COLFO News # 5 September 2022

COLFO News Issue # 5 September 2022

http://colfo.org.nz

Regulations for Clubs and Ranges

While training for staff involved in regulating and inspecting clubs and ranges has
continued. The actual regulations have still to be made public and we still don’t
know what fees will be applied.

A possible solution to the Firearm Licence delays
In a reply to questions raised by Act MP Nicole Mckee police minister Hon Chris
Hipkins has said he will make law changes to alleviate the situation and flatten out
the “bell curve” of renewals that peaks every 10 years.

“Police are under a lot of pressure when it comes to firearms licence renewals and
new applications as well, and that is a result of the decisions that this Parliament
has made to make it more difficult for people to get firearms licences and to
have their licences renewed,” he said in the House.

Piecemeal Police gun crime data a ‘dangerous embarrassment’

The Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO) says piecemeal publication of
firearm crime data masks incompetent data collection by Police, increases public
firearm fear, and hides the failure of the firearm confiscation programme.

A story by the NZ Herald tries to make the best of data obtained from a Police
database started in 2019, pretentiously called the ‘Gun Safe’ project. The data was
promised to be public and easily accessible to help guide policy.

COLFO Spokesperson Hugh Devereux-Mack said the data had not been regularly
released in full, forcing media and stakeholders like COLFO to request data under
the Official Information Act.

“The failure to consistently record and report firearm data is a dangerous
embarrassment.”
The GunSafe data includes all manner of events, even callouts where firearms are
never found. Even the Police Association noted in 2020 that recording of events is
erratic.

Data reliability is undermined by broad criteria that leads to ‘events’ being entered
into the GunSafe system. Entries include times a firearm is suspected but not
present, times where there is a ‘perceived firearms risk’ but no actual firearm
involved, times a subject is known to have a firearm – but Police do not encounter
one, and for events when there is something that looks like a real firearm, but isn’t.
This means even courtesy visits to a licensed firearm owner's home can be
classified as an 'event' within the system, inflating the numbers unnecessarily.

These Gun Safe numbers have been used to argue for general armament of police
which COLFO and other organisations spoke out against.
Event details are either combined in rough categories or inputted into free text
fields which Police noted in an OIA response to COLFO last year, made it too timeconsuming to formulate into more useful data.
“This poor reporting has created an unnecessary fear of licensed firearm owners,
and misdirected efforts to deal with criminal use of firearms.

“It has prevented the public from seeing that despite Government promises that
the grandiose firearm confiscation would make New Zealanders safer, firearm
crime has continued unchanged.
“It has prevented the public from seeing the inability of Police to collect this data.”
“Because of the inconsistent Gun Safe reporting framework, the data has possibly
hidden a failure to catch and prosecute enough criminals who have firearms, and
lays a poor foundation for costly new legislation” Devereux-Mack says.

COLFO supports frontline officers and their work on operation Tauwhiro which is
necessary to tackle criminal use of firearms. Devereux-Mack says this is where
Police should be investing their efforts and not the administration of the firearms
licensing system where Police have shown that they are an inefficient disaster.
Consultation is open on the Firearm Register Regulations
https://www.police.govt.nz/advice-se...s-regulations/
consultation-proposed-regulations-support-new-firearms-registry?
fbclid=IwAR3EVBrsfEPD3DXt-LNo4EZvLfaNoxtUVqsoUfZNK4easfJlrwH_Fw9yj9I
COLFO urges all licensed firearm owners to provide feedback to police on these
proposed regulations.

Submissions close on 12 October 2022
Your first firearm or ammunition sale or purchase after June 2023 will trigger a
requirement to register ALL your firearms within 14 days