I hope this is the end of it and police don't try to ram this through some other way. As has been pointed out many times, this would only affect gun owners who respect the law in the first place. Jan Molenar had no gun licence and wasn't obeying any gun laws with the guns he used. No law changes will affect the likes of him. In the mean time, a police officer has already been killed using a high powered air rifle. There are no law changes even in the pipeline concerning those types of rifle. It's hard to understand how police think sometimes. The proposed changes never made any sense.
I have all of the endorsments you can get on your New Zealand Firearms Licence(Dealers,MSSA,Collectors and theatrical/demosntration).My Nephew just turned 16 and was isssued his firearms licence.It's a privellege and should be a right(I am inherintley left-wing,not right-wing) as firearms and other weapons are just tools,that have all the uses of a hammer,sickle plow and shovel.I believe you should just get one "Weapons Licence" and then be able to purchase whatever you want,I mean criminals find it just as easy to acquire weapons regardless of the law,so why are law-abiding citezens restricted because of this.
A good decision. The police should not be trying to unilaterally extend legislation.
I wrote to the police minister in September about the police taking the law in to their own hands over this matter, and was told she didn't involve herself in day to day policing (which left me wondering what her role is then). I reluctantly sold my sporting configured semi-auto rifle to comply with the Polices new rules as I didn't really want an E-cat licence and could not justify spending $1000 to $1500 on a E-cat storage safe to put it in. What i want to know, now that the police have withdrawn their advertising and had their new rules overturned,is are they going to compensate me for the money that I have lost (approx $750) selling what was a reasonably new rifle, unnecessarily, but on their direct instructions? I had trouble finding a buyer for it due to its reclassification...and then also had to then spend more money buying a bolt-action replacement for it, so all up this has still cost me $1650! Maybe TV3 could take this up with the Minister or Police Commissioner?...as not only have they wasted public money but they have unnecessarily wasted law-abiding New Zealander's personal money as well! I did some research prior to writing to the Police Minister and was surprised myself at how low the statistics are for crime involving firearms in New Zealand...the media play it up but it is very very low.
PENNI Guns will ONLY be an issue if they end up in the wrong hands
Hahahahahaha, I believe I said just this right fromthe beginning, the police don't have the power to change laws or the way they are interpreted. They need case law to back this up. Either way I got my E-Cat for free so just as happy!
Penni, anything in the wrong hands (not just guns), cars, alcohol, knives, will always be an issue. The point is we dont harass owners of kitchen knives and cars to nearly the same level as firearm owners, yet knives and cars are responsible for far more deaths and far easier to obtain and use.The time has come in NZ to start concentrating the criminal users of these items rather than the harassment of legal and law abiding firearms owners, its a waste of time and money and only alienates good people further, the very people that the police should be seeking support from.
Guns will always be an issue especially if it is in the wrong hands.
Why do they (the media) refer to firearms as weapons all the time ? Last time I checked mine were used to shoot paper and pest rabbits. They are simply firearms, tools, sporting equipment in law abiding hands. Anything can be a weapon, kitchen knives, cars. Please TV3 use proper words for this story and dont try to take away what little we have in terms of this victory, legal firearms owners in this country have been harassed by the police the public and the media for far to long, time to start picking on someone else, how about criminals ??.
Great to see justice triumph over blatant injustice. Good law abiding people don't deserve to be treated like garbage so I'm glad that the very obvious law has been upheld and the wildly ridiculous foolishness that was the police misinterpretation has been crushed definitively.