Thread: Sad Commentary on Life and Balance.

No one doubts that the police have a hard job. But when you have sub standard journalism ramping up hysteria you can understand why you get anger. The depletion of main stream newspapers could also be a reaction to such standards.The tragedy that occurred in Nelson does that mean we ban cars. One wonders if the proposed possible changes to the gun legislation has seen a campaign to whip up opposition to any change to the Adern legislation. Democracy has many faces.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police...PF774SOMWM6PE/

The tragedy that occurred in Nelson does that mean we ban cars.

Imagine if he'd previously been convicted of using a car as a weapon not long ago.

Imagine if one had to show proof of being free of illicit drugs when applying for a driver license

I think we can all appreciate what has been happening in Canada insofar as it is a warning to us all.

Lies, damn lies, statistics, Chris Cahil. Tell us what constitutes 17,000 firearms encounters.

A breakdown by numbers for what type of incident would be revealing. They are including most of the firearms are not involved in a crime at all.

Originally Posted by Sidetrack

Lies, damn lies, statistics, Chris Cahil. Tell us what constitutes 17,000 firearms encounters.

I would suspect firearms encounters may include toy guns, imitation guns, real guns, someone mentioning guns, "we think we saw a gun" etc etc
I don't think there is any breakdown by type or requirement for an actual firearm to be recorded as a "firearm encounter" they could even be including FAL inspections and security checks for all we know
and I could be totally wrong in my assumption too

I believe if you are pulled over for any reason and a regi check shows the registered owner has a fal that is flagged as "firearms" for the officers conducting the stop.

Originally Posted by John Duxbury

A breakdown by numbers for what type of incident would be revealing. They are including most of the firearms are not involved in a crime at all.

Add to that there have , by their own numbers, been 75 deaths in 6 years due to firearms (about 12 a year average) ( and clearly this does not include March 2019) compared to over 300 per year in motor vehicles. And bear in mind that the number of motor vehicles compared to firearms is not that much different (car registration is approx 4.5 million vrsus estimate of 1.5million firearms) 12 per year versus 300 per year is not the same 3:1 ratio of ownership...

Its a bit like shark attacks....deadly shark attacks for the last 100 years in NZ are easily outnumbered by 1 years drowning statistics yet people are not afraid of drowning but are afraid of sharks.....Then consider that they are more likely to die in a crash on the way to the beach / pool than they are either of the other possibilities....

Surely no one thinks that we don't have an illicit gun problem? And a gun crime problem? Don't get distracted by the numbers. They are just numbers. 17K? 10K? 5K? Whatever. There are too many guns in the wrong peoples hands. Yes?

What to do about it is the problem. Targeting us is targeting the wrong people. We might have the odd miscreant amongst us (curse them) but overall it seems licensed owners are pretty good, and clean.

The focus needs to turn on the underworld, not us. We are easy picking, but pretty blameless.

And we comply they dont

Originally Posted by Tahr

Surely no one thinks that we don't have an illicit gun problem? And a gun crime problem? Don't get distracted by the numbers. They are just numbers. 17K? 10K? 5K? Whatever. There are too many guns in the wrong peoples hands. Yes?

What to do about it is the problem. Targeting us is targeting the wrong people. We might have the odd miscreant amongst us (curse them) but overall it seems licensed owners are pretty good, and clean.

The focus needs to turn on the underworld, not us. We are easy picking, but pretty blameless.

I think you mean we have a CRIME problem generally but sadly that appears to be far too too hard to deal with or solve so "red hearings" are cast out everywhere

Its become more about "being seen to be doing something" rather than doing something and the media seem to lap it up

When we broke the caravan last week, I asked the tow truck guy if we could follow him to his yard as I didn't want to retrieve my rifles from the caravan on the side of the State highway, he understood completely and we had a chat about someone seeing me on the side of the road and subsequently calling the cops.

It's not really surprising, when the new laws were introduced a lot of firearms become illegal - including your grandads bunny gun that labour swore would be ok. When you look at the import numbers over the years vs the surrender numbers it never balanced.

What did people think would happen? Oh we made a bunch of guns illegal, and now we're finding lots of illegal guns. F***ing muppets.

Plus it looks like your doing a great job and are being successful if you make laws up aimed at the people that will comply with them. What's the point of making more laws for those that wont comply anyway....the stats wont look as good