Thread: Hello..

Originally Posted by grandpamac

Greetings 303shooter,
First welcome to the Forum. Regarding the arms legislation and enforcement thereof Rushy has summed it up well. Firearms owners in NZ are a minority and need to present a responsible face to the balance of the community. Fight wing rednecks nutting of in their echo chambers, spouting conspiracy theories and bare faced lies, do nothing to help our cause and likely rather less than that. Thanks for that descriptive bit of prose Rushy. The answer lies with us. First we should all belong to a firearms oriented club with a national organisation. This gives us a voice. Second we need to let the general public see firearms owners behaving responsibly. The firearms law we now have should have been in place 25 years ago. John Banks, the National Police Minister at the time, could not convince his colleagues that a buy back of the recently imported AK47 look alike rifles was needed. Kea guns(sawn off 410 shotguns with a pistol grip) had been bought back recently at the time. Contrary to the doom merchants predictions I don't believe that any party is likely to revisit firearms law in the near future and we need to learn to live with what we have. As far as your firearms licence being cancelled along with your drivers licence perhaps the answer lies with us. If the police decide that someone who is unsafe with motor vehicle may also be unsafe with a firearm it is hard to argue with that.
Regards Grandpamac.

Once it is before a court, the reasonable bar for losing your FAL on that account should be an outright LOSS of your driving license.

A few speeding tickets...yet society still trusts you with a motor vehicle ... and a half decent lawyer could then argue it is inconsistent to then take the FAL.

Just think annual road toll vs. firearms toll.

Loss of FAL would not apply to a FAL holder who cannot drive due to, say, loss of peripheral vision, but it might apply for persistent speeders, drink drivers, etc. where it leads to loss of driving license.