Growing interest in firearms 'healthy'

More New Zealanders are arming themselves with firearms licences for sport, recreation and pest control, showing what police believe is a healthy attitude toward gun use.

Police figures issued to The Dominion Post under the Official Information Act show that about 16,000 people got firearms licences for the first time in the past two years - up from 5320 in 2002.

Police national manager of firearms licensing and vetting Inspector Joe Green said there was more interest in game hunting.

Lifestyle block and vineyard owners were getting licences for guns to scare birds and kill pests.

Firearms were used in only 1.3 per cent of all violent crime, including homicides and suicides, he said.

"You get this increased interest in firearms and at the same time the criminal use of firearms is falling.

"All these trends say to me New Zealanders have a healthy attitude toward the use of firearms."

But gun control advocate Philip Alpers, an adjunct associate public health professor at Sydney University, said it was "wishful thinking" to believe the increase was entirely due to healthy outdoors activities.

"You have to recognise there is a component of males in particular, who fantasise about blowing away a burglar and think that guns are a solution," he said.

"There is always a group of people who lie to the police and say they want it for a sport when they'll keep it under the bed."

Though it was not known exactly how many guns there were in New Zealand, police estimated there were 1.1 million. By last November, 214,396 New Zealanders held firearms licences.

Of these, 8000 of the 44,667 issued in 2006 were first-time licence holders, as were about 8000 of the 37,804 issued last year.

Council of Licensed Firearms Owners chairman John Howat said the number of licensed gun owners dropped off in the 1990s after an initial increase when licences were introduced in 1983.

Previously, gun owners had only to be registered, he said.

Mr Howat put the latest increase down to a greater appreciation of the outdoors and the availability of replica guns.

Young people progressed from plastic "soft-air guns" to buying real guns for shooting sports, he said.

And city-slickers who bought a 10-acre block would take up arms when rabbits, hares and possums began "destroying their dream".

"A lot of them change their view points on guns - there's a need for them in that situation."

Mr Alpers said though Australians had to prove they were members of a shooting club before being issued with a gun licence, New Zealanders did not.

Some would say they wanted one for outdoors activities because self-defence was not an acceptable reason to want to own a gun in New Zealand.