Kerre Woodham: It's the optics of the thing

I suppose it's a bit unfair to conflate the two because there is absolutely no correlation between licensed firearm users and illegal gun use, I get that.

And I suppose that an increase in the cost of a firearms licence is fair enough, given that licensing fees have remained static since 1999, according to the police. The police also point out that the cost - $126.50 or thereabouts, is less than 15 per cent of the true price to issue a licence.

So okay fair enough.

But it's just the optics of the thing, pinging licensed firearms users on a weekend where there were firearms incidents in three Christchurch suburbs, in Hamilton, in Auckland, and in a year which have seen rates of injury and death caused by firearms tracking higher than ever before. Why ping the licensed firearms users? And I, I know intellectually and with clarity that the two are completely unrelated, but they're not.

Because we were told when the Prime Minister announced in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings, that the Government was taking action on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen gun laws and make our country a safer place.

That was the promise, that New Zealand would be a safer place, and it patently is not. Over the past 12 months police have attended 4% more jobs where guns are involved than the previous 12 months. There's been a 74% increase in injuries. And if you look at the past 12 months and compare it with ten years before that, there is a 53% increase in gun crime and a 327% increase in injuries caused by guns.

So New Zealand is not a safer place thanks to the gun laws that were introduced.

That's the problem with ideology over pragmatism. Just wanting something to be so, hoping something to be so, doesn't make it so. Buying back semi-automatic weapons from law abiding gun owners was never going to make New Zealand a safer place.

Illegal firearms use has nothing to do with lawful gun ownership, so the police should be able to increase licensing fees for all the reasons they've given, without there being any kickback.

But there will be, A) because the firearms licensing process is imperfect, and firearms owners don't see why they should fund a bureaucratic mess.

And B) because at a time when criminals are using illegal firearms, seemingly at will, I'd rather hear announcements about how police are investing, time and money going after the crims rather than raising the prices for lawful gun owners.  

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