Police Association President Chris Cahill has welcomed the prime minister’s commitment to changing New Zealand’s gun laws.
“Jacinda Ardern has said emphatically that New Zealand’s gun laws will change and that now is the time for that change. I absolutely agree with her and I believe many New Zealanders will be aghast that in our country someone can amass a cache of weapons like that discovered in this Christchurch tragedy,” Cahill said.
“It is sickening that it has taken this horrific event to wake us up to our vulnerability. My first thoughts are with the families of those who have been killed or injured, and with our incredibly brave first responders – police officers, ambulance and hospital staff, and all those members of the public who helped in any way they could.
“However we cannot ignore the role of guns in this event.”
Cahill says the debate that New Zealand is about to have on access to certain firearms should be short and swift.
“The bitter irony with this alleged perpetrator in Christchurch is he would not have been able to buy the weapons he had in his home country of Australia, because immediately after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 the then Prime Minister John Howard acted swiftly to ban semi-automatic weapons and Australians were with him.”
“New Zealanders and our politicians now need to step in behind Prime Minister Ardern as she takes decisive action on access to lethal weapons. I can pledge that the association will do everything it can to assist her in cleaning up our gun laws.”
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My 2c: Hopefully this is a PR move & when the dust settles they'll not go too crazy removing gun rights here. I don't really care if certain semi-autos become unavailable to people on a regular gun license (a license mainly intended for hunters) - they seem a bit like cheating to me anyway. So long as they don't touch the collector license where you can buy a wide range of things if you meet the requirements.
Also, as FullAuto said in a previous post, nobody in the media is mentioning that the mosque where they had guns for protection saw less fatalaties because they fired back (is this a rumour or is it true?). This doesn't really matter because the Ministry of Police knows that kind of thing and will be involved in the policy making. Media's gonna do what they do, which is mostly be dumbasses & report half truths for clicks.
Comments
(Old Spike)
the bit about the 2nd mosque is untrue. he used up the ammo for his most lethal guns at the first mosque, returned to his car to get another weapon, shot some more people with that one, then went to a second mosque where he used he other weapons which were shotguns. also at the second mosque one of the people there wrestled the gun from him, after which he fled. the person who ultimately stopped him was completely unarmed.
(Old Spike)
Thanks for clarifying. Could be a rumour started by pro-gun rights people.
He looks to be all of about 5' 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue2F1UZwgfc
(Old Spike)
Yea, there was a completely unarmed guy who tried to "wrestle the gun away" at the first mosque, but if you've seen the video you also saw that he ended up losing that fight.
As brave at it was, that man didn't have to die fighting with his bare hands against an armed killer. If NZ didn't have laws that explicitly prohibit armed self-defense then perhaps he could have fought back with the appropriate tools.
(Old Spike)
yeah he did unfortunately. if the laws were more loose he would've been killed long ago by an earlier nutjob, and if he himself had been armed this time and that time he still would've died because the perp would be even more heavily armed and they don't wait to give you time to draw your weapon in defense.
(Old Spike)
Turns out the Aussie terrorist never had a job, had no education, was living off inheritance from his father's death in 2010. What an absolute fucking loser.
I think we should send the Aussie diplomats home until they do something formal about the mainstream racism in their country. I'm fucking pissed that an Aussie did this on our soil & they have openly xenophobic politicians like Fraser Anning who back the terrorist.
Mind you I think we should send the Israeli & Americans home too, just for context haha.
(Old Spike)
You live in NZ?
(Old Spike)
Yeah man I try not to give any personal info out but have mentioned it a few times on here, I thought you knew. I forget where you are... Tennesse? or is it Kentucky?
(Old Spike)
mostly agree with your point but he left australia because we are dealing with people like that.
just wondering if nz has incitement laws? not really a fan of them myself because they're such a double-edged sword. they're supposed to hold people who spread hate and encourage violence to account, but what they also do at the same time is let the people who actually do the violence to get off completely or at least more lightly, by claiming they only did it because they were incited to do so by another.
(Old Spike)
I thought he went to NZ to train & didn't plan on doing the attack there.
Yeah there are laws against incitement here. I don't know much about it.
The only move I've seen so far is banning Milo. It's better than nothing but I think Aus politicians need to look at whether it's suitable to ride the emotions of anti-immigration voters. Sure it may secure some votes but it's not healthy for society. Our Foreign Minister does it but his voting block are almost exclusively old people & he gets about 7% in the elections.
Man this will make NZ have low tolerance for racism for quite a long time I reckon. It's like America's 9/11 except instead of hating on Muslims it's the opposite. Could cause Aus & NZ to drift apart a bit. Hopefully not, we have a long history as brother nations. I think there could be some expectations from our end though.
Re: political rhetoric - it definitely doesn't help that any public discussion of immigration policy gets far left nitwits going overboard about racism. Both sides need to chill & be more civil.