Gangs and Guns Run Riot

There is a bit of an inside joke doing the rounds in some circles about the reporting of gun crimes in the media. Most of the articles that have involved a firearm incident say that it is ‘gang linked’ – the joke being that it is inevitable gangs are involved and the only real news headline would be if it somehow wasn’t involving gangs.

What’s not a joke is that gun crime is continuing to grow and become part of daily life for Kiwis. The real concern is that the public has become so used to it that it is just another by-line scrolling through their news feed. The fact is, this level of gun violence has never occurred in our country and has never been as frequent as it is right now.

It has been building for the past twelve months and we have all been trapped like a frog in a pot – it has been building gradually and slowly to a point now that even media are so used to incidents involving guns it no longer is major news. They might put a report online or mention it in a news bulletin, but it is now so common that it no longer sits top of the news as it did just a few years ago.

The clear issue here is that gangs are inevitably involved with most, if not all, gun crime.

So the question is, what is being done about it?

If you are struggling to think of anything of any real action being taken – you’re not alone.

Gangs have been growing over the past few years, exponentially of late, and are clearly front and centre in our gun issues – let alone crime, meth, anti-social issues, and violence.

So naturally, the government in response has allowed our police force number to…reduce. Yes, reduce. They have decided to literally give millions of dollars of funding to gangs. They have legitimised and normalised gang chapters by visiting them as guest speakers on their gang pad. They stopped the training of new police recruits for months – literally leaving our police training college empty. They have even got rid of police Armed Response Teams and have refused to arm our frontline police. Any laws brought in restricting gangs? Any additional action against gangs? Nope.

For some strange reason, they keep thinking that bringing in a law banning ‘military-style weapons’ in response to a terrorist incident is going to solve the gang gun problem. Firstly, these laws were brought in more than two years ago. Clearly, it is having nil effect on gang violence and gun crimes because we are still seeing incidents increasing. And the fact that they are ‘laws’ should make it obvious that gangs and criminals are going to ignore them – that’s what makes them criminals. It has been an entirely frustrating few years for those law-abiding gun owners who had to give up their firearms and all of whom could see this coming a mile away.

The government is even making more moves to bring in more gun laws – those will be utterly hopeless in stopping criminals who don’t give two fifths what the law says. That’s the problem.

The fact is, without any real action from the government against the increase in gangs and gun crime, we are simply going to see more incidents, more people shot at, and more innocent people killed.

Right now, the government just looks like a bunch of well-dressed dopes controlled by the woke, watching gangs and guns run riot.