Almost all of the worst massacres involving firearms were done by paramilitary groups conducting raids on villages and camps -- things no form of gun control could prevent.

Finally, it does not take a "sophisticated terror network" to rent a van or a lorry (truck with a flat front-end) and use it to plow through a crowd of pedestrians. All you need is one evil $#%@# with a bit of determination.

[rogue06]

that really depends on exactly how annoying your neighbours are....

And how close they are.

[Starlight]

The OP article is pure speculation. "Fake news".

The NZ government buyback scheme runs until September / October. Only some types of guns are being banned/bought-back (mostly types of semi-automatics), with other types of guns remaining legal. The government doesn't keep a gun registry so it doesn't know how many of these particular type of guns are out there. So even after the buyback scheme ends in October nobody will know what proportion of people owning these guns have kept them rather than handing them in. Any statements about whether compliance with the law has been 'high' or 'low' will be pure speculation even at that point.

It is remarkable how willing conservatives on this site seem to be to believe that gun owners won't obey this law. What happened to "responsible law-abiding gun owners"? Guess you guys actually think gun owners are criminal scum?

Even if some proportion of gun owners don't comply with the law, the law will still serve its primary purpose of reducing the general availability of massacre-relevant-guns to future massacre-aspiring people. The Christchurch shooter bought his semi-automatic guns from a local store. Now, that can't be done anymore. Someone in his position would still be able to buy guns, but not ones that could kill so many people so easily.

Also worth noting that owning a gun for self-defense purposes isn't legal in NZ, guns have to be owned for hunting or farming purposes etc, and have to be locked away and the ammo stored separately. NZ doesn't have a culture of guns for self-defense.

[Starlight]

For the record.
I have been hijacked at gunpoint. The situation was such that if I had a gun and had tried to use it, my best mate who was in the car with me would have shot. When the hijackers searched me, had they found a gun, it would have been stolen and I would have been forced into my parent house (I was hijacked outside their house) at gunpoint for them to search for more guns.
My father-in-law has been involved in a shoot out.
My brother has been involved in a shoot out.
I have had friends (and family friends) who have been beaten and tortured in order to get access to the gun safe. I've had family friends beaten and tortured because they didn't own guns (devout Seventh Day Adventists)
I have an elderly family friend whose hand were smashed (i.e severely broken) because he shot at the thieves breaking in.
And I haven't even started on those who have been murdered yet......

I assume all of this happened in South Africa, and none of it in New Zealand?

The huge difference in crime rates and gun-use-during-crime rates make comparing the two countries like apples and oranges. But interesting to hear your view that this still applies even in high-crime high-gun-crime countries like SA:

Owning a gun doesn't automatically make you safer. Sometimes it makes you more of a target.

Quite a lot of US studies I've seen found gun ownership in the US makes you and your family less safe. The chances of an accident, suicide with it, a criminal grabbing it off you, or a criminal responding to seeing it by shooting you, are greater than the chances of successfully using it to defend your life or that of your family.

(That being said, I still think our new gun laws are knee jerk, badly thought out reactions by the bunch of useless incompetents we currently have in parliament)

Like Judith Collins?

[rogue06]

The OP article is pure speculation. "Fake news".

The NZ government buyback scheme runs until September / October. Only some types of guns are being banned/bought-back (mostly types of semi-automatics), with other types of guns remaining legal. The government doesn't keep a gun registry so it doesn't know how many of these particular type of guns are out there. So even after the buyback scheme ends in October nobody will know what proportion of people owning these guns have kept them rather than handing them in. Any statements about whether compliance with the law has been 'high' or 'low' will be pure speculation even at that point.

It is remarkable how willing conservatives on this site seem to be to believe that gun owners won't obey this law. What happened to "responsible law-abiding gun owners"? Guess you guys actually think gun owners are criminal scum?

Even if some proportion of gun owners don't comply with the law, the law will still serve its primary purpose of reducing the general availability of massacre-relevant-guns to future massacre-aspiring people. The Christchurch shooter bought his semi-automatic guns from a local store. Now, that can't be done anymore. Someone in his position would still be able to buy guns, but not ones that could kill so many people so easily.

Also worth noting that owning a gun for self-defense purposes isn't legal in NZ, guns have to be owned for hunting or farming purposes etc, and have to be locked away and the ammo stored separately. NZ doesn't have a culture of guns for self-defense.

Yeah, I'm sure the 700 firearms turned in represents a sizable percentage of those in private hands.

[Raphael]

I assume all of this happened in South Africa, and none of it in New Zealand?

Yes. But my post was not about the NZ situation, but that owning a gun doesn't automatically make things safer.
I can also tell tales where having a gun saved a life. Like when my mom had her .38 special on her protecting her from being attacked.

The huge difference in crime rates and gun-use-during-crime rates make comparing the two countries like apples and oranges. But interesting to hear your view that this still applies even in high-crime high-gun-crime countries like SA:
Quite a lot of US studies I've seen found gun ownership in the US makes you and your family less safe. The chances of an accident, suicide with it, a criminal grabbing it off you, or a criminal responding to seeing it by shooting you, are greater than the chances of successfully using it to defend your life or that of your family.

The counter to that is that gun crime is demonstratively worse in those cities and states in the US where gun laws are very restrictive.
The situation in South Africa is the result ofa couple of generations of people believing that anarchy and violence are the way to get what you want. And is not helped by politicians openly calling for the murder of farmers.

Like Judith Collins?

Unlike the left, I do actually criticize politicians on the right when I think they were wrong.
Judith is wrong on this issue.
She is also wrong on the euthanasia issue.

But the law was still crafted by the idiots from the Greens and Labour and the traitors in WinstonFirst.

[Starlight]

Yeah, I'm sure the 700 firearms turned in represents a sizable percentage of those in private hands.

You're such a sucker for fake news.

The first gun-buyback event is tomorrow.

Maybe at least wait until the gun-buyback actually starts before claiming it's failed? Even better, wait until its finished.

[Starlight]

But the law was still crafted by the idiots from the Greens and Labour and the traitors in WinstonFirst.

You're kind of glossing over the fact that 100% of the idiots in National voted for the bill too. If they disapproved strongly, they could have voted against it, like ACT did. It passed with 99% of politicians voting for it. Can't blame that on leftist idiots.

[rogue06]

You're such a sucker for fake news.

The first gun-buyback event is tomorrow.

Maybe at least wait until the gun-buyback actually starts before claiming it's failed? Even better, wait until its finished.

According to Radio New Zealand, a Crown entity so they're pretty much an official source, the buyback program began right after the law was enacted back in March and as of July 4 a whole 1000 firearms have been turned in of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million guns in private hands.

It looks like their buyback has been as big a failure as the ones that have taken place here in the U.S.

Buyback programs have proven to well intentioned wastes of money.

University of Pennsylvania professor Lawrence Sherman, who headed a wide-ranging assessment of crime prevention programs, called gun buybacks “the program that is best-known to be ineffective” in reducing firearms violence, while lecturing at a U.S. National Institute of Justice conference. This view was echoed by Dr. Garen J. Wintermute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis who has stated that, “The continuation of buyback programs is a triumph of wishful thinking over all available evidence.” To make the point even clearer, Dr Wimtermute also said that, “Gun buybacks or exchanges do not reduce violent crime rates.”

A report released by the Police Executive Research Forum, a group of big city police chiefs, released in the 1990s when buyback programs were all the rage, clearly showed that these programs don’t work. After evaluating programs in several major cities they found that none had any effects in the cities’ homicide rates.

This was later confirmed by independent follow-up studies in Seattle, Sacramento, St. Louis and Boston found no evidence buy-back programs reduced crime.

In the first instance a check of coroner’s records and hospital admissions data in that city for the 6 months after a major buyback found no evidence whatsoever of an effect on firearms-related deaths or injuries. Probably not a surprise considering that nearly a quarter of the guns collected were inoperable.

Another study in Seattle uncovered the fact that 66% of sellers admitted that they owned another gun, which they didn’t surrender making it questionable just how much disarmament is actually accomplished. The same sort of thing was found in the other cities. According to a study by criminologist Richard Rosenfeld of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, 59% of buy-back participants in Sacramento said they had additional guns at home. In St. Louis it was 62% with 14% of the participants there saying they planned to buy a new gun within the next year, and an additional 13% said they might.

In Boston a Harvard University study of gun buyback programs found that 75% of the firearms gathered were several decades old. Similarly a study of Milwaukee-area buyback programs by the Medical College of Wisconsin Firearms Injury Center in the mid 1990s discovered that the firearms turned in are not the types generally linked with gun deaths. They tend to be older, small caliber revolvers whereas those used in homicides and suicides tend to be newer, large caliber semi-automatics.

Moreover those turning in the firearms are often the widow of hunters, or other older people, rather than teenage gang members who have suddenly decided to abandon a life of violence. IOW, most of those voluntarily surrendering their firearms are very unlikely to commit a violent gun crime meaning that the public safety benefit is minimal at best.

It should also be noted that these buyback programs, with their no questions asked policy, actually create a safe place for criminals to sell unwanted, stolen guns, thus inflating the market for such illegal weapons.

Finally, at a Hartford Connecticut buyback program about a decade ago they offered $100 for each firearm turned over. It turned out that residents were legally buying handguns at local pawn shops for about $60 to $75 and turning them in for the $100. One man came in with 39 Chinese-made rifles and made a profit of about $1200.

Similarly, at a gun buy-back program in New Jersey, a man turned in 18 guns, some that couldn’t even be fired, and collected $1350 in certificates for food, clothing and furniture. “Had this guy sold the stuff to a gun dealer, he would have gotten maybe $75 for the lot,” a police officer remarked.

Also in New Jersey (Camden), a teenager turned in a shotgun and received $50, which he used to buy a handgun that he later used in a homicide. In Brooklyn, New York, after the D.A. raised the “reward” for turned-in guns from $100 to $250, the largest percentage of the guns turned in were .38 police service revolvers from court officers who were allowed to keep their revolvers after they were issued 9mm semiautomatics the previous year. Not exactly taking the guns out of the hands of criminals.

I can attest that this sort of thing actually happens because here in Atlanta several years back one of the local news outlets (which owns the biggest TV station, AM radio station and the city newspaper) offered tickets to a Janet Jackson concert in exchange to anyone who turned in a firearm. An estatic reporter saw the line of people ready to participate and started interviewing them. Of the three people she interviewed one said that they just bought a derringer for about half of what the tickets would cost him, another said that they were trading in an old rusty firearm and the last one said that she was exchanging her grandmother's pistol for tickets (no indication if the grandmother was aware of this). The crestfallen reporter quickly cut the interviews short.

[Raphael]

You're kind of glossing over the fact that 100% of the idiots in National voted for the bill too. If they disapproved strongly, they could have voted against it, like ACT did. It passed with 99% of politicians voting for it. Can't blame that on leftist idiots.

You're doing that thing again where you assume that because I am on the right politically (I actually sit pretty dead center on most "where are you politically" type polls) I have to agree with everything the major political party on the right does.

I think National was wrong to vote in favour on it. It is one of the few things I actually agree with ACT on.

It still doesn't change the fact that the the law was hastily and badly crafted by the Greens, Labour and NZF.

It is one of the reasons I am seriously considering giving my party vote to the New Conservative Party if they start polling high enough to have a chance of getting in.

[Cow Poke]

You're such a sucker for fake news.

Hey, welcome back!