By Anees Teladia

With the recent terror attack on the Muslim community in Christchurch, New Zealand, the always contentious and controversial issue of gun control has arisen with renewed vigour. In an interview with foundation director and professor of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, Professor Kevin Clements, much insight was gained into how exactly such a murderous mission was possible in the first place.

“In order to get a gun license, you have to go through a vetting process and nominate some referees (normally friends and so forth) who would testify to your character. Then you would have to indicate that you have somewhere to keep the guns safely and you can’t have a history of criminal convictions. If you meet all those requirements, you’re likely to be allocated a gun license.”

New Zealand gun laws register the gun owner, but they don’t register the gun to the owner. According to Prof Clements, there are 1.5 million weapons in New Zealand and 250 thousand registered gun-owners. However, there is no certainty as to how many weapons each gun-owner has.

“Things like single action shotguns, bolt-action rifles etc. are all perfectly acceptable weapons. The unacceptable weapons are pistols and sub-machine guns – things like that. They have more restrictive gun ownership requirements.”

“But there’s a big loophole in the law. You can get an AR-15 with a seven-cartridge magazine, but then convert it into a semi-automatic weapon by purchasing a magazine which has 30 bullets in it,” said Clements.

According to Clements and other gun control advocates in New Zealand, gun laws are far too relaxed.

“There are some controls over the retail purchase of a weapon, but if you want to sell to somebody else [i.e. a private sale] there aren’t the same requirements…it [a gun] could easily be passed into the hands of criminal groups and so forth,” said Clements.

“I could buy a weapon in one shop and go to another shop with my license and buy another. There wouldn’t be any cross-checking or referencing of how many weapons I’ve started to purchase.”

“I – and other gun control advocates – have been saying it only takes one person to have a psychotic break, or to feel that he’s on some kind of religious crusade to run amok – and that’s exactly what happened.”

“In the two or three instances where we’ve had mass shootings, they’ve all been with military-style semi-automatic weapons.”

“There is a strong mood in public opinion – and within the government – to ban military-style semi-automatic weapons and the magazines which enable them to hold 30 lethal bullets…there’s a lot of momentum around banning those weapons,” said Clements.

Clements states that there is no justification – in law – for anyone in New Zealand to own a gun for the purpose of self-defence.

“You can only have guns, for hunting, agriculture or for sport. We don’t have a gun-culture here where you can own a gun, as in the US, for self-defence purposes,” said Clements.

The New Zealand government has indicated in response to the Christchurch attacks, that it is going to move quickly to change gun laws, which will be more restrictive. Most gun control advocates believe it’s a good move.

“This does require courage on the Prime Minister’s part,” said Clements.

“…but the government is so shocked by the murders in Christchurch that they really want to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again and that the weapons used are not available for such purposes in the future.”

VOC