Rushed law is bad law and yesterday just how bad the rushed New Zealand gun legislation actually was has been revealed in an article on Newsie.
In the days following the Christchurch terror attacks, politicians rushing to pass new laws mistakenly agreed to ban magazines for all firearms.
Could this possibly be the worst case of incompetence displayed by the coalition government thus far? They banned magazines for ALL firearms.
They only paid lip service to consulting the public and raced to create a new law without all the normal checks and balances that we the voting public would expect from a competent government.
Let me say it one more time. They banned magazines for ALL firearms. That is appalling. We should be grateful that they are not rushing their proposed changes to abortion law least they accidentally make abortion compulsory!
Thank goodness the police intervened to stop the government from “mistakenly” making it illegal for guns to have magazines. Without their input, the legislation would have gone through and gun owners all over New Zealand would have been stuck with guns that were only legal if they were missing a key component. It would be like saying that cars are legal but car tyres are not.
Critics of the firearms law changes said the process was too rushed, and not enough time was given for submissions on the amendments to the act.
Newsie
The documents show some early errors were picked up by police, while other concerns were dealt with when the bill was brought to Parliament less than two weeks later.
[…] The report also showed how little police knew about the number of firearms that would need to be seized.
[…] Police still do not know how many now banned guns there are in New Zealand.
Really it is a comedy of errors. The government rush the legislation which has a serious error and the police are tasked with seizing a completely unknown number of firearms from unknown owners at unknown locations. Perhaps we should rename the government the Coalition Comedy Company.