Nicole McKee
Spokesperson
Fair and Reasonable Campaign
Parliament was back last week, and despite the Government originally having the Arms Legislation Bill at the top of the Parliamentary Order Paper (that is the official agenda of Parliament) it kept being pushed back and delayed. This Stuff headline may sum it up:
On Friday Radio NZ has reported the government “remains divided” and this week’s delay means that “any hope Labour had of passing legislation in time for the March 15 one year anniversary is now lost”.
What does this mean?
With the Anniversary to be missed, we say it is even more logical to now wait until the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Christchurch reports back at the end of April, before making any decisions on the Bill. That is certainly our message to MPs.
Police Association pulling out all stops
It appears that our opponents are starting to get worried. This week they were touring the studios calling for an end of the “political point-scoring” and for MPs to “do the right thing”. That’s code for not liking our campaign, or our friends in Parliament pointing out the risks of a firearms register. For them, the “right thing” is what they say is right, not what law-abiding firearms owners like you and me think.
I joined TVNZ’s Breakfast to debate the Police association president. Click here to watch on-demand.
The Police Association president Chris Cahill was also very upset that someone used our online email tool to contact NZ First MPs and entered his name. Whoever did that wasn’t very clever – they put in Mr Cahill’s email so he received our confirmation email.
While we do not condone this sort of behaviour, we think that in the context of thousands of licenced firearms owners voicing their concerns, it’s a bit weak to try and argue that those people should be ignored because one person was mischievous.
We also note the irony of going to the media about this while at the same time calling on MPs not to ‘point score’. Whoever it was, it had to be someone who knows Chris Cahill’s email address, so maybe he has an idea who was behind it? We certainly don’t.
Police misinform Parliament on harsh gun club laws
On a much more serious note, we have uncovered that Police cited evidence that does not actually exist in persuading Parliament to adopt harsher restrictions on gun clubs and ranges.
The Police’s recommendation for licensing clubs and ranges was apparently because there were local concerns on safety and noise. It turns out that’s a real stretch. When our lawyers asked for the evidence under the Official Information Act, the Police could only reference “anecdotal information of complaints (sic)” and that “Police is (sic) often approached by Local Authorities with concerns over this type of land use.”
So our lawyers then went directly to the local authorities (i.e. New Zealand’s councils) asking them to specify the number and type of complaints against rifle clubs and ranges, and when these had been notified to Police.
94% of the councils responded and could find no instances of them reporting a range or club safety issue to Police.
In fact, of the 75 councils who responded, there were only three noise complaints they had received about firearms use.
You can read more in our media release on the issue here.
Police raid family looking for firearms that had already been handed in
ACT’s David Seymour has released another instance of Police raiding a family home searching for prohibited firearms that didn’t exist. In this case, though, Police’s own records show that they were handed in!
Click here for ACT’s media release with the full details.
Clubs and ranges are threatened by the Arms Legislation Bill
In addition to last week’s newspaper and online advertising campaign, we went down on the range with John Herbert of NZ Rod & Rifle Magazine to hear his take on why clubs and ranges are so important for our community.