– Conrad – 4/9/97
A recent report, by retired High Court judge Sir Thomas Thorp, recommends that military-style semi-automatic weapons should be banned and that the New Zealand Government should buy back currently owned ones at market prices. This is a move similar to that made recently by the Australian Government, which has spent an enormous amount of money buying up guns as one of their responses to the shooting tragedy in Tasmania.
I can see the logic in banning the further importation or selling of these weapons, even if it does seem a lot like ‘shutting the door after the horse has bolted’, because at least the number wouldn’t get any higher. However the idea of buying back such guns that are already in the country seems to be an expensive and ultimately pointless political gesture.
For simplicity’s sake we could divide gun owners into two camps. There are those who are lawfully registered owners and use their weapons for legitimate purposes like hunting (though how a ‘sportsperson’ could justify using a semi-automatic weapon for this is another story), and those who are not registered, and keep their guns in secret for their own reasons, such as armed robberies. So who do you think will be the ones to sell their guns back to the Government?
We could be left with a situation where the only weapons of this type left in the country are in the hands of those on the wrong side of the law, who would rather hang on to them in secret, and the Government aren’t going to know who they are.
Ultimately it only takes one nutter with a gun to lose the plot, and the whole operation is rendered a waste of time and money.
