New Zealand Prime Minister Announces New Raft of Gun Control Measures, Including Registry
byJORDAN MICHAELS
New Zealand is becoming a case study on what can happen when the right to keep and bear arms isn’t enshrined in a country’s governing documents.
Following a decision to ban and buy back all semi-automatic “assault weapons,” Kiwi Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday a massive new slate of gun control measures designed to “stop remaining weapons from falling into the wrong hands.”
“There is a new normal around firearms. It is a change of mindset,” Ardern said at a press conference. “The most dangerous weapons are being taken out of circulation. Our gun laws date from 1983, and they’re dangerously out of date with technology, with trade, and ultimately, with society.”
“We’re enshrining in law that owning a firearm is a privilege and comes with an obligation to demonstrate a high level of safety and responsibility,” she concluded.
Ardern’s new gun control measures are unlikely to receive the near-unanimous support that Parliament granted to the “assault weapon” ban earlier this year. Among the measures already receiving pushback is a registry tying guns to individual gun owners, which would make future firearm confiscation much more difficult to evade. The full list includes:
Establish a register connecting specific firearms with licensed holders
Tighten the rules to get and keep and firearms license
Tighten the rules for gun dealers and get and keep a license
Require licenses to be renewed every five years rather than every ten years
Introduce a system of warning flags to police can intervene if they’re concerned about a license holder’s behavior
Prohibit visitors to New Zealand from buying a gun
Establish a licensing system for shooting clubs and ranges
Set up a formal group to give independent firearms advice to police, which will include “people from outside the firearms community
Set up new controls for firearms advertising
Require a license to buy magazine parts and ammunition
Increase penalties and introduce new offenses
“This suite of measures would have made it considerably harder for the terrorist to purchase guns in the way he did,” Ardern said Monday in a statement, referring to the massacre that prompted New Zealand’s change in gun law. “He would have had to pass a good character test and the register would have alerted the police to the type of gun purchases the terrorist was making.”
Ardern began the press conference by celebrating the supposed success of the gun buyback program taking place at collection points across the country. She reported that more than 3,200 firearms had been turned in at the 20 “collection events” since the country banned semi-automatic “military-style assault weapons.”
While that’s more than were turned in before the collection events began taking place, as GunsAmerica reportedearlier this month, there are likely hundreds of thousands of now-banned weapons in the country. That places the compliance rate at somewhere between 3.2 and 0.6 percent.
The New Zealand Parliament may have capitulated to the gun ban agenda, but Kiwi gun owners may not be so easy to convince.
The .44 Hand Ejector 1st Model, or New Century Triple Lock, was introduced in 1908 and manufactured until 1915, but sold out of inventory until 1917. The total production was 15,376 revolvers. It was produced in several different calibers, barrel lengths and finishes.
It acquired its nickname of “Triple Lock” as a result of a unique locking system which locked the cylinder in position at three different locations: the front of the cylinder with center pin, the rear of the cylinder by locking bolt and the yoke locked at the frame with a special locking bolt.
The three locking systems were discontinued in 1915 when the 2nd Model was released, as the yoke lock was found not to be necessary.
This is a Hopkins & Allen auto ejecting top break small framed five-shot revolver, chambered in .32 S&W. Hopkins & Allen started out as the Hopkins & Allen Manufacturing Company in 1868, started by a group of men, most of which were already partners in Bacon Manufacturing Co. and Continental Arms Co. Both companies ceased operations about the time Hopkins & Allen were founded.
In 1874, Charles Converse, who owned about one-half of the company, sold out to Merwin Hulbert & Co., who were already the sole distributor for Hopkins & Allen. Merwin Hulbert later went bankrupt, and Hopkins & Allen followed in 1898, but was reorganized as the Hopkins & Allen Arms Co., which in turn went out of business in 1914. The revolver retains about 75% of its original nickel finish, but is missing some parts.
Anti-gunners are trying to turn gun ownership into a public health problem. (Dave Workman)
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- A controversial two-day “public health summit” held near Seattle typifies the one-sided approach toward solving the nation’s so-called “gun violence” dilemma because the discussion over two evening sessions failed to include important representation from specialists on gun safety: gun owners and representatives from any firearm rights group.
Elsewhere around the country, whenever the news media reports on the gun issue, almost invariably gun control groups are labeled “gun safety” advocates while the Second Amendment community is referred to as “the gun lobby.” This apparently justifies the exclusion of gun owners from discussions that ultimately affect their rights.
And making guns a “public health issue” has become a cornerstone of the gun prohibition crusade on the national and state levels. What is currently happening in Seattle is a microcosm.
As noted by the West Seattle Herald, the summit, held over the course of two evening sessions in White Center, a suburban community immediately south of Seattle, saw representatives from the King County Department of Public Health, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, Moms Demand Action and “community leaders working with youth, gun violence survivors, and elected officials from King County, Seattle, and surrounding communities.”
Missing from the agenda were certified firearms instructors, gun dealers, range operators and representatives from such groups as the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, or the National Rifle Association. Washington State gun rights activists were suspicious from the outset because the national headquarters for both SAF and CCRKBA are located just a few miles away in the City of Bellevue. There are at least two popular indoor shooting ranges and gun stores within easy travel distance to the summit location, as well.
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb summed it up tersely.
“This isn’t about public health,” he said. “This is all about politics.”
The Seattle area has become a hotbed of gun prohibition politics over the past five years, largely fueled by wealthy anti-gunners who, according to Second Amendment activists, have “weaponized their wealth” in an effort to turn the right to bear arms into a tightly-regulated privilege.
The King County Board of Health organized the event. Gottlieb, who also chairs the CCRKBA, told a reporter from local NBC affiliate KING 5 News, “They are trying to make gun ownership a communicable disease, and it is really kind of stupid.”
Earlier in the week, SAF launched a national campaign to end so-called “gun-free zones.” It not only raised the hackles of the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility but served notice to anti-gunners across the map that just because the National Rifle Association currently appears to be in disarray, the gun rights movement overall remains aggressive and is maintaining its momentum.
According to the Health Board’s website, “In the absence of federal and state action on common-sense gun safety laws, King County must take action to protect our residents from gun violence. Much of this work must include shedding light on the impact firearms have on the health and safety of King County residents, while taking steps to limit their impact.” The proposed “gun safety” action plan agenda includes these items:
Require disclosure of information on health risks related to firearms. At retail locations, signs will be posted at entrances and where firearms are sold. At ranges, they will be posted at the entrance and where used. Signs will be available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Somali, Chinese, Korean, Ukrainian, Amharic and Punjabi on the Public Health – Seattle & King County website.
Require gun owners to securely store firearms and ammunition at all times, on all premises. (There is no definition of “secure storage” in the plan.)
Work with youth and young adults to assess and provide recommendations for reducing gun violence that they experience.
Require that the King County Sheriff’s Office destroy working forfeited weapons, including those that have been turned in by owners.
Establish a work group tasked with developing gun safety and gun violence prevention strategies based on proven public health models.
Alarming to gun owners was this footnote: “These proposals are just the beginning.”
This effort is spearheaded by King County Councilman Joe McDermott, a former state legislator and one-time congressional candidate who has pushed gun control in the past. When he ran to succeed former Congressman Jim McDermott (no relation), his campaign literature included this statement: “For too long, politicians in Washington DC have kowtowed to the National Rifle Association. It is past time that we pass tough background checks, ban military style assault weapons plaguing our communities and once and for all hold gun manufacturers liable for the over thirty thousand deaths they cause in our country every year.”
So, when McDermott recently asserted to the Seattle Times that he had no legislative goals, rights advocates including Gottlieb were incredulous, and not without reason. The county health board’s website offers action plan goals, and this statement:
“We expect and demand they (the Legislature) use their power to save lives, or at the very least, get out of the way and give us the local control to do it ourselves. If and when the state preemption law is repealed by the Washington State Legislature, the King County Gun Safety Action Plan will immediately move to:
Ban the sale and possession of semi-automatic, high velocity weapons
Ban the sale and possession of high capacity ammunition magazines
Raise the age to 21 for all firearm purchases and possession
Establish a waiting period before taking possession of a firearm after purchase
Require firearm safety training before taking possession of a firearm after purchase
Critics contend that this is the same “wish list” that Democrats and their gun control supports have been pushing in the Legislature in Olympia. High on that list is repeal of state preemption, which has been the law in Washington for more than 35 years. This statute has served as a model followed by other states in crafting their own preemption laws. Anti-gunners would like nothing better than to strike down the model.
There is no small irony in all of this. Gottlieb, in a conversation with Ammoland, noted that Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) – founded some years ago by pro-gun physicians – is now under the SAF umbrella and is an important project. One of DRGO’s main interests is what it calls “boundary violations,” when doctors begin asking patients about firearms in their homes. This happens all over the country.
Gottlieb personally has become a leader in a suicide prevention effort in Washington State. Working with the Forefront program at the University of Washington, he has brought together gun safety experts including retailers and range operators, to work with pharmacists and others to reduce suicides in Washington State. RELATED: Gun-Free Zones Are Shooting Galleries For Maniacs; End Them
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
