Thread: Relocating gun safe on same property.

Originally Posted by zeropak

An Interesting thread. From my experience the local AO's tend to want to act outside of the firearms legislation with regard to inspecting firearms, recording serial numbers and inspecting storage security. This is an extract from the official NZ Police firearms storage guidelines. As you can see there is no requirement for the license holder to have their security in inspected if they are at the same address as when the original inspection was done, even if you have moved the physical location of the storage.

Police approval of an individual’s security arrangements is decided on a case-by-case basis following inspection. A member of Police will arrange a mutually convenient time to review your firearms security if:
(a) You have applied for a firearms licence (including if you have previously held a firearms licence).
(b) You have applied for an endorsement to possess a pistol, prohibited firearm, prohibited magazine or restricted weapon.
(c) You are already the holder of a firearms licence and have notified Police that you have changed address.

This was my experience recently. The AO wanted to see:

1) A keysafe to store the key to the gun safe.
2) Another lockable cabinet or safe to store rifle bolts.
3) A steel gun safe. According to him they no longer accept anything made from timber or ply because readily available battery powered tools can easily break into them in less than 10 minutes of sustained attack.
4) Somewhere separate and lockable to store ammo (lockable ammo box in the safe was acceptable).

So long story short access to my firearms and ammo is spread across 4 different lockable containers... To assemble a working gun would take quite some effort which is apparently the point.

Not that I have any issue with the above, if it means that I've demonstrated I store weapons safely then great. However this doesn't change the fact that the police seem to be enforcing something that isn't actually law.