Locking Up Guns: Foiling thieves, children and the momentarily suicidal (original) (raw)

In New Zealand, 200,000 licensed shooters (5.5% of the population) own an estimated 1 million firearms, 9 times more guns per capita than in England and Wales and 20% more than in Australia. Based on a 3 year study of firearm theft in New Zealand, this paper concludes that insecure storage of lawfully held weapons by licensed owners poses a significant public health and safety risk. Furthermore, this paper concludes that the failure of the police to enforce New Zealand gun security laws, and the government's hesitancy to develop firearm education and regulation policies, exacerbates insecure firearm storage, a key factor in firearm-related theft, injury, suicide, violence and criminal activity.

"Results: Most victims were killed by a licensed gun-owner, while 62.5% (and ten out of eleven female victims) were killed with a legal firearm from the collection of a licensed gun-owner. Almost all victims (95%) were killed by a familiar person. Half were shot by their partner, an estranged partner or a member of their own family. Of all the dead, 63% were shot during family violence, 91% of these with a legal firearm. Of the perpetrators, 82% had no predictive history of violent crime, while none had a history of mental illness. Conclusion: These results contradict the suggestion that efforts to reduce firearm violence should be directed only at “criminals and the mentally ill”, rather than “law-abiding gun-owners”.

In New Zealand, 97% of licensed firearm owners are allowed to keep an unlimited number of guns in secret. The firearms held by these people – common sporting shotguns and rifles – are also the guns most often used in family violence, homicide, suicide, injury and crime. By contrast the remaining 3% of gun owners possess weapons deemed more dangerous, namely handguns, military-style semi-automatics and machine guns. These must be individually registered by serial number to each owner. As a direct result of this careful registration, such weapons are far less commonly misused. So the guns most often used to kill, injure and intimidate are those which are least controlled. Shotguns and rifles can be collected and kept in any quantity without the need to show a genuine reason to own them, and with no official record of the guns being kept anywhere. Firearm registration, a system proven to work in many countries around the world, is not applied in this country to the guns which are most misused. New Zealand is now one of the very few Western countries which does not have this elementary form of control over all firearms.

New Zealand has come late to the gun culture. For the past century we prided ourselves on a healthy, safe attitude to firearms and low rates of gun crime. There was pride in our smile when visitors from North America were amazed to see unarmed police. That smile is now tinged with concern – a “yes, but” reaction as we acknowledge that guns have become a noticeable problem here, too. The history of New Zealand’s gun control law is dominated by failure. Failure of gun owners to comply with the laws, failure of police and courts to enforce and uphold them, and most importantly the failure of successive Governments to provide the will and the resources to see the laws through. At the same time we have pioneered and proved the worth of strict registration of individual firearms. Though New Zealand has consistently achieved this only with hand guns and restricted weapons, the low rate of misuse involving such firearms is acknowledged to be the result of registration. Now the challenge is to achieve the same result with the guns most commonly used in death, injury and crime – common sporting long guns.

NZ Police files show that, in all the firearm-related homicides in this country in the three years 1992-94: - Of all the dead, 63% were shot during family violence, 91% of these with a legal firearm - Almost all victims of firearm homicide (95%) were shot by a familiar person - Nearly two-thirds of firearm homicide victims (and ten out of eleven female victims) were killed with a legal firearm from the collection of a licensed gun-owner - Most firearm homicide victims were killed by a licensed gun-owner In addition, a parallel study showed that half the perpetrators involved in non-fatal misuse of firearms during domestic disputes were licensed gun-owners."

In recent months there has been an upsurge in contributions to the popular press from social commentators insisting that guns make our nation safer. This essay questions these assertions. The paper provides evidence to support a contrary affirmation: that is, in order to have a reduction in gun violence, there needs to be a reduction in the number of guns generally, and a continuation of the legal controls that currently shape firearms policy in Australia.

Over the study period, 78 incidents yielded information on 97 perpetrators and 100 firearms. Of the 97 perpetrators, 66 per cent were unlicensed, 20 per cent were licensed, the licence status of 8 per cent of the perpetrators was unknown and the remaining 7 per cent were using air guns, and therefore a licence was not required. Half of the perpetrators involved in domestic disputes were licensed. Of the 100 firearms, 44 per cent were classified as 'legal firearms' and 56 per cent were classified as 'illegal firearms'. These findings suggest that strategies aimed at reducing or preventing injury due to firearm misuse must focus on both licensed and unlicensed individuals and both legal and illegal firearms.