The usual suspects are calling for tighter gun control law after the Kawerau shooting.
Between the Media party and politicians pushing agendas it is hard to get to the salient facts.
While the Kawerau siege ended peacefully, the alleged shooting of four police officers has raised the issue of whether cops need better access to firearms, as well as questions about New Zealand’s gun culture. Can anything be done to stop similar situations?
Who raised the issue? The Media party? Police? What gun culture?
This is just sensationalism by the Media party.
As alleged Kawerau gunman Rhys Warren was taken into policy custody, after an armed siege following the shooting of four police officers, it didn’t take long for relief over the lack of fatalities to develop into scrutiny of how the incident occurred. The Kawerau siege is the fifth police shooting in the last decade, and has raised some familiar questions without straightforward answers.
Do our police need guns on them at all times? Why are more criminals getting access to, and using, firearms? And what can be done to stop a similar shooting occurring?
The last major change to police firearms access came in 2012, when police were given access to a lock-box of firearms in every frontline car.
That decision followed two high-profile cases of police shootings: the Napier siege in 2009, when Jan Molenaar killed one police officer and seriously injured two others, and a 2010 Christchurch shooting where two police officers were injured and police dog Gage killed.
The Kawerau siege is not an ideal example for those pushing for easier police access to guns: the police shot were not unwitting constables taken by surprise, but members of the elite Armed Offenders Squad, sporting extensive training and body armour which saved their lives.
They were also shot with a shotgun and/or a .22 rifle. Though lethal their penetrative abilities are somewhat diminished compared with other centre-fire firearms. The lock-box situation doesn’t apply here…they are Armed Offenders Squad members and would have been carrying from the moment they left their vehicles.
The debate heads into farce when the politicians start talking about gun control. Stuart Nash enters the debate from entirely the wrong angle. You would have thought the opposition Police spokesperson would have been standing by the bedside of the wounded officers, not politicking over gun control.
Labour’s police spokesman Stuart Nash says there are a number of unanswered questions about whether more guns are illegally getting into the hands of the wrong people, and if so, how.
What a fool. Criminals will get guns no matter what laws there are. They are criminals and laws are only an impediment to law-abiding people. You would have thought that a Police spokesman would have worked out that criminals always do illegal things.
David Clendon, police spokesman for the Green Party, agrees, saying getting a better idea of the supply of guns “might lower the temperature a bit in terms of people wanting to see the police routinely armed”.
Clendon also says there is a strong case to revisit the idea of universal gun registration, scrapped in 1983, to get a better handle on how many guns are being used and by whom.
“That does seem a pretty obvious vulnerability in terms of making it easier for improper, indeed illegal trading in weapons to go ahead.”
What an idiot. The only people who register guns are people like me…responsible and law-abiding firearms owners. Judith Collins explains that simple concept for the idiot Green MP.
However, Collins says similar regimes overseas have proven “very ineffective and very expensive”, while doing little to stop criminals accessing guns.
“All that will do is add a huge amount of work to police…for very little outcome, because all the people who are legally in charge of firearms would go and register them, and all the criminals wouldn’t.”
Instead she favours a regime of firearm prohibition orders, currently being developed, which would allow police to search the homes of those with previous gun offences to ensure they did not have any weapons.
Regular checks on people banned from holding firearms seems sensible. The Police regularly check firearms owners, so why not check ratbags?
Nash is calling for an independent inquiry into gun culture in New Zealand society – a move which he says would make clear the scale of the problem without a “purely law and order perspective”.
He admits solutions may be hard to find, but says doing nothing is not an option.
Collins supports the idea of an inquiry, and says Parliament’s law and order committee is currently discussing whether to look into how gangs are getting hold of guns.
“There are some people very keen on that. If that is something that happens…that’s the sort of thing where it would be very helpful to everybody.”
O’Connor also backs an inquiry, saying “nothing will happen until we acknowledge that it’s an issue”.
“People who simply never should have access to firearms, have got access to firearms.”
Nash is a tool. There is no gun culture…hell’s teeth, there isn’t even really a NRA-type lobby group here. But I tell you what, I’d consider starting one if these muppets keep going down this path. Criminals will get hold of guns if they want them. They will either steal them…or they will just apply copious amounts of illegal cash to buying them. You can’t stop criminals from obtaining weapons…they are criminals. Any law changes will simply further infringe the rights of law-abiding and responsible gun owners.
– Fairfax
