Tag Archive for: gangs

New Police Firearms Regulatory Unit announced

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An “Independent” unit?

In announcing a new Firearm Regulatory Unit “separate from, but still aligned to Police” Police Minister Hon. Poto Williams has reneged on a previous commitment by Labour to set up an Independent Firearm Authority to administer the Arms Act.

She went on to claim “This Government has a strong track record on tackling gun crime. Already we have prohibited the most dangerous firearms.”

As Neville Dodd, President of SSANZ points out, “The 60,000+ firearms confiscated by the government existed in the community for 28 years without a problem, that is until police failed in their duty to properly vet a foreign terrorist.

We therefore question why the regulation of the Arms Act is still being left with Police.
In SSANZ’ view it is very wrong for Police to be both the regulating authority and also the enforcement agency in dealing with firearms.

This represents a clear conflict of interest that would not be acceptable in most professional organisations.

Independence encourages trust

SSANZ welcomes the new planned Regulatory Unit but strongly believe it must be completely independent of police if it is to have the trust and confidence of the firearm community.

We will watch with interest as the new model is developed and trust that it will include local offices where customers can interact with real people, rather than a purely faceless web based operation.

We would like to see a substantial financial investment in the new Authority. Anyone who has recently been through either the licensing or re-licensing system will know that the current process is overwhelmed and under-resourced.

It is ridiculous that police are taking from 6 to 9 months for licence renewals. A strong focus from the government on investment in additional staff, systems, technology and other resources will be needed if the new Authority has any chance of succeeding where the current system has floundered.

We look forward to more information on the key performance indicators for the new Authority, particularly with regard to (1) improving application processing times, (2) making a real difference in reducing gun crime and (3) identifying the sources of gun crime and the supply chains of illegally-held weapons.

Steady increase in violence post “buyback”

Since over 60,000 firearms were confiscated from law abiding licensed firearm owners, more stringent regulations applied to lawful ownership and tougher penalties were introduced for gun crime, we have seen a steady increase in gun related violence perpetrated largely by gang members.

The question then:

So how have all these new laws made New Zealanders safer – a question which has also been asked by the Office of the Auditor General?

A Significant Distortion of the Truth

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Recent statements attributed to the Commissioner of Police, Andrew Coster, have repeated previous allegations from police that gangs acquire their firearms from licensed firearms owners. That is a significant distortion of the truth and by implication Coster maligns a quarter of a million carefully and properly vetted New Zealanders.

The Commissioner very conveniently fails to mention that 12 gang members who had “wrongly” been issued with firearms licenses were the conduit to gangs for a large number of firearms. Wrong, because no member of a gang would meet the “fit and proper” criteria required to hold a firearms license. If they had been issued with licenses, then those licenses should have been revoked. That would have been logical and easy. Police have a list of gang members and they have a list of licensed firearms owners so a simple comparison of the two lists for match ups would have not only been obvious but easy to do. Clearly, that has not been done.

It is known that some of that 12 bought up large in order to supply guns to their gang associates, so it is easy to see how police can say “hand on heart” that the gangs are getting their guns from licensed firearms owners. However, the reality is quite different and it is extremely disappointing that our New Zealand police lacked the integrity to acknowledge the truth.

This situation not only offends the properly vetted firearms owners, it begs the question of why those 12 firearms licenses were ever issued in the first instance and more importantly why they remained valid and were not revoked. One has to question police administration efficiency.

In this regard, we are reminded that the Royal Commission held that police failings in issuing the Mosque shooter Tarrant with a firearms license also emanated from sloppy police work. These twelve gang related license holders seem to be yet another example of poor police vetting?

To further illustrate the falsehood of the Commissioner’s claims we obtained the following data for the most recent 10 years through Official Information Act enquiries to police:

1. An annual average of only 9 holders of a firearm license have been prosecuted for supplying firearms to unlicensed people (not necessarily or exclusively gang members). Police and/or Police Association media statements suggest a much greater number.

2. Annually an average of 188 license holders report a burglary where firearms are taken. (The number shows a slight increase in the most recent 5 years). Police and/or Police Association statements do not usually state numbers but they imply a much larger number.

3. The total number of firearms reported stolen from license holders average 567 per year. Yet an earlier OIA response states police seize some 1300 unlawfully held guns each year. This clearly rebuts Commissioner Coster’s claim that gangs get their guns from licensed firearms owners. We have always been of the opinion that gangs import guns along with their narcotics imports.

4. An average figure for firearms reported stolen that are recovered is 32 per year. (one is tempted to ask how effective NZ Police are; of course, we do sympathise with police on this aspect as the first thing that a gang member will do is a make a 5 second pass across the stolen firearm with an angle grinder to remove serial numbers).

As an aside, we point out that simple act with a grinder makes a mockery of the police “justification” for the new Firearms Register to be implemented in two years time.

5. On average 3 firearms are reported lost each year, although it should be noted that this number is declining. Very few of these appear to be recovered (4 in 11 years).’ We would make two observations on this.

(a) In our view this small number is a recognition that firearms are treated by licensed firearms owners as valuable assets (or even treasured possessions)

(b) It is highly likely that losses could be by hunters in difficult and/or dangerous terrain

6. Police themselves lose on average 2 firearms of their own each year due to loss or theft (interestingly their OIA response on this point failed to include the 11 firearms stolen from Palmerston North police station last year nor those stolen from police cars). The comparison is stark. Licenced Firearms Owners loss as a percentage of the total owned is 0.00013% and the police loss is 0.033% i.e police are 300 times more likely to lose a firearm than a licensed firearms owner.

In Summary

  • Just 0.0035% of the total population of licensed firearm owners are prosecuted for supplying guns to unlicensed people.
  • Less than half the guns seized by police are those stolen from licensed owners so where do the bulk come from?
  • It is our contention that most guns circulating in the underworld (250,000 estimate) are those accumulated over many years, (“bring backs” from two world wars and other conflicts) along with more modern firearms smuggled into the country with $millions of drugs.
  • Added to this police have provided 12 known gang associates with a firearm license so it is no wonder that criminals have ready access to firearms.

A Significant Distortion of the Truth