Thread: We have too many guns on our streets

Yeh. many of the ones that posted misunderstood my meaning and intent. Never mind, there is no long term harm done. On the subject of pumps; the first gun I provided my grandson was a 20ga Remington pump;- for several reasons, not the least of which was the great safety features of this weapon. He could have 1 or later, 2 in the magazine with an empty chamber while carrying. I never had to worry about a gun not broken, nor a semi with one instantly in the chamber. The gun could be loaded and unloaded with safety on, and was never cocked without my permission-- the cocking action itself being a noisy affair giving plenty of audible warning and a certain amount of time for me to react if improper.

We still own that firearm and soon it may sprout a rifled barrel for deer slugs.

The interesting thread which underlies several of the more negative remarks that were posted struck me as near paranoia type concern and perceptions by firearm owners that ANY concession we might give , relating to firearms ownership and use, would almost certainly be capitalized upon by negative anti gun media and associated belligerent interests, and that this would be used by government and or police to lever our established rights away from us. In my view this is a legitimate concern held by lawful firearms owners, but nevertheless a sad indictment of the lack of trust in our government and the way it makes laws, and the meaninglessness, or lack of meaningfulness of the consultative processes that exist in our country. It is a fact that in many other spheres of citizens engagements with local and regional councils people feel that their concerns, submissions etc are ignored, downplayed or made to be of less than significant importance by those elected to govern locally or nationally. The excuses that are engineered by governing bodies to with-hold information from the public are many and varied and it is becoming increasingly difficult for citizens to have any satisfactory redress for their concerns.

This is the real nub of the fears that beset firearms owners, along with those, who, for example fear pollution of their water supplies by mass aerial poison applications, and pollution by carcasses, by-kill etc, truck drivers who need to complete 'x' km per day to keep delivery schedules being held up by lycra clad pedal pushers but who are to afraid to breach the "PC" gap by going public with their concerns and other drivers who live in fear of hitting a wavering cyclist. I'm sure you can think of many examples of "fears of breaching PC" and the fears of standing up and being counted and seen by all and sundry, and risking public criticism or lampooning. How many governing Ministries do you trust implicitly? DoC? MPI ?, Ministry of Health?, Ministry of Education? Police? Ministry for the Environment (who controls ALL resource consent procedures)?

If you have doubts about trust , then ask yourself this:-- what meaningful ongoing actions are you personally taking to correct things you are concerned about, and also speaking out.

Is it PC to ask how many of the relations and so-called concerned relatives of the prick who was involved in drugs and who shot 4 policemen knew of his activities and did anything or sfa to stop him before it came to the shootings? I saw a Maori university professor on TV 1 the other day saying to the public in his interview that if a non Maori policeman came to his door he would slam the door in his face until a Maori policemen came instead. This joker claimed to have been a policeman in OZ before he came to NZ to become one of our educational elite. WTF?
And while this educationalist blabs his crap, legitimate firearms owners are getting crap because a criminal illegally uses a firearm.
Question is --- what positive things can we collectively do about ignorance in and by governance powers-- across the board?