Guess What? New Zealand Gun Owners Aren’t Giving Up Their Weapons. Liberals Will Hate This.
Michael Cantrell
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After the horrific shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand earlier this year, the country’s government imposed strict firearm laws to try and prevent another incident from happening, caring little for the fact they were trampling on citizens’ God-given right to defend themselves against violent criminals.
However, gun owners aren’t giving up their weapons.
via The Daily Wire:
Those changes resulted in a new gun ban that prohibited “military-style semi-automatics,” and a redefinition that would include nearly all firearms with detachable magazines, Reason reported:
Ardern also intends to “ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons” (MSSAs), which under current law include semi-automatic rifles that have pistol grips, folding or telescoping stocks, bayonet lugs, flash suppressors, internal magazines holding more than seven rounds, or detachable magazines that have “the appearance of holding more than 10 cartridges” (15 for .22-caliber rimfire ammunition). MSSAs already require a special license. Ardern wants to make them entirely illegal, and that includes firearms currently owned by license holders, who will be required to surrender them. They are supposed to receive compensation, but this “buyback” won’t be optional.
The new law also banned “high-capacity magazines” – those holding more than five rounds. An exception was made for magazines holding ammunition for small-caliber ammunition.
As Reason now reports, New Zealand gunowners aren’t handing in the legally obtained-but-since-declared-illegal firearms. The latest numbers show just 700 weapons have been turned in. There are currently 1.5 million firearms in New Zealand, though it is unclear how many fall under the new expansive ban.
“These weapons are unlikely to be confiscated by police because they don’t know of their existence,” said Philippa Yasbek of Gun Control NZ. “These will become black-market weapons if their owners choose not to comply with the law and become criminals instead.”
So why aren’t people turning in their weapons? The government doesn’t know who owns what firearms, so it’s sort of impossible to enforce the very laws they passed. The only way they could go about figuring out this situation would be to go door-to-door and search people’s homes, which would be a violation of their rights.
It’s nice to see a victory for gun rights in another country, especially one that tends to lean heavily socialistic. Gun control laws never work anyway, a lesson we all learned long ago, but for whatever reason, the left continues to try anyway.
All gun control manages to do is taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, creating a larger pool of victims for violent offenders to choose from.
Let’s cut the crap and get back to the basics of the Second Amendment, allowing people to possess the means necessary to defend themselves.
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