(28-02-2024, 02:57 PM)Wainuiguy Wrote: The knee jerk reaction to the Aussie lone wolf Tarrant was always stupid. His gun was already illegal. All the change did was to give legal owners of semi automatic guns (and let's not use the term "military style" because most semi autos used in NZ are not that type) a nice cash payment to go and buy other guns. In some cases more powerful ones than they had!
Those that had guns illegally still have the guns. Gun crime did not abate - it actually got worse.
Yes, and...
(29-02-2024, 03:04 PM)nzoomed Wrote: It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction which ended up making alot of innocent owners get caught up in the whole thing unnecessarily.
For example, a crappy worn out 100 + year old pump action .22 with a 12 round magazine became illegal due to the rushed legislation. Most public are unaware of this fact and just assumed the likes of AK47 or AR15 type guns were banned when it extended to many more firearms than just semi auto centrefire.
Many people took advantage of the buyback and got good money for junk guns and bought something more powerful such as a brand new .22 magnum semi auto or a semi auto shotgun.
Looks like they are trying to make the legislation more workable I guess.
Needless to say, there are legitimate uses for such firearms, for example a .223 semi auto would be very useful for a farmer who is needing to control wild pigs or wallabies.
To make things worse, it appears that a number of gun owners are not up to date on the new legislation, going by what I've seen listed on trademe where buyers are pointing out in the q&a to the seller that the magazine needed modification before they can sell it.
Yes.
Part of the problem now is the complexity of the current laws, which make it confusing about who has to do what, when, and most gun owners don't want to do the registration process because if it gets hacked it provides the crims with a shopping list of who has what. Police don't actually need to know - if they are going to a property where there is a licensed gun owner they know there are likely to be guns there and the what and how many aren't really relevant. And they aren't likely to need to go to a licensed gun owner's home very often anyway.
On the other hand, the person who has " a crappy worn out 100 + year old... [snip]... .22" of any kind will have to deface it with an engraving of a made up serial number when they register it (if it doesn't already have one).
So, let's hope common sense prevails, and sporting/hunting guns can go back to being used as they should be, and the criminals get hammered instead of the law-abiding sportsman/collector/farmer/hunter.