Thread: Feeling sick after reading this !

Originally Posted by gmm

My understanding is one of the reasons the Government want a register is that they believe that firearms used by criminals come from licenced firearm owners and that if they can maintain a record of these will prevent or limit the supply. The major flaw in this is that there are many firearms which will never be registered, and it will do very little if anything to prevent gun crime or prevent criminals having access to firearms. We all know this, and I suggest so do the Government, but they have an agenda and an objective.

Source of supply in my belief has nothing to do with the establishment of a registry, if source of supply was a concern then every transaction that required a mail order purchase form, permit to procure or import slip over the previous years would be being followed up and verified as correct. It's arguable that the basics aren't being done prior to the establishment of a registry - and the question has to be asked "why?". One can only make assumptions on this as the questions I've seen asked as to what happened to and where are these records have appeared to have been either avoided or deflected (information not available etc etc). If the information isn't available, what was the point of the importation forms for one as these should have largely given the majority of the lifecycle (import, sale, disposal) for firearms imported since the requirement came into being.

It would seem that at this stage the only possible benefit (and that is of no proveable and realisable benefit to licence holders themselves) for a registry is increasing the cost of the ownership of firearms. The claimed benefits have already been debunked by the overseas experience, and the idea that it will stop criminals who have been given firearms licences from passing firearms onto other criminals is incorrect. The flaws in the idea are many and blatantly obvious, and everywhere else that's tried it has found nothing but difficulties, which include no real reduction in firearms crime that can be related to the existence of the registry but several crimes that can be directly linked to it.

Second thing against the registry in it's current form, is that of the list of NZ Govt departments who have a really rough record of technology project implementation - the top two or three of that list from anyone you care to ask would invariably include the NZ Police. Better chance of success if any other department was running it based purely on previous performance.