New Zealand begins gun buyback after mosque killings

I think the majority of shotguns and rifles are owned by the farmers to protect their flocks.

In NZ, apart from the odd stray dog there aren't really any predators to go after livestock.

What should be done? Good question, but one that doesn't lend itself to simple, knee-jerk solutions (like banning a certain type of firearm). However, there isn't a solution that results in perfect safety.

The banning of a certain type of firearm is not a solution but it is one part of the equation to improve safety. There is not one action alone that can be taken and treated as a perfect solution.

As to your right to safety, there is no proof that a ban makes you safer. You are already safer than at any point in the last 100 years. Isn't that good enough?

No, it isn't good enough. They haven't stopped people from getting cancer but cancer treatments are better now than at anytime in the last 100 years. Is that good enough?

I do have to say I enjoy the feeling of schadenfreude watching the gun nuts freak out that people are going to watch NZ take action on guns that works.

This is something they REALLY don't want the public to see.

 1996- 354 murders, 1997- 364 murders, 1998- 334 murders, 1999-385 murders, 2000-362 murders.

2007 - 282 murders, 2013 - 273

Population in 1996 - 18.3 million, 2013 20.1 million.

Sorry, 2013 population was 23.2 million.

Attilathehungry

Concentrating on mass casualty events is used by many as a way to tug at the emotional heartstrings rather than make effective policy. Stopping mass shootings makes for good political coverage and all that, but nothing else.

No it isn't. You are ignoring the psychological effect mass events have on the population. Unfortunately, this mass shooting will also have such a long-lasting effect.

Such guns that the killer used in this attack have no real use in New Zealand except for mass shootings. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders have decided they don't want these guns in their country.

Responding to such events with action rather than 'thoughts and prayers' is the hallmark of a functioning democracy.

New Zealand opened a gun buyback scheme Thursday aimed at ridding the country of semi-automatic weapons similar to those used in the Christchurch mosque attacks that killed 51 Muslim worshippers.

Hope this is successful and I respect the good people of NZ enough to think it will be successful.

Get these filthy devices out of circulation. They are sickening.

It works.

The Australian man accused of the killings, Brenton Tarrant, is alleged to have used an arsenal of five weapons, including two military style semi-automatic rifles (MSSAs), in the attacks on two Christchurch mosques.

Yes, the ‘Australian’ man carried out the attack in New Zealand because the weapons were freely available to purchase, which is very unlike Australia where it is impossible to purchase military grade semi-automatic weapons. Tell me again how strict gun laws don’t stop mass-shootings.

Attilathehungry

No problem. It's a fair point. Mass shootings though, which is what the NFA buyback and ban were in response to, decreased dramatically.

One other fact, noted by Hemenway and Vriniotis in 2011: “While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the [Australia gun control law], resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres.”

This from a Vox article about the Margaret River shooting in 2018.

Haaa Nemui

True. I think they need them (and semi-autos, they argue) for pest control. Rabbits and mobs of feral goats that'll bolt after the first shot.

So with every legal firearm that is bought back under this system, the ratio of firearms in New Zealand that are in the possession of criminals increases accordingly.

Or it could decrease. After all, many criminals started out as upstanding citizens before they turned into a life of crime - they didn't start that way. With less upstanding citizens with guns, there can also be less upstanding-citizens-with-guns-turned-criminals in the future.

Attila

Thanks. And you.

There is a drop in the overall murder rate though. Like you said. And mass shootings aren't 'down' in Aus, they were basically non-existant for 22 years until ONE occured last year. USA? Not so much.

Stopping mass shootings makes for good political coverage and all that, but nothing else.

Yeah, tell that too the victims and ther families and see how that goes. Stopping mass shootings (if it was possible) will save lives. Anyways, does that mean nothing should be done? Thoughts and prayers? More guns?

As far as bans go, Sorry, my right to safety overrules gun-nuts' desire to play with their bang toys.

Let's also keep in mind that this mosque shooting Jacinda adores was actually stopped by a man with a gun. People like to ignore that part. The shooter had gone back to his car for another gun to continue shooting. A brave man threw a credit card machine at him but he simply tried to shoot at him and went back inside and continued shooting. When he went back to the car again, the brave man had picked up one of the empty guns and pointed it at the shooter, who fled. He wasn't going to stop until he saw that gun.

Let's also keep in mind that that particular gun would not have been there had the shooter not left it behind, and none of the shootings would have happened if he didn't have access to the guns in the first place. Not to take anything away from the hero (because he is a hero) who faced the shooter, but let's also keep in mind that the shooter was on his way to another site when two police officers who had just returned from a training exercise rammed his car and apprehended him therefore stopping possibly much more shooting. It was the police (appropriate people) who ultimately stopped more death.

Oh by the way, our police force don't typically carry guns on them. In the event of an emergency, they have to go get them. Safe, right!

Always was in the past. An active shooter (usually part of a domestic incident) would see the AOS called out to stop further escalation of a situation and ultimately shut it down. Unfortunately there have been losses of life in these incidents but the public at large have always been very safe.

Also try to remember that the people who may have an argument for holding these types of guns, farmers, are also often targeted for home invasions and theft by gangs because it is known that these people do have guns. The more of these guns that are owned privately, the more likely gangs will get hold of them.

I get that you don't like Jacinda. That's fine. I also agree that the authorities have been unnecessarily heavy handed. People do not however need access to the types of guns that have been banned.

Oh no!,

shocking! less guns less gun crime

who would have thought that?

crims kill crims with guns. If they can get them.

nutcases are stymied and resort to kitchen knives.

love the arguments above for owning military grade weapons.

"should be able to spray a crowd of people if I want to. It's my second amendment right"

The bad guy with a gun vs good guy with a gun analogy used in this instance is garbage. It's designed simply to instill fear - "OMG how can we defend ourselves against people with guns?" The reason it's garbage is in NZ the only people who are allowed to carry guns publicly to face the so called bad guys are law enforcement officials anyway. Any other "good guy" carrying a gun in public would have been breaking the law (and actually be a bad guy) even before the ban on these particular weapons. Therefore it's extremely unlikely that anybody actually following the law would have been in a position to face a "bad guy with a gun" with a gun of their own. It's seriously a load of garbage in relation to this ban.

The problem is the person wielding the weapon, not the weapon

A few weeks back there was a knife attack in Noborito. There is no dispute from me that the perpetrator had a problem. Many people have mentioned how he managed to inflict so much damage in just 20 seconds using only a knife. But don't kid yourself. The amount of destruction in 20 seconds if he had used a semi automatic assault rifle would have been much greater.

@Brian Wheway - crows and rooks... Very few areas in NZ. Magpies, yes but they don't generally go after large livestock, perhaps will scavenge a carcass though. Pigeons... yes, but they don't make a nuisance of themselves at all around livestock either. The kea is a bird which causes problems for some farmers but only in alpine areas and it's also a protected species. Yes there are pests around but not really predators that go after livestock. Exactly what I stated before.

AttilathehungryJune 20  11:10 pm JST

Hammer, I get it. You care about mass shootings. I care about overall murders.

Cant we care about both? If you go to hospital with two broken arms, the doctor doesn't just set one. Anyway, thanks for the discussion.

Those who really think they need guns should really try living and walking in the streets at night in places that ban guns.

The NRA in the USA has a very strong hold on guns and the laws, most weeks in the US we see a mass murder of some description, The new Zealand government has got a back bone and is banning the ownership of assault type rifles, America, take note it can be done, ref to tightening up firearms laws and the ownership of various weapons.

.

GHammer, thank-you for proving my point. The murder rate drop was in no way related to the assault weapon ban.

Jacinda played on the emotions of the people by using a tragedy to force through her rules without asking the public or even other politicians what they thought. She has labelled her own citizens criminals.

Before this new scheme took affect, she had authorised gun raids against innocent citizens:

"One of the complaints is from a Christchurch contractor who says a rifle was levelled at his 12-year-old daughter during a raid on his home by police acting under the Search and Surveillance Act. The act allows police to search an address without a warrant."

Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/112872575/complaints-about-heavyhanded-raids-on-gun-owners-land-at-ipca

The buyback laws will be giving the gun owners almost nothing compared to what they paid for it depending on the "condition" the police decide the gun is in. While perfect condition will receive 95%, average condition receives 70% and "poor" condition receives 25% of what they paid for it.

Don't worry if you have a gun not on the police list though, you can pay $120 and they'll check it for you....

Let's also keep in mind that this mosque shooting Jacinda adores was actually stopped by a man with a gun. People like to ignore that part. The shooter had gone back to his car for another gun to continue shooting. A brave man threw a credit card machine at him but he simply tried to shoot at him and went back inside and continued shooting. When he went back to the car again, the brave man had picked up one of the empty guns and pointed it at the shooter, who fled. He wasn't going to stop until he saw that gun.

Source: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/111343093/man-who-scared-away-gunman-at-christchurch-mosque-hailed-a-hero

Jacinda banned the viewing of the video and the reading of the manifesto, making it illegal to know exactly what happened. Then allowed the media to lie about him saying things like he was Christian or far-right etc. They call him a white supremacist but he highly admired the Chinese for their structure of government. But all we know about him and his way of thinking comes from a few people who got to read the information themselves before it became a crime. People have already been charged as criminals for having this information.

Jacinda put on a hijab and had her picture taken and posted everywhere, making her the face of the mosque attacks and taking the focus away from the real victims. Does anyone remember the real victims' faces now? Or just the big Jacinda mural painted in Australia?

She tried to cancel our annual Anzac Day remembrance ceremonies of our fallen soldiers, because it was supporting "violence". 58 services were cancelled.

The taken guns weren't even being held safely. A man stole 11 guns from a POLICE STATION after they had been handed in. Luckily the police have found the man and taken them back.

Oh and I suppose taking all the guns will keep the people of New Zealand safer because less bad people will have guns right? Well here's a word from our friendly neighbourhood gang leader:

"Gang members will not be handing in their guns following the law reform announced by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, a Mongrel Mob leader has said."

Don't worry, he assures us gangs will only use guns for gang-on-gang violence. I'm sure they won't take advantage of the disarmed population. Oh by the way, our police force don't typically carry guns on them. In the event of an emergency, they have to go get them. Safe, right!

Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12217785

Jacinda has also been talking about limiting free speech and social networking sights. Already police have been harassing citizens for posts they've made on the internet.

Evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tKEjSVhj-Q

The police officer in this video has even brought his gun with him as if this citizen is a threat because of his opinions.

"The Prime Minister isn't ruling out changing laws that could go as far as blocking Facebook if it's used to share extremist or violent content like the alleged Christchurch gunman's video of the March 15 terror attack."

She needs a disarmed population to control what we say, and she's not quiet about it. She's using the mosque tragedy to push her agenda; it was never about the victims for her.

Source: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/05/jacinda-ardern-won-t-rule-out-blocking-facebook-if-used-to-spread-extremist-content.html

@haaa numb, ref no natural predators, are you telling me you have NO crows, rooks, magpies, or pigeons? there is also call for using in farms shot guns for pest control

GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS

The police took 36 minutes to stop the killer despite being in a major city, while the shooting was in a "gun free" zone. Fortunately the killer was scared away from the second mosque by a good guy with a gun, Abdul Aziz, who had picked up an empty shotgun the shooter had dropped, and was later arrested by armed police.

Free adults have a legal right to defend themselves but the NZ government made it illegal to carry a gun for defence against bad guys with guns, thus are complicit in mass murder. This government is now putting a gun to the heads of free adults including Muslims who survived this shooting spree and ordering them to hand over their legally obtained but now banned guns "or else".

Political elites allow the media to glorify criminal gun violence in order to promote copycat killings they can exploit to further their desire to disarm the lower classes of practical defensive weapons in order to empower the security forces which protect their class. This makes them fascist terrorists, who are in bed with neo-Nazis who urge people to murder minorities with legally available guns so they will all be banned, in order to facilitate the murder of democracy and state perpetrated crimes against humanity like ethic cleansing and genocide as in Germany, Rwanda and Myanmar.

Time for Americans to hand in all of their weapons too.

As an NRA member, I can tell you with certainty, that will never happen.

Hammertime; thanks for the reply. No denying that mass shootings are down in Australia- in the US too. But, at risk of sounding cold blooded, so what? If there is no overall drop in the murder rate then the drop in mass killings is statistically meaningless. It doesn't matter if 10 people are killed in each of 10 incidents, or 100 individual murders occur, the end result is the same- 100 lives lost.

Concentrating on mass casualty events is used by many as a way to tug at the emotional heartstrings rather than make effective policy. Stopping mass shootings makes for good political coverage and all that, but nothing else.

It's a tragic situation.However, tragedy often is the impetus for bad legislation and policy. If you look at the statistics of similar laws in Australia and the USA, you can see that there was no real impact.

First, we need to have a concrete definition of what a MMSA is, other than a scary looking rifle. Next, we need to determine whether or not these weapons are actually used in many crimes. In the US, long guns of ALL kinds (rifles, shotguns) are used in only a minute fraction of murders. I'd be willing to bet that the same is true in New Zealand.

Criminals will get weapons. No law will stop them. It will only punish those who have done nothing wrong.

Stranger: if you check the homicide rates in Australia pre and post gun buyback, there was no discernable change. The rate started falling in the late 1980s and continued to fall through the 2010s. The buyback did not cause the rate to fall faster, it simply maintained the same pattern. Ironically, in the years immediately following the law (1996) the murder rate actually briefly surged, then resumed falling at the previous rate. 1996- 354 murders, 1997- 364 murders, 1998- 334 murders, 1999-385 murders, 2000-362 murders.

Same in the US. The murder rate was already dropping when the assault weapons ban was passed into law. It kept dropping afterwards at the same rate. Again, no noticeable impact. This may again be due to the fact that rifles are not used in the vast majority of murders, nor even in the vast majority of firearms murders. Actually, fists are used more often to kill than rifles in the USA.

Good on NZ if that’s what the government want, thankfully that I’d not coming to the US?

Hammer, I get it. You care about mass shootings. I care about overall murders. And causation or correlation. In the case of Australia, I haven't found any reliable source to prove that the drop in murder rate was due to the anti-gun legislation. The rate dropped for years before the law, and kept dropping after it. Didn't suddenly drop by a greater amount. Just stayed on the same downwards trajectory. So, this suggests that the law did not have any discernible impact on the homicide rate.

Decreasing, or even eliminating mass shootings does nothing to make the country safer. It's an illusion.

As to the victims, this is simply an emotional argument. As I said, there is no evidence that the laws had any impact. And seeing politicians standing on the graves of crime victims and using their tragedy to push their personal agendas is sickening.

What should be done? Good question, but one that doesn't lend itself to simple, knee-jerk solutions (like banning a certain type of firearm). However, there isn't a solution that results in perfect safety. As to your right to safety, there is no proof that a ban makes you safer. You are already safer than at any point in the last 100 years. Isn't that good enough?

Haa: how is safety improved when there are no results as the result of the ban? Particularly a ban on a weapon that is so rarely used in any kind of crime to begin with? Not sure about NZ or Oz, but in the US only 6% of all homicides were committed using all kinds of long guns. So even if, and it's a big if, ALL those murders magically disappeared because the weapon of choice disappeared, it is little more than a rounding error.

However, that's not reality. They can easily be replaced with other weapons, other firearms. The 6% includes regular hunting rifles, shotguns, as well as so-called 'assault weapons', meaning that the impact is even smaller. So, IF it is part of the equation to ban them, it is a very very small part.

The problem is the person wielding the weapon, not the weapon.

So with every legal firearm that is bought back under this system, the ratio of firearms in New Zealand that are in the possession of criminals increases accordingly. Brilliant.

Very sad day.

Fewer firearms available to everyone means less firearm violence.

I believe firearm violence depends on the number of firearms AND the bad-guy-with-gun : good-gut-with gun ratio. This buy back will decrease the first, but increase the second.

In the right hands, guns can decrease violence, as well as decrease the chances of falling under a dictatorship.

BTW, I am not American...