Editorial: Time to change our gun laws

In the wake of the Aramoana and Port Arthur massacres, retired High Court judge Sir Thomas Thorp was commissioned to review New Zealand's gun laws. The review took a year and cost $1 million.

It recommended sweeping changes, including the registration of all firearms, the creation of an independent firearms registry and an eminently sensible ban on military-style semi-automatic rifles. As The Evening Post observed at the time, "if a deer can't be killed with seven rounds, the shooter doesn't deserve to use a gun".

Twelve years later, none of the review's recommendations has been implemented, although a watered-down version of some of them is before Parliament's law and order select committee. At some point, parliamentarians might get around to passing it.

In the meantime, a policeman is dead, a colleague and a civilian are in a critical condition and a third policeman is in a stable condition. All four were shot by a man who, unknown to the police, had assembled an arsenal of at least 18 semi-automatic and military-style firearms at his Hawke's Bay home.

The fault for the shootings lies firmly with the gunman, Jan Molenaar. It is he who accumulated a personal arsenal and he who chose to shoot four unarmed people.

But in the aftermath of the shooting, one question is crying out to be answered: how could the police who went to his home to carry out a routine cannabis search have been unaware of the extreme risk he posed?

Molenaar was one of 50,000 registered gun owners whose gun licences expired in 2002 when the new 10-year licens-ing system took effect. According to police national manager of operations Tony McLeod, files on each of the 50,000 were created and sent to the districts in which they were last known to live. Police in those districts then undertook "a range of inquiries" to locate them, but not all were found.

That appears to have been the case with Molenaar, but it is hard to see why. He lived at the same address for 20 years. Police should have known he had previously been a registered gun owner and, if they did not know the whereabouts of the guns he once possessed, they should have known he represented a threat.

Already gun organisatons are warning against a "kneejerk" reaction to the shootings. It is the same warning they issued after the Thorp report was produced and the same warning they issue every time an innocent is killed by a bullet.

But the rights of hunters and recreational shooters have to be balanced against the rights of the police and the public not to be shot.

The present system of registering gun owners, rather than their guns, is an abysmal failure. If the police ignorance of Molenaar's arsenal is a guide, anywhere up to 50,000 formerly licensed gun owners still have weapons that the police know nothing about.

The time has come to act on Sir Thomas's recommendations. Surely it is not beyond the ken of Parliament to devise a workable system that reduces the risk to the public and the police.

If that requires stepping on the toes of gun lobbyists, so be it. Gun owners have rights, but so do the public. Theirs is the right to go about their lives without being shot at. It is the greater right.

- © Fairfax NZ News