The focus of firearm control laws upon people licensed for firearms — when almost all offenders with firearms are not licensed, so their firearms are not lawfully held — suggests misdirected lawmaking.
An example is the firearm registry, which is cataloguing all lawfully owned firearms in New Zealand. This is part of the controls of privately owned firearms. These focus upon three factors: regulating the firearm; regulating the firearm user; and regulating firearm use(s).
A review of the old firearm registry in the 1970s found that not only had the system never been used to solve crime, it had an error rate of more than 30%. The abolition of rifle registration by the Arms Act 1983 was justified by anticipated savings.
In 1990, registration was introduced for military-style semi-automatic firearms (MSSAs) and the lifetime firearm licence was abolished. Personal suitability was still gauged by "vetting" of the applicant in face-to-face interviews.
Vetting, a cornerstone of assessing the suitability of a firearm licence applicant, had been insufficiently funded and later diversions of funds had contributed to major failures in background checks.
The creation of firearms lists has long been thought necessary for controlling privately owned firearms and their owners. Full firearm registration suggests that knowledge of the firearms to be encountered should a house call be made is available, because the police know the resident is licensed for firearms.
For a firearm registration system to be of value, the information within the system must be correct, must be available when required, and must be able to be updated without corruption or loss. The late Sir Thomas Thorp argued that unless 90% of all firearms were registered, the system would be of little use; J. David Fine found that the diversion of police from more focused crime control duties was not a good use of taxpayers’ money.
Full firearm registration is useful for returning lost or stolen property, and enabling those who wish to buy or sell firearms to ensure they deal only with lawfully held firearms.
Consultant Jeff Loan, in his comprehensive presentation of the case for firearm registration, catalogued the virtues of a registry tying firearm owners to their firearms, explaining: "... it is very difficult to isolate and quantify any direct correlation between the establishment of a firearm registration scheme and firearm-related deaths/injuries ... because they were ... implemented as part of a comprehensive ... package of ... measures".
Establishment funding for the New Zealand firearm registry was $408 million, to be spent over four years. Costs shown to date show that spending is expected to increase to more than $500m, up from less than $100m annually. This is largely because of the appointment of more than 200 staff, an increase of the order of 80% over the staffing formerly used for firearm control.
Licensed firearm owners have been accused of selling weapons to those not licensed for them. Fewer than 20 offences were reported annually, some involving deportees from Australia who became licensed after their arrival in New Zealand.
It is unsurprising that "investments" in illicit drug shipments are accompanied by firearms. Such detections, although widely publicised are to be expected, given that only a small percentage of shipping containers are examined.
Firearm thefts are known to be of the order of 600 annually, and from the number of firearms seized from offenders (some 1300 per annum), it is known that few have been supplied by licensed firearm owners. The existence of a pool of "grey" and "black" firearms (firearms illicitly held), is known but seems unable to have been properly documented, despite official efforts.
Grey weapons (those firearms held by otherwise law-abiding people whose licences have lapsed, or who in ignorance continue to have them), and black firearms (held for criminal purposes), were unable to be enumerated.
Gang members are known to hold firearm licences, surprising in view of their publicly stated refusal to comply with new laws. Up to 200,000 illicit firearms may exist after recent law changes, these firearms being in the hands of as many as 20,000. Such people are not expected to make any effort to licence themselves or to register their firearms.
Breaches of data security have occurred in many government repositories, including those of health, police, social welfare and transport. Other digital registration systems for firearms in New Zealand were found to contain error rates of between 10% and 15%, despite regular attempts at correcting and updating these records. The new system, inaugurated mid-2023, is already known to contain erroneous information.
The registration of the firearms of owners who are traceable, who face loss of firearm licence, fines and imprisonment, for transgression, seems redundant.
The about $500m annual cost could be used to provide, for example, more public health resources, or even, if applied to policing, more than 2000 full-time staff.
- Chaz Forsyth is a former president of the New Zealand Sporting Shooters Association.
