Editorial: The dilemma of tracking guns

OPINION: The cache of weapons found at the home of gunman Jan Molenaar and other elements of the Napier seige raise questions about New Zealanders and firearms.

The man who killed a policeman and wounded two others and a civilian had 18 fully loaded guns. Police found more than 100 spent cartridges, 2000 bullets and home made explosive devices.

His firearm licence had expired in 2002 and three of the guns had been stolen. Two of the self loading rifles had belonged to the army but were sold in the 1980s after more modern rifles were introduced.

The amount of fire power found at the house naturally has people asking about our firearms registration system, which registers the gun owner and not the gun.

The system is currently under review by the police.

We changed the system in 1982 after the police found it virtually impossible to keep track of guns with limited resources. Instead gun owners were registered.

There is no accurate idea of how many guns are in New Zealand. In 1997 Sir Thomas Thorp had a go at estimating what the national gun cupboard held between 700,000 and one million in total with perhaps 100,000 held by unlicensed owners. It has also been estimated that between 10,000 and 25,000 guns are held for criminal purposes.

It's argued that changing the system back to registering guns instead of owners just means an account of the firearms held by law abiding people will be the outcome.

Unfortunately, there will always be guns and gun owners who remain outside the law and beyond any attempt to account for the firearms in the country.

But it would be very useful to know how many guns a person owns. For police and other enforcement agencies, having more information than just a person is licensed to own a firearm would be helpful.

And a means of tracing guns would also be of assistance.

The army is now putting microchips in weapons for traceability. In this case it's a question of technology. And the original problem of limited resources to cope with vast amounts of information on guns may have been solved by the computing power available today.

Of course with regard to the Napier case, given that Jan Molenaar's licence had expired in 2002 there is no guarantee that guns he owned would be tracked in another kind of system. But it is time to look at how other countries do things, or even look at a belts and braces type approach to the issue. Could we know who has firearms and how many they have under a revised system, with tabs kept on both owner and guns.

While some may see this as too much and possibly draconian, when it comes to this dilemma is there ever too much information in the police hands?

- The Marlborough Express