Gun seller banned from TradeMe

A TradeMe user has been banned from the site in the fallout from last weekend's Sunday Star-Times investigation into the ease of buying a gun online.

Last week the paper bought a .22 rifle from a private seller through online auction site TradeMe with less than $100 cash, no licence and on the first attempt. The privately listed Remington bolt action rifle, similar to the one used to kill South Auckland liquor store owner Navtej Singh, was one of about 550 guns for sale on the site.

While most of those were being sold by licensed gun shops that insist on paperwork signed by a police officer, about 10% appeared to be private sellers. Many made no mention of needing to see a firearms licence.

Gun dealers are concerned private sellers are not checking that buyers have licences as they are legally required to do.

TradeMe had criticised the Star-Times for not releasing details of the man who sold us the rifle, but it did not take the company long to track him down. The man told the paper TradeMe emailed him to say his account had been disabled for selling a firearm to a person without a licence.

The man, originally from China, said he had held his firearms licence for just over a year and bought the rifle through "legal channels".

He said although he had emailed reporter Tony Wall to remind him to bring his licence to the sale he did not ask to see a gun licence, saying he "just totally forgot".

"You do not look dodgy, you got a new car and you dress well and are a friendly person. I should ask but I just forget, that's the only reason", he told Wall last week.

The man said he had rung a police arms officer anonymously to say he thought he had sold a weapon to someone without a licence.

The officer advised him to try to get the weapon back. The Star-Times handed it to a licensed gun dealer.

The seller regretted the episode and acknowledged he had made a mistake. "I'm thinking about reporting to the police. Maybe if I don't call the police, the police are gonna call me. I might be put in jail for three months or up to $1000 fine. I don't know, I can't take the risk."

Gun control advocate Phillip Alpers said the investigation proved New Zealand's gun laws are "so open to abuse and lying".

An adjunct associate professor of public health at Sydney University, Alpers said New Zealand was the only country in the developed world that did not crack down on uncontrolled private gun trading.

"I have no problem with licensed dealers advertising wherever they like because these are very well controlled deals. It is not worth their licences to sell to someone who does not have a licence. Putting all transfers through dealers would be the way to go," he said.

He said the biggest problem with New Zealand's system was that individual guns are not registered and police have lost control over how many there are or who has them.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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Roger McCall   #2   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Alpers always at it, what annoys me the most is that the media always get him to comment. Joe Green summed it up nicely. Gun registration has failed all over the world gun crime in NZ has shown that in most cases they are stolen weapons or even home made. Our gun laws work when properly applied by the Police.

Seb   #1   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

I think it is easy to ignore the reality that New Zealand comparatively low gun crime. As Inspector Joe Green mentioned less than 6 months ago, New Zealand has a "healthy interest" in firearms with a remarkably low violent crime rate. Phillip Alpers is a gun control advocate who's baseless rhetoric is becoming tired and just plain annoying. Leave New Zealand, with its proud history of hunting and the sporting use of firearms, alone. Mr. Alpers, there is a reason your Gunsafe NZ and Coalition for Gun Control ventures in New Zealand failed, Kiwis are not interested in your misrepresentations and emotional rhetoric.

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