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The New Zealand government is working to reform its complex and draconian firearms law.
In 2019, a far-left ideologue mass murdered dozens of Muslims in New Zealand. One of his goals was to promote draconian gun laws in New Zealand and in the United States. He succeeded in New Zealand. Many extreme restrictions on firearms and ownership were piled onto already restrictive laws.
Far Left PM Jacinda Ardern was successful in pushing through the draconian law on a wave of media maximized emotion. As part of the pushback to these draconian exercises of power, the Hon. Nicole McKee was elected as a member of parliament for the ACT party in the election of 2020.
Associate Minister of Justice, Hon. Nicole McKee, was interviewed in 2024 by deerstalkers.org.nz:
Labour’s firearm law changes in 2019 affected everybody, not just hunters. Although, in saying that, hunters are a massive part of the licenced-firearms-owning community.
I recall when the kids were small, and hubby was studying, the only way we got meat on our table at home was when I went out and hunted for it. We could not afford supermarket meat.
The real motivation came in 2019. I was running my own business, running firearms licencing courses in rural and isolated communities.
I realised when the 2019 changes came into effect that they would affect everybody, not just the hunters, as I mentioned, but also target shooters, collectors, pest controllers and so on.
In the New Zealand election of 14 October 2023, the three conservative parties won 67 seats, while the far left parties dropped 21 seats to a total of 55. This was a tremendous repudiation of the far left in New Zealand. Gun owners are only 5% of the population of New Zealand.
Nicole McKee was elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 2020. She is a member of ACT, a conservative/libertarian party in New Zealand. ACT has 11 of the 67 conservative seats. The conservative coalition government started a process to reform the draconian gun law shortly after being elected. McKee is heading up the effort. From the Hon Nicole McKee June 1, 2024:
“Cabinet has agreed to the registry review terms of reference and the review is now underway,” Associate Minister of Justice, Hon Nicole McKee says.
The Hon Nicole McKee has been keeping people informed of the new government’s progress on reforming the disastrous and confusing laws passed in 2019. Here are excerpts from her releases. Americans will realize that defense of self and others, or militia use for the common defense, are not mentioned. From a September 11, 2024 ,release:
“I am focused on producing the best firearms laws in the world – laws that are easy to comply with and improve public safety.
“The previous Labour Government’s rushed, knee-jerk law changes have not made New Zealanders safer. More people were convicted of a firearm-related offence in 2023 than in 2019 – up 18 per cent.
From a December 17, 2024, release:
“Most firearms users are law abiding and responsible people. Many New Zealanders use firearms to hunt for food for their families, to control introduced pests, in farming and agriculture, and in sporting and competitive events.
All these activities are legitimate. They are all important because they benefit communities and help protect our natural environment.”
“The safety of our communities is at the heart of an effective firearms regime; it is important that everyone has confidence in how firearms are controlled. For that reason, everyone has a role to play in the rewrite of the Act. This upcoming round of public consultation is the first step in hearing from all New Zealanders about their views.”
From a release on March 2, 2025:
Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPOs) are made by the court when offenders have committed serious violent offences. They are in force for 10 years – prohibiting offenders from holding a firearms licence, and from being around or accessing firearms. Breaching the conditions of an FPO is a criminal offence, and offenders that do breach conditions can be liable for up to seven years in prison.
Legal Firearms Owner is abbreviated as LFO in the releases. From a November 11, 2025, press release by the Hon. Nicole McKee, Associate Minister of Justice:
“The current law has been modified dozens of times since it came into force over 40 years ago with many of those changes being rushed through with little to no scrutiny.
The result is a complex, confusing and bureaucratic patchwork that makes it difficult for LFOs to comply while not adequately keeping the public safe.
“The new law will be written in plain English, structured logically and with public safety at its core. It makes it much more difficult for firearms to get into the hands of criminals while allowing LFOs to continue to use their firearms safely and responsibly.
Some parts of the reform effort appear to be making the law more severe. New Zealand does not have a Second Amendment. Firearm owners are only five percent of the population.
From Hon. Nicole McKee’s release:
“Penalties for over 60 Arms Act offences will be increased, and eight new offences will be created – including new offences to reduce firearms entering the black market such as for straw buying and possessing a firearm with identification markings intentionally removed.
The Hon Nicole McKee is an impressive woman. She appears to be doing the best she can with the situation as it exists. With only five percent of the population as legal gun owners and no Second Amendment, she is pushing for the rule of law when it comes to firearm ownership in New Zealand.
The assumption is that firearms ownership will be legal if the rules are followed. She is focusing on making the rules clear and easy to follow.
It may be the best that can be expected in New Zealand. The law is in the formative stage. We will not know the particulars until it actually passes the New Zealand parliament.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973.
He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
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Springfield Echelon 4.0 Compact
The Man is just amazing and the next time I am in the UK. I am going to buy a bottle and see how good it is! Grumpy
The Colt M1911 automatic pistol remains a competitive defensive tool even today. Back in 1934, it was a paradigm-shifting design.
Baby Face Nelson’s handgun of choice was the Colt M1911. Some were.38 Super, while others were .45 ACP. He used both the stock version as well as full-auto conversions made by famed mob gunsmith Hyman Lebman.
Some folks just come from the factory broken. How much of it is nature versus nurture has occupied psychologists for ages. Oftentimes, those broken people live out their lives until they do something sufficiently egregious as to earn incarceration and anonymity. Others can be a bit flashier.
Lester Joseph Gillis, aka Baby Face Nelson, was tragically born without a conscience. Photo: Public Domain
The Origins of the Monster
Lester Joseph Gillis was born in December 1908 in Chicago. He shot his first man at age 12. Gillis happened upon a handgun and popped a buddy in the jaw over some perceived slight or other. He spent the next year in reform school but stole his first car immediately upon his release. This earned him another year and a half behind bars.
Such aberrant behavior has a name these days. Had Lester Gillis been born in the Information Age, he would have been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorderand put on all sorts of psychoactive medications. He then still would have pursued a life of crime and spent most of his adult life in prison.
As it was, Lester Gillis represented an odd convergence in the human species. A loving father, an affectionate husband and a born leader, Gillis was also a psychopath who came of age amidst the Great Depression. All that stuff synergistically combined to make him a legend.
Gillis learned his craft as part of a gang of “strippers.” Their MO involved stripping the tires off people’s cars and selling them on the black market. In his early 20s, he graduated to armed robbery.
His gang secured their victims with tape before ransacking their homes. They became known as the Tape Bandits in the press.
In a single hit on a magazine executive named Charles Richter in January of 1930, the Tape Bandits made off with $205,000 in jewelry. That would be about $3.6 million today. Once Gillis got a taste of the good life, he couldn’t stop.
One of his armed robbery victims later said of Gillis, “He had a baby face. He was good looking, hardly more than a boy, had dark hair and was wearing a grey topcoat and a brown felt hat, turned down brim.”
Gillis’ mates called him Jimmy. However, newspapermen coined the nom de guerre “Baby Face” Nelson. He carried that name with him to his grave. Thanks to his sordid profession, that didn’t take long.
The M1921 Colt Thompson got all the press, but Depression-era gangsters used a wide variety of weapons. Many of them came from Hyman Lebman’s San Antonio gun shop.
The M1921 Colt Thompson submachine gun was the ideal tool for the professional bank robber who was not overly concerned with collateral damage. When equipped with a 50-round drum, the Thompson was a devastating close-range weapon.
The Monster Comes of Age
What really set Nelson apart from his peers was his willingness to just blow people away as the need arose. He killed his first man, a robbery victim named Edwin Thompson when he was 22.
In 1933, during a getaway from a bank robbery in Brainerd, MN, Nelson sprayed a crowd of bystanders with his Thompson submachine gun. The following year he got cut off in traffic by a paint salesman in Chicago and shot the man to death.
Normally such a fulminant temper and congenital lack of conscience would be a bad thing. However, once Nelson met John Dillinger, he weaponized his psychopathy into something altogether marketable.
In April of 1934, Nelson, Dillinger, Dillinger’s best mate Homer Van Meter, John “Red” Hamilton, Tommy Carroll, Pat Reilly, Nelson’s wife Helen, and three bits of female arm candy descended upon the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, WI, for some down time.
Emil Wanatka owned Little Bohemia. While playing cards with Dillinger, he noticed his holstered handgun and informed his wife. She had a friend call the feds. Legendary G-Man Melvin Purvis gathered a few FBI guys and hit the place. The end result was a bloodbath.
Eugene Boisneau, John Hoffman and John Morris were just three normal guys who had dropped by for the famed Little Bohemia $1 Sunday night special.
They were climbing into their 1933 Chevrolet Coupe just as the FBI agents arrived. It was dark, and somebody squeezed a trigger. Boisneau was killed outright. His two pals were shot to pieces but survived. Tragically, the gunfire also activated Dillinger and company.
Everyone but Nelson fled into the woods. Nelson just snatched up his Thompson and charged out the front door, exchanging fire with Purvis himself. His audacious assault bought him enough time to escape.
Nelson subsequently hijacked several cars and took a total of seven hostages. He winnowed the crop down to three and was climbing into yet another stolen vehicle when FBI agents Jay Newman and W. Carter Baum, along with local constable Carl Christensen, arrived. Nelson embraced the fog of war, confidently approaching their car and asking the men to identify themselves. The G-Men did so, and Nelson hosed them down with a full-auto M1911 pistol.
The Colt Thompson and the Colt M1911 pistol (below, center) made for a smart match for many a Depression-era criminal.
Gunsmith to the Stars
Hyman Lebman was a San Antonio gunsmith who serviced an eclectic clientele. He sold hunting weapons, cowboy boots and saddles upstairs in his shop at 111 South Flores Street.
However, he kept the really good stuff in the basement. Back before the 1934 National Firearms Act, there were literally no rules governing firearms. Machine guns were available over the counter, cash and carry. You didn’t have to show a driver’s license because nobody had a driver’s license. Lebman thrived in this space. More than a few Chicago gangsters vacationed in San Antonio as a result.
Lebman sold Thompson submachine guns as the opportunities arose. He was also known for two custom weapons in particular. He converted the Winchester M1907 rifle to full-auto and added a Cutts compensator, extended magazine and the vertical foregrip from a Tommy gun.
Homer van Meter used a Lebman M1907 to kill patrolman Howard Wagner during a bank robbery in South Bend, IN, in 1934. His masterwork, however, was what he called his baby machine gun. Hyman Lebman’s full-auto 1911 pistols raised the bar on concealable firepower.
Lebman offered these converted 1911 machine pistols in both .45 ACP and .38 Super. Some were selective fire, while others were full-auto-only. At one point, Lebman was testing an early prototype in his basement and shot a row of holes through the floor above, narrowly missing his son Marvin.
The guns could be had with a modified Cutts compensator, the foregrip from a Thompson submachine gun and an extended magazine packing either 18 or 22 rounds, depending upon the caliber. These Lebman mini machine guns cycled at more than 1,000 rpm.
In 1933, Nelson, his wife, Helen and their son, Ronald, along with infamous gangster Homer Van Meter, had Thanksgiving dinner with the Lebmans in their home. Nelson subsequently left with five full-auto babies in .38 Super, four standard Colt 1911 pistols in .45 ACP and a pair of Thompsons. Nelson gave $300 apiece for the Thompsons — 50% above retail.
The Colt M1911 pistol was concealable, reliable, powerful and accurate. It was a common weapon for the motorized bandits of the 1930s.
1930s-era criminals preferred handguns like these for their concealability and firepower.
This is the bulletproof vest Baby Face Nelson wore
during his bank robberies. Photo: FBI
The Death of the Monster
Following the demise of Dillinger and Van Meter at the hands of police, Nelson became the FBI’s Public Enemy Number 1.
On November 27, 1934, Gillis and John Paul Chase engaged in a shootout with federal agents Samuel Crowley and Herman Hollis at a turnout in Barrington, IL. Nelson killed the two G-Men with a Colt Monitor BAR but caught eight buckshot in his legs and a single .45 ACP bullet to the belly for his trouble.
The .45 ACP round punched through his liver and pancreas. Baby Face Nelson bled out and died later that evening in his wife Helen’s arms. He was 25 years old. It seems a fitting end for the serendipitous psychopath.
Hyman Lebman, for his part, had to stop his machine gun business after the passage of the 1934 NFA. However, he worked as a gunsmith in San Antonio into the 1970s. His son Marvin later described the visiting gangsters as “men in nice suits and hats.” Hyman Lebman, the unofficial armorer to the mob, eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease in 1990.
Soldiers have some of the coolest toys. However, you have
to suffer a great deal to really play with them.
A dear friend was once a grunt with the 173rd Airborne Brigade posted in Vicenza, Italy. The 173rd is a storied paratrooper unit whose origins date back to 1917. Its members are called the Sky Soldiers. I’ve heard the 173rd described as, “The most fit group of alcoholic sociopaths in the known universe.”
Any healthy society venerates its warriors. Failure to do so is a great way to become conquered. However, along the way, sometimes reality gets a bit blurred.
If you shape your opinions from movies and the media, you could be forgiven for believing that American soldiers are all like John Rambo — rock hard super troops with chiseled physiques and ice water for blood. That was not my experience.
For the most part, even our elite special operations forces are really just souped up kids. They are indeed fit and exquisitely well-trained. They also have some of the neatest toys. However, even the new O-6 full Colonels are typically not yet 40 years old. The actual trigger pullers are often just teenagers.
As an aside, my wife’s grandfather fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War II. He once told me that a soldier should never remain in combat for more than a year. He said that, after about 12 months under fire, a man gets mean and is no longer afraid of anything. You cannot threaten him with court martial, peer pressure, or any other such vapid corporeal stuff.
I would actually assert that 19-year-olds make the best soldiers. Anything younger and you lack the requisite self-confidence. Much older and you start to question things. If the Big Green Machine was populated by old guys like me, we would, to pirate a phrase from the classic sci-fi opus Aliens, “Just nuke the site from orbit … it’s the only way to be sure.” It is that extraordinary teenaged sweet spot about which we will concern ourselves today.
Communal Suffering
Soldiers are subjected to corporate hardship for a variety of sound reasons. One is that sleep deprivation and hunger are combat analogues. Going without food and sleep reliably ratchets up the stress without a great deal of unnecessary risk.
As a side benefit, it is those ghastly road marches and protracted deployments that give you bragging rights with your grandchildren decades later. If you use a little poetic license describing how horrible it all was, they’ll never know the difference.
My buddy’s platoon was deployed to the field for a month. During this time, they conducted patrol base operations and ran tactical missions like recons and raids. As they were living in the field, that meant MREs for food and no showers for a full 30 days.
I’ve done that before myself and didn’t much care for it. However, over time you reach a sort of dirt stasis. Old dirt has to fall off to make room for new dirt. Once you find that filth balance, you attain a sort of unhygienic Zen. Most folks are good with it. And then there was this one idiot guy …
The M107 water carrier consists of a 400-gallon aluminum water tank mounted on a military trailer.
Details
While my friend’s unit was living tactically, they still required support. The easiest way to keep these guys in fresh water was to give them a dedicated water buffalo. The military designation was the M107. This was a giant 400-gallon aluminum tank mounted on a military trailer all painted camouflage. Everybody everywhere called them water buffaloes.
The M107 is pretty simple. There’s a big hatch on top to make them easy to fill, and spigots on the side so several soldiers can get water at once. The design is pretty stupid-proof.
In this case, they parked the water buffalo in the middle of the patrol base and just cycled by as needed to recharge canteens and get water to shave, brush their teeth, and so forth. Four hundred gallons should be enough to last 30 guys for a good while. However, over time, they began to notice something weird about the taste.
He said at first, they all assumed it was just that obligatory dearth of hygiene. However, late one evening, my friend dropped by the water buffalo to top off his canteen. While there, he heard something sloshing around inside. Producing his red lens flashlight, he carefully climbed up on top of the water buffalo and cracked the hatch.
He was shocked to discover one of his fellow grunts happily bathing inside the thing. This flaming moron was scrubbing down with soap and a dishrag, effectively ridding himself of his accumulated grunge. My buddy shouted for assistance and unceremoniously dragged the slippery miscreant out of the tank.
The platoon leader placed the young man under arrest and remanded him to their higher headquarters. Part of that was due to the rank stupidity he had shown in bathing in the unit’s drinking water. More importantly, however, it was to prevent my buddy and his fellow paratroopers from, no kidding, murdering him.
When I think back to my time in uniform, I remember being dirty a lot.
Ruminations
The unit scored a fresh water buffalo, and the guys all had the willies for a few days. My buddy had no idea what ultimately became of the mad bather. He never came back. I somehow doubt he had a long and productive career as a soldier.
I imagine, given his simply breathtaking proclivity toward poor judgment, that he eventually ended up incarcerated someplace. Wherever it is, I do hope they have nice showers.
Jug and Skeeter stylishly portraited by Mike “Doc” Barranti.
The phone rang and I answered with trepidation. You know the feeling. Something just doesn’t sound right with the ring, and you know it’s either bad news or someone you don’t particularly want to hear from. In this case, it was the latter. As soon as I heard the bumbling, “Hey, Skeet, ol’ buddy,” I knew exactly who it was.
You guys may recall Jug Johnson. Jug aspired to be a gun writer but struck it rich with mineral rights on a sliver of land he bought, complete with a run down, tar paper shack cabin.
Seems this sliver of land accessed a huge natural gas field, a super-giant of a reserve, which resulted in monthly royalty checks exceeding $200,000. Talk about dumb luck. And more proof that dimwits can get lucky while the rest of us continue working daily just to get by.
With the money, Jug bought a huge, articulated RV that was bigger than a Greyhound bus and leased 50,000 acres of prime hunting ground.
“Wanna’ go huntin’, Skeet?” he said. “Season opens in a coupla’ days?”
I had to admit, the offer, along with the opportunity of busting a deer with my 7.5” Ruger flattop was tempting.
“We can take the RV and set up camp with it. I’ll pick you up at your place in Horsethief, if you want?” he said.
Door-to-door service to one of the top mule deer spots in the state was enticing. I guess I could put up with Jug’s stupid questions and remarks for a few days.
Jug’s RV was a little on the large size to say the least.
The Trip
At quarter to five, I was dreaming of Pancho Villa and his crew of henchmen charging me in Columbus, New Mexico. I dreamt I was stationed there and heard bugles, signaling the charge.
I was manning the Hotchkiss M1909 Benet-Mercie machine gun and had just pulled the bolt back. The dream seemed so real, I could still hear the bugles after I woke up; only they were playing “La Cucaracha” now.
Then, I heard the sound of air brakes hissing as they lost pressure. Peering through my bedroom shades, I saw the biggest RV ever made and Jug Johnson behind the wheel. He ordered the RV with an air horn that blasted “La Cucaracha” when hitting the horn.
Walking down the three steps of the RV, the dimwitted Jug grinned through his prominent overbite, adjusting his too small cowboy hat and hitching his britches as he headed for the house. I greeted him at the front door after turning on my preloaded coffee percolator.
“Grab yourself a cup of coffee while I clean up, Jug.”
After I brushed my teeth, washed my face and ran a comb through my thinning hair, I met Jug in the kitchen. He was holding an ice cube on his tongue, sputtering more unintelligibly than usual, “Thang, that cothees HOT!”
Shaking my head, I grabbed a cup, laughing to myself, thinking maybe he wouldn’t ask me so many questions during the three-hour drive with a scalded tongue. I could only hope.
As Jug drove, I napped. Before you knew it, we were pulling up to the lease. While Jug leveled the RV and set up camp, I gathered firewood for the pit, along with water from the stream. We cooked beef steak, cut into cubes and strung on whittled sticks, while sipping some good sour mash whiskey. We turned in early, knowing we’d be up well before the sun.
Skeeter’s 7.5” flattop with shed antler.
The “infamous” blood trail.
The Hunt
We were up by 0400. drinking coffee and planning the hunt. Jug towed his new ATV on a trailer so we wouldn’t have to walk much getting to our vantage points. I was going to be nestled in a pinyon thicket where the bucks liked to bed down after eating soybean all night. On my way to my stand, I found a nice Muley shed antler. Maybe I’ll be lucky today, I thought to myself.
Jug was going to high ground, up in the cliffs, where he usually hunted, taking advantage of some new wildcat he designed with lots of reach. I forget the particulars, only that he had to replace his barrel after every 150 rounds, or so, on account of it burning the throat out.
We were in our spots 45 minutes before daybreak. Around 0815, I heard a far-off shot sounding like a NASA rocket launching into space followed by a huge sonic boom.
It had to be Jug. In all honesty, it woke me from a light doze. I was looking around, gathering my senses, when I noticed a nice, chunky 4×4 muley sneaking through the pinyon. I patiently waited for him to close the distance, as he headed right for me.
He was totally unaware of my presence. Before sitting down, I had drawn my flattop and placed it next to me on my backpack for faster access and less movement.
I picked up the flattop and cocked the hammer, placing my left thumb in front of the hammer to prevent any negligent discharge. When the buck was 35 yards from me, I removed my thumb and lined up my sights.
When all seemed perfect, I started my trigger press. The exploding cartridge startled me, and the buck did a perfect “mule kick” indicating a heart shot and ran back downhill.
After a relaxing smoke, I holstered my gun and headed toward the buck. Before getting to him, I heard Jug coming in on his ATV. I guess he was good for something after all.
“Did ya get him, Skeet? I heard your shot,” he said.
“I think so. My sight picture felt good as the hammer broke and that 429421 HP should have taken care of him,” I replied.
We found my buck 45 yards from where I shot him.
“What about you, Jug? I heard you shoot. Did you get one too?” I said.
Jug looked dejected.
“I think I crippled one. That’s why I was coming over here. To see if you could help me find him?”
We loaded up my deer and headed over to where Jug shot his deer.
“I was sitting up there, by that big boulder and he was standing right around here,” he said.
We saw some hair, but no blood trail.
“Where’d you see him run off to? We’ll see if we can pick up any sign as we go,” I asked.
It reminded me of my border patrol days, tracking down illegals.
Jug’s Muley. Some guys are just lucky.
Jug said he saw the buck disappear into a dry creek bed. We followed the creek bed, but didn’t see anything for a half mile. Every hundred yards or so, we’d stop, stand up and glass, looking for any sign.
We turned around and headed in the other direction and went for about another half mile past where we started. We still didn’t see anything, so we turned around and headed back to camp.
We only went a few feet when Jug said, “I see blood, Skeet!” He was getting excited now. So, we followed the sign.
“Look here, Skeet. He must have stopped; there’s a lot of blood here.” Looking down, I saw several drops of blood and wondered how we ever missed it? We follow the trail for about ½ of a mile and it stops. We looked around to see if the buck jumped out of the creek bed, but didn’t see anything.
I told him, “Let’s turn around and see if we can’t figure something out, Jug.”
“Look Skeet, another blood trail, he must have doubled back on us!” he said.
We followed the two blood trails, one going east and the other going west, when it occurred to me what was happening. I started chuckling and Jug asked me what was so funny.
With tears in my eyes, I asked,” What’s in back of your ATV?”
“Huh? Why it’s your deer, Skeet.”
“Exactly, and what do you notice about the deer, Jug?”
Jug studied the deer like he was trying to order for an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Why, he’s bled out a lot, Skeet.”
“Exactly! Now get out and look at the back of your ATV.”
Jug started laughing too, now.
“Skeet, we’ve been tracking your deer leaking blood out of the ATV.”
Ironically, as we headed back to camp, we recovered Jug’s deer. He was a real whopper too, but with no visible sign of a hit.
As far as I could tell that huge bullet of Jug’s was going so fast that it created a vacuum of sorts and sucked all the air out of its lungs, killing it instantly. I’d have never believed it, if I hadn’t seen it myself. I guess some guys really are just lucky.