We really hope that new Minister of Police Hipkins will unravel the complex legislation that confuses lawful gun owners and police alike and instead transfer the administration funding to getting illegal guns off the streets.

That’s the message from the Sporting Shooters Association President, Neville Dodd, who says new proposals to tighten controls on the use of legally owned firearms that will see the closure of many safe shooting ranges must be at least rationalized and preferably dumped as counter productive.

“Until now Police emphasis has been on pointless restrictions for licensed firearms owners who comply with the law anyway. A classic example is the planned registration of guns owned by licensed gun owners. That will achieve nothing and simply add costs to an already very expensive administration budget.”

The government has allocated $208 Million to police to fund the new “business” unit that will administer licensing and the firearms register. That translates to $1 million a week. What an appalling, scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money and why on earth is it not directed to where the problem is – the gangs.

“We understand that there’s an estimated 20,000 unlicensed guns within the gang/criminal community(Thorpe), who will never tell the authorities what they have and certainly not hand them in”.

This is where parliament and police need to focus rather than on law abiding licensed firearms owners. He says that the new minister Chris Hipkins has the track record of fixing things and that while his new challenge is a very real one, he hopes the Minister will redirect the police focus from law abiding properly vetted licensed firearms owners to the criminal element in society for a better result for all New Zealand.

Sporting Shooters Assn is an organisation who speak for 240,000 legally licensed gun owners.

By Sporting Shooters Association of New Zealand