Thread: Could we do more

Originally Posted by stumpy

I have always wondered what the problem with the serial number of any weapon/firearm being logged against a person is ..
if your the owner , when you buy a firearm , why cant it go ,against your FL ?
are people worried about the info leaking into the wrong hands?
or being charged per firearm you own in some sort of registration scheme , like some on here all my firearms are of the endorsed type , I don't own any "A" cat firearms ... don't get pissy and come back in a rant , I am genuinely interested in the why not .
I realise now that to get all of NZ to come up with the number on all their guns and get checked etc would fail ... but it has to start somewhere ... maybe from jan 2017 all weapons bought , new and used must be registred , and I think that a cop at a scrotes house who finds a stolen firearm , if he has a serial number and a previous owner who was burgled then they could tie that crim into that crime , the more he/she is charged with the more they go away for (hopefully ) I personally cant see the harm in it ... but im sure others will .
cheers blair

Stumpy,

People are concerned that registration of all firearms provides a "shopping list" for police in the event that they implement a buyback policy. This is how the buyback worked in Australia. One year they asked for registration, then all law abiding owners complied, and the next year they changed the law and had the buy back. Conveniently, due to registration, they could track down the firearms they wanted.

The other argument that people tote, is that registration, historically, has provided little benefit in terms of solving crimes. As with the Canadian registry, the main reason it was abandoned is that it had minimal statistical impact on the number of crimes solved. Although this is sometime held in contention.

EDIT: These are the two cases that I am familiar with, there are other examples of firearms registration schemes worldwide which work in different ways and may/may not provide benefits in terms of solving crimes. In summary, there are three reasons firearms owners in New Zealand seem opposed to general registration.
1) Possibility of a buyback - firearms owners view registration as a precursor to this.
2) Administrative and financial burden on police services
3) Data security concerns