You miss the point that the inherent capabilities (the connection between ease of use and lethality) of guns mean that “respecting” them requires close regulation of their ownership and owners, no less than with cars and many types of heavy machinery (indeed more, since guns have no function other than to kill).
You also appear to be under the misapprehension that New Zealand has the same Constitution and sociopolitical priorities as the USA.
Bear in mind, MacTech and his fellow gun…enthusiasts are terrified by New Zealand’s restrictions.
Not because they care who lives or dies in NZ, mind you. It’s just that when it’s shown, once again, that reducing the number of, and restricting the access to guns will reduce the rates of gun deaths, the various arguments against such measures as a method of reducing gun deaths will be shown to be hollow shams. Again.
Humph. Apologies for the hijack. I feel what I said is true, but it’s not really germane to this thread, only to mactech’s posts.
(I was about to edit to remove that bit, and then our internet crapped out, and I had to power cycle the modem. :mad:
Anyway, I’m reasonably certain laws have already been put into place to deal with the criminals who don’t turn in their now-illegal weapons. Has anyone bothered to look them up? 
Guns are toys for a lot of people. If you like to plink at targets and that’s all, then guns are toys for you.
What proportion of mass murders are committed by non-gun-owners? Heck, what proportion of homicides overall?
Also, you need to keep your messaging straight. Statements like
sure seem to imply that it’s gun owners who are the problem.
Less than 10% have been turned in? I am genuinely proud of them.
Reminds me of (the criminal) Rosa Parks. How dare she not move to another seat. It’s the law, dammit. Lock her up!
Gun control enforced at gunpoint. Ah, the irony…
Why do you assume that New Zealand’s way to deal with violent felons is at gunpoint? In the civilized world, it doesn’t work that way.
???
Do the violent felons in “The Land of Cleves” typically meekly and unwaveringly comply with anyone gently exhorting them to “Put the gun down son, and come with me to the malt shoppe so we can talk about why you felt compelled to shoot up that bus full of Nuns, orphaned toddlers and puppies.”?
That’s what gundamentalists fantasize about, but in reality it is more effective to coerce compliance with financial penalties. If you don’t turn in your gun, you get fined. If you don’t pay the fine, the government gets a judgement against your paycheck, your bank accounts and your house. No violence on the part of the government; comply, or go broke.
You can imagine my shock when I discovered that the police enforce the peace… through acts/threats of violence!
It’s a crazy, mixed-up world.
Doesn’t happen in UK. I can’t speak for New Zealand, but the only times armed police are called out in the UK is when there’s good evidence for believing weapons will actually be used.
Actually, the US appears to be an outlier in the way their police protocols allow for the use of lethal force.
For example, a few years ago, there was an escapee from a New York prison whom a police officer encountered in a remote area. The police officer shot him as he was fleeing. I found that odd because (1) the officer had never seen the escapee in person but was just relying on a description; (2) there was no indication the individual had any weapon, so no grounds to believe imminent harm; (3) he was running away, so again, no imminent harm. Doper police officers responded to my inquiry that use of lethal force was nonetheless called for by their protocols, because of the escapee’s record for violent offences. I simultaneously asked a friend of mine in Canadian law enforcement, and he agreed with me that under Canadian protocols, the use of lethal force would not be justified, particularly because of the lack of a weapon and the flight.
We also had an example a couple of summers ago where a mentally unstable guy was armed in a busy street in Toronto. The police officer who was first on the scene talked the guy down and got the gun away from him, even though in that circumstance he may have been justified in using lethal force to protect others. But instead he put his own life at risk, approaching the individual to talk and using de-escalation techniques. The officer was highly praised afterwards.
And finally, we have the example of a police officer in Toronto who was done for manslaughter after shooting a mentally unstable guy to death.
I’m guessing it will be a kind of dont ask, dont tell type of thing.
Already in the US I know several people with large weapons caches with some legal and some illegal guns. These are well respected individuals that include police officers, active and retired military, respected business owners, lawyers, even college professors. To get those guns would involve lots of undercover work and getting family members and friends to turn informant.
Better to keep the current system in place so where a person with a guilty conscience can turn their guns but allow others to keep them, maintain them, practice with them, as long as they do so in a safe way.
Then actively target criminal use. For example here in the US where they tack something like 10 years in a federal prison for using a gun in committing a crime.
OK – I get the tongue-in-cheek but I was curious.
With this all being a bit of a knee-jerk fast response a lot still needs sorted out but it looks like anything from a simple naughty-naughty to 10 years if you use such a firearm to resist arrest. I do like that at least from what the police have said there will be a recognized difference between gray-market firearms legally owned but never turned in and truly black market ones which have been imported or changed hands illegally.
If true this is a terrible policy approach. The whole point of the buyback should be to get illegal guns. Those guns are likelier to be used for crimes than legal guns.
…LOL.
Well duh, challenging the unjust law (actually a city ordinance) by getting her locked up was the whole point of her act of protest:
If owners of guns that are now illegal to possess in NZ want to use similar civil-disobedience tactics to Rosa Parks and go to jail for not giving up their illegal guns, they’re free to do that. And if they want to use their plight as a rallying point to try to mobilize popular opposition to the new ban, they’re free to do that too.
And they will doubtless fall ludicrously flat on their kissers because most of the NZ population supports the ban.
What’s “ironic” about it? Nobody that I know of is suggesting that law enforcement officers dealing with armed criminals (such as people refusing to turn in illegal guns) shouldn’t be armed themselves.
Sounds like a fairly persuasive argument for broader gun bans, actually. People illegally owning guns but storing and using them prudently and safely, so they don’t draw law enforcement’s attention to their possession of them, won’t be interfered with. People rashly waving guns around openly where they have a higher risk of doing damage will get the book thrown at them and the guns taken away. Result: gun ownership concentrated in the hands of safe and prudent people who have a strong incentive not to be careless with their weapons.
Once the deadline is passed:
Offer rewards for leads on those who are not turning in their guns, and aggressively run them to ground.
Make possession an absolute liability offence.
Make the penalty significant.
I suppose you can’t just give the gun nutters a one way ticket to Fairfax, Virginia, or set up a citizenship exchange with the USA: one gun nutter for one normal person.
My read is ------- the illegal guns not eligible are those imported in violation of previous laws and I would assume those stolen from legal owners in the past. Its possible it also includes those not purchased by registered shooters/owners under the past laws. It may - and this is foggy from the details I read - include those inherited as part of estates where the person inheriting it did not do the formal paperwork of transfer. This one to me (I am not a New Zealander) is seriously gray.
It is basically a standard approach. The goal here is not to reduce the number of illegal firearms among the criminal element but to compensate those who legally owned firearms of this type before the law was put into place. In short its a offering to those who want to play by the rules even when those rules change. This isn’t about fighting known crime; it is more about the chance that one of these types of firearms could be used in some future unknown crime in a manner of speaking.