THE 1997 REVIEW OF FIREARMS CONTROL: AN APPRAISAL.

• Author: Newbold, Greg

INTRODUCTION

In August 1996 the Minister of Police commissioned Mr (now, Sir) Thomas Thorp, formerly a judge of the High Court of New Zealand, to conduct a review of firearms control in this country. Initially, the report was due for presentation by 28 February 1997 but, as a result of extensive public interest and a large number of submissions, in December 1996 the completion date was extended to 30 June 1997. In all, 2,884 written submissions were received. In addition, consultations with informed parties were conducted, public hearings were held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, a number of Australian states were visited, and six empirical research projects were undertaken by independent consultants. The final report, Review of Firearms Control in New Zealand, is 281 pages long, including appendices. It is by far the most detailed and comprehensive report on firearms ever conducted in this country. Although the Arms Act 1983 was amended extensively in 1992, the review proposes further significant changes. The purpose of the current paper is to analyse the findings of the New Zealand firearms review and discuss the viability of some of its major recommendations.

BACKGROUND TO THE REPORT

In order to understand the recommendations of the report and the intense interest it generated, it is necessary to know a little about how firearms law has evolved in New Zealand, and why the report came about.

Firearms control in New Zealand commenced with the Arms Ordinance of 1845 and was amended a number of times until 1920, when the first detailed firearms legislation, the Arms Act, was passed. The Arms Act 1920 set the foundation of firearms law until its first major revision in 1983. Until 1983, the fundamentals of arms law were that specific firearms were registered to specific owners. Persons wishing to purchase a gun had to obtain a permit to do so from the police and then register the weapon with the police once it had been procured. Pistols were subject to extraordinary restrictions from 1920, and ownership required a special licence. The 1920 law was replaced by a new Arms Act in 1958, which tightened some aspects of the law, relaxed others, but generally made no substantive changes.

In 1983, however, as a result of a survey which had found a large proportion of errors in the arms register, the registration of firearms was scrapped (Forsyth 1985:95). Under the Arms Act 1983, persons wishing to own firearms had to be vetted by the police and pass a simple written test. Those who satisfied police requirements were issued with lifetime licences, allowing them to purchase and possess rifles and shotguns. Controls over the number and type of guns owned were dropped in the case of long guns, but ownership of pistols still required an endorsed licence with special conditions attached.

Implementing the new act was the largest administrative task ever undertaken by the New Zealand Police (AJHR 1985: G.6:9) and initially it was perceived to be working well. Firearms received almost no comment in the House of Representatives for the rest of the decade and, although violent and criminal firearms offences grew significantly (by 57% and 55% respectively) in the six years following the act, violent gun crime still remained low, at less than 2% of all violent offences (unpublished police data).

So unconcerned was the government of the day about gun control issues that, after 1986, approximately 12,000 cheap, military-style semi-automatic rifles (MSSAs) were allowed into the country with little control over their importation (NZPD 1992 v.525:8754-65). In 1987, when the New Zealand Army converted to the Steyr rifle, the government added to the nation's private stock of assault weapons by selling 2500 of its 7.62mm Self-Loading Rifles direct to the New Zealand public. Initially there was no media reaction either, but by 1989 news of massacres in Hungerford, England, and Hoddle St and Queen St, Melbourne in 1987, followed by Stockton, California in 1989, all by gunmen using assault rifles, prompted the Commissioner of Police to ban the importation of military semiautomatics in 1990. Although a High Court challenge overturned the ban, it was replaced immediately by a customs ban.

Apart from the issue of MSSAs, until the end of 1990 the 1983 Arms Act was uncontentious and it attracted little comment in parliament. Private fears were growing, however, and by the late 1980s there was a growing trickle of articles and letters to newspaper editors warning of the dangers of uncontrolled gun imports and sales. Suspicion that overseas massacres would result in tighter gun laws in New Zealand also led to the formation of a lobby group to preserve the status quo. This group, formed in November 1989, was called New Zealand Shooter Rights (Newbold 1997a:186).

It was exactly a year after the formation of Shooter Rights that the concerns of both pro- and anti-gun restriction advocates came to fruition. In November 1990 David Gray, a licensed gun owner, went on a rampage at Aramoana in Otago and killed 13 people. The weapon which Gray used to slay at least nine of his victims was a Chinese-made military semi-automatic (O'Brien 1995).

Reaction to the massacre was rapid. The Aramoana incident occurred just a few weeks after the government had changed from Labour to National in a general election and the new Minister of Police, John Banks, flew immediately to the crime scene. He promised a review of firearms law, which finally came in November 1992 in the form of a comprehensive amendment to the Arms Act and its accompanying Regulations. The fundamentals of the Arms Amendment Act are that lifetime arms licences have been replaced by 10-year renewable ones, with photographs of licensees added. All existing owners have had to re-apply for these licences. Each applicant has been individually investigated and has been denied a licence if unable to prove himself or herself to be a "fit and proper" person. One next-of-kin and one unrelated referee must attest in a confidential interview to the applicant's suitability to own firearms. People without licences are now prohibited from buying ammunition. Firearms not in use have to be kept in a locked cabinet, separate from the ammunition. The re-licensing process commenced in 1993 and was completed early in 1998. Approximately 240,000 licences were given, with an estimated 85,000 holders of the old licences failing to apply for new ones.

The greatest law changes have been directed at the owners of MSSAs. All owners of military-style semi-automatics had until 1 May 1993 to get rid of their weapons, to convert them to sporting configuration, or to apply for a special "E-Category" licence at a cost of $200.00 every ten years. All E-Category applicants underwent rigorous examination in order to satisfy police that they were suitable to own an MSSA. When not in use, all MSSAs must now be stored in a safe or strong-room which must be approved by police before an E-Category licence can be issued.

Many gun owners were unhappy with the new law and Shooter Rights (renamed the Sporting Shooters' Association of New Zealand (SSANZ) in late 1992), with a membership of 3500, had campaigned vigorously against it. In response, in June 1993 an antagonist organisation known as GunSafe was formed, headed by television personality Philip Alpers. From that point a lively debate developed between GunSafe on the one hand, pushing for even more stringent gun controls, and SSANZ lobbying for existing gun-owning rights to be retained.

Apart from public squabbles between GunSafe and SSANZ, further firearms massacres in New Zealand and overseas also served to maintain the profile of the firearms debate. The Aramoana incident had been the first firearms massacre in New Zealand since 1941, but after it came the Schlaepfer shootings in Paerata in 1992 and the Bain shootings in Dunedin in 1994. Overseas there were well-publicised mass shootings in Sydney and Texas in 1991, in New South Wales in 1992, in New South Wales and San Francisco in 1993, and in New South Wales and Washington D.C. in 1994.

Although these killings kept the arms debate alive they did not throw into question the efficacy of the new laws. But in 1995 and 1996 a series of incidents in New Zealand and overseas cast the issue of gun control back into the political arena. In July 1995 Ron Lewis ran amok with a pump action .22 rifle in Wainuiomata. Although he killed no one he was wounded by a police volley and lost both his legs. In September 1995, in Invercargill, Eric Gellatley broke into a sports store, stole guns and ammunition, and began firing wildly up and...