Ben Waimata
In the mid to late 1980s, there were over 60,000 SKS and SKK rifles imported to New Zealand from China. I had one of these rifles, they were cheap and effective, and most of them will be still serviceable. This one half-decade of imported rifles 30 years ago represents more than the total ‘buyback’ hand-ins. Even if there had not been a single semi-automatic rifle imported since 1990, the total achieved would still barely account for these rifles alone. Not to mention all the WW2 M1 carbines, Garands etc that have been used, and all the other semi-autos imported before 1990.
In truth, the number of semi-auto rifles imported since 1990 would be a lot higher than the number before that, and in the last few years some importers have been bringing in very large numbers of A-category AR15 rifles in particular, with cheap A-cat AK and SKS clones common for those wanting simpler firearms. Not to forget the huge number of sporting semi-automatics, and far larger again numbers of (usually not semi-automatic) .22, shotguns etc caught up in the mindless magazine law change rules.
Anyone who knows the industry at all understands what a small percentage of newly illegal firearms have been handed in, and what a huge number of (deliberate or inadvertent) new criminals New Zealand has. Anyone who has done even the most basic cost/benefit analysis will see that there was never a valid reason for what has been done.
Now for the first time we genuinely have firearms commonly ‘on the streets’. These are rifles that our esteemed Police minister tells us are designed “solely to kill people”, and they are carried by the police. So we assume the police now have a social licence to kill people? According to Nash, there is no other explanation for using them. The old E category licence allowing civilians to use these rifles has been removed, and these rifles are used by the police. Interestingly a recent OIA revealed that the degree of police vetting required to obtain an endorsed FAL (and own a pistol or MSSA etc) is actually higher than what is required to become a police officer!
Yeah we’re all safer, hundreds of thousands of new criminals who hide their firearms instead of keeping them in approved storage, massive discontent from the FAL community, and a newly armed police force with “weapons solely designed to kill people”.