Thread: Safe Requirements and Licence Questions

I have spent a lot of time and money over years making my equipment and ammunition hard to find and harder to steal - well beyond 'A' cat (which all my firearms used to be, before Stealcinda & Crew). If however my equipment is taken off me in September, I suspect there will be no market for the expensive safes I invested in, and I'll have little use for them either. Although, maybe I'll unbolting the safes from the concrete, labelling them misleadingly, and hoping any thieves double-herniate themselves trying to carry them off empty... or filled with cement

Originally Posted by muzza

The law as it stands as present says you must store firearms and ammo "seperately". If you can do that then you will be fine

Under the current legislation if the firearm is made inoperable then you can store firearms and ammo together. Probably not a good idea anyway, however that's the law. The separate lockup within a gun cabinet is just that, separate. The downside to that is the separate lockup often has very poor quality, small lock on it so again, not a good idea. As rewa says, It makes 'personal-sense' to make it as hard as possible (within reason), to make it as time-consuming and difficult, for someone to steal your firearms.

Originally Posted by ipv

Hey all,

I am doing my firearms licence test in two weeks and have one question about that and one about the safe.

Licence test question: I have been studying up and doing the quiz on the Police website, I have scored low a few times as the test asks about bullet travel and specific firearm questions. Am I expected to know the distance all calibre bullets can/will travel? I was under the impression that the test was only on the Arms code and 7 main rules.

Safe Question: I am going to purchase a safe that has two compartments for firearms and ammo. Reading the Police guidelines it states that the cabinet should be fixed to two surfaces not that it must. I don’t want to skimp on security but I also need to understand what the rules are. Must I bolt it to the floor and wall?

Cheers

You don't need to be a ballistics expert, but generally a rifle will be dangerous far further out than a shotgun as round shot from a SG loses speed relatively fast.

It is relevant to the 7 rules in checking your firing zone. Think shooting an animal silhouetted over the horizon or up in a tree. A SG should be fine, but less so a rifle in that case.

For some commonsense ballistics, assume a .30 cal (~7.62mm) full power cartridge rifle will shoot 3-5km (that's a firing zone you just can't check is safe).
The same .30 cal (~7.62mm) may kill an animal through a 1m tree trunk at short range. Again relevant to firearms safety and pointing the firearm in a safe direction. The bullet can kill through a house very easily so pointing your firearm at a wall is not a totally "safe" direction either. You have to realise that a centrefire rifle is scarily powerful and designed to cause death at distance, so treat it with 100% caution, and don't "get used to it".

A .22LR will classically go out to a mile (1.6km), same considerations for going through wooden walls at short distance. Massively more powerful than an air rifle. A falling projectile at 1.5km or less can still kill or take out an eye, something to think about if shooting possums up a tree in a built up area. I heard of a fat sun bather who had a .22 rimfire projectile (shot almost vertically up by a neighbour) fall down onto her abdomen and lodge in her subcutaneous fat. Ignorance reigns supreme in a lot of places.

A wee trap in the exam is when two answers can both seem right (they MAY both be right in fact) but for the test the correct answer is the right answer which pertains to firearm SAFETY.

Good luck with the exam.

Having recently studied this for teaching purposes, the answer to storage of ammo is well known . It is in the arms regulations 1992 which are part of the 1983 arms act.

Arms Regulations 1992 (SR 1992/346) (as at 21 March 2019) 19 Conditions relating to security precautions – New Zealand Legislation

Yes it is specifically permitted at present to store ammo with the fiream provided it is deactivated (bolt stored separately) but really it's not a good idea to store either bolt or ammo with your rifle. This should be something that is tightened up. This is a drawback of having break action shotguns and everything else but a bolt action. It's a danger you take on when you choose to own that firearm.

Here's a recent discussion I started about storing your bolt, with comments about the "ammo with gun" issue: https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co....ecurity-46755/

Note that most of the directions given about storage are by licence vettors who are NOT police officers and their informal requirements vary wildly between individuals. This is another area that needs tightening up.

Download this as its pretty clear
https://www.police.govt.nz/advice/fi...rearms-storage
Follow that and you should be ok when inspection is done. However if you do the minimum it states keep a copy on hand just in the inspector has a different opinion.

The inspector who looked at mine in December 2018 for my new license checked the gun cabinet was bolted to garage floor and wall as per that document. My gun cabinet has the typical separate internal keyed box but they said their preferences thats for knife, GPS etc and not ammo. Said a determined thief could steal the whole cabinet. I reckon they'd use grinder to cut door open before they'd wrench the whole cabinet from wall and floor but I accept the their suggestion to have a seperate secure place for ammo and another seperate secure place for bolt. Sure it's OTT to regulations but seemed sensible to me me to be a bit anal about security. So I bolted a steel tool box into a sturdy cabinet for the bolt and got a small keypad 'safe' for ammo. That's bolted to wall in different room. So 3 locations.

I’d wait till these changes are through, especially the 2nd round. Vetting and storage review.
I doubt any arms officer would be able to successfully push through applications at the moment, but I would like to be proven wrong.

Originally Posted by Bagheera

Note that most of the directions given about storage are by licence vettors who are NOT police officers and their informal requirements vary wildly between individuals. This is another area that needs tightening up.

You're right about that Chris. Bear in mind though, that AO's and firearms vettors generally (obviously not all) have a far greater knowledge of the Arms Act and Arms Regulations than the average police officer, some of whom unfortunately, know next to nothing about firearms and firearms law.

Even so IMHO, even after probable changes to the arms legislation in the area of security, all AO's and firearms licensing vettors should have to attend a course run by a specialist in firearms law such as Nicholas Taylor and then undergo a written or oral test so that they're all on the same page. It shouldn't be too hard to arrange and it would have benefits for everyone. Wouldn't be a bad idea for all police officers to undergo training in that area too.