New Zealand’s gun confiscation program criticized as a ‘failure’Over the weekend, the government of New Zealand released the numbers from its months-long gun buyback scheme, launched after the country’s Christchurch massacre at a mosque earlier this year.
In total, officials say they took up over 56,000 guns from over 33,000 hand-ins through buyback and amnesty programs over the past few months, according to data from New Zealand Police. Most of those were rifles now outlawed by the country’s ban on so-called “military style semi-automatic firearms,†which was swiftly ushered into law earlier this year. A few of the confiscated firearms were shotguns targeted by the law’s provisions.
“We have taken well over 50,000 of these guns out of our community,†Police Minister Stuart Nash said over the weekend. “That’s got to be a good thing.â€
Now, that 56,000 number represents a small fraction of the total number of New Zealand’s overall legally owned firearms, which was estimated to be between 1.2 and 1.5 million earlier this year. But precisely how many of those were affected by the ban is hard to discern. A briefing paper given to lawmakers in April estimated as many as 240,000 of the country’s guns would be made illegal under the new law, while police in September estimated between 56,000 and 170,000, according to Stuff.co.nz.
As a result of the disparity between the figures, a spokesperson for one of the country’s pro-gun groups says that the government still has a compliance issue on its hands..........
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/new-zealands-gun-confiscation-program-criticized-failure/
