By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
The New Zealand government has launched its “second wave” of gun control in the continuing reaction to the deadly March shooting spree, committed by a lone gunman, on two mosques in Christchurch.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
According to the Daily Caller this phase amounts to a continued clamp down on gun ownership in the island nation, with tighter gun licensing regulations and the establishment of a national firearms registry. There are an estimated 1.5 million guns in the country, and only a few hundred have so far been turned in after being banned as so-called “assault weapons.”
New Zealand does not have a Second Amendment-type provision in its constitution. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was quoted suggesting her citizens do not necessarily have a need to be armed.
The country staged its first gun “buyback” program recently, which apparently was well-received by gun groups groups in the U.S.
NPR reported that Shannon Watts with Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action said New Zealand’s quick actions “stand in stark contrast to the U.S.” Andrew Patrick with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence said gun control in New Zealand is an example of “action and accountability in response to a horrific mass shooting that is unfortunately missing in the United States of America.”
“When it comes to moral and legislative responses to gun violence,” Patrick reportedly said, “American politicians could learn a lot by looking toward this small island in the South Pacific.”
Not everyone would agree. The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association and others have been critical of the gun control reaction., which penalizes law-abiding citizens for something they didn’t do. There are gun owner groups in New Zealand that are pursuing legal action.
After virtually all of the Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination either agreed or failed to disavow New Zealand’s harsh actions, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed in an Op-Ed, “By their silence the entire national Democratic Party, and especially those Democrats hoping to replace Donald Trump in 2020, have erased any doubt that they have graduated from being the ‘party of gun control’ to being the ‘party of gun confiscation.’”
The lone gunman now in custody for that terror attack apparently said in an alleged manifesto that he had hoped the slaughter would cause a gun control discussion in the U.S. Essentially, some gun rights advocates have observed, the accused murder suspect is getting exactly the reaction he had hoped for.
As reported by the Washington Examiner at the time, in the manifesto, “the author claimed he wanted his use of guns to create conflict in the U.S. over gun control and the Second Amendment, deepening geographic, political, cultural, and racial fault lines that would lead to a civil war, setting up a worldwide conflict over race and reduce U.S. influence globally while ensuring the future of whites in North America.”
