Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand Inc.
sportingshooters.nz
The persistence with which police are delaying the issue of new firearm licences and the renewal of existing ones (a whole year to just renew!!) has spurred a Member of Parliament to question the Police Minister about the delays.
We applaud the improved vetting now being undertaken by the Police after their disgraceful failures of the past (failures which directly led to the mass homicides in New Zealand, of 1990 and 2019) but we cannot applaud their administration. It is clear that a significant level of under-resourcing, and/or failure to anticipate the resources required to meet the new vetting requirements shows a serious disconnect within police national headquarters. This is no doubt because the new Firearms Authority remains under police control and appears to be subject to Vote: Police in the Parliamentary financial allocations.
Sporting Shooters president, Neville Dodd is calling for a re-appraisal of the lack of ‘independence’ of the new firearm authority and he records that the intention for full firearm registration is doomed to fail, as it has in every overseas jurisdiction where it has been tried.
Criminals don’t register their firearms, and registration is just a stepping stone to confiscation, at an establishment cost to the taxpayer of a million dollars a week!
Doesn’t this all remind you of ‘flogging a dead horse’?