New Zealand Gun Crime Hits 10-Year High After Strict Gun Confiscation
It’s been more than a year since New Zealand instituted strict gun confiscation in the wake of a mass shooting in Christchurch in March 2019. So according to liberal logic, gun crime in New Zealand should be at an all-time low now.
But that’s the opposite of what has happened. According to figures obtained by Radio New Zealand, “[L]ast year had the highest rates of gun crime and deaths involving firearms for nearly 10 years.”
The gun-control legislation implemented in New Zealand banned all “military-style” semi-automatic guns and so-called “assault rifles.” In an effort to take those weapons out of circulation, the country established a mandatory “gun buyback.”
In 2014, before the implementation of gun control, New Zealand had a gun-related death rate of less than 1 per 1 million people. According to Radio New Zealand, the nation recorded 2.4 gun-related deaths per million people in each of the past two years.
So if the goal is to reduce gun violence, gun control is an epic failure. At the very least, gun control does very little to reduce gun crime.
This should not come as much of a surprise. A 2018 study by two pro-gun-control groups found no observable effect on gun homicides and suicide rates in California that could be linked to gun-control laws in the state.
Similarly, if gun control worked as well as liberals claim it does, Chicago would be a peaceful utopia. Instead, the Windy City is an epicenter of gun violence. Last weekend, 104 people became victims of gun violence in the nation’s third-largest city, with 14 losing their lives.
Perhaps it never occurred to gun-control advocates that criminals, who by definition do not obey laws, are not deterred by strict gun-control laws.
As a group of New Mexico sheriffs speaking out against proposed gun-control legislation in their state in 2019 explained, “you’re just taking guns out of law-abiding citizens’ hands.”
“This is not going to affect the criminals out there. They’re going to be able to get guns, and they do not follow the law.”
In America, law-abiding citizens need guns more than ever as left-wing mobs push to “defund the police” and go on rampages of looting and destroying businesses. This anarchistic unrest comes in the wake of the death of George Floyd in police custody a month ago.
Yet these arguments do not deter liberals. Should Joe Biden win the presidency in November, he has promised to make anti-gun extremist Beto O’Rourke his gun-control czar. Liberals would love to implement the same gun-control measures in America that proved ineffective in New Zealand.
In light of the failure of gun-control measures to reduce gun violence in New Zealand, it might make sense for the nation to reconsider its “assault weapons” bans and gun confiscation program. Instead, New Zealand is doubling down on its gun-control efforts.
According to Reuters, New Zealand implemented a gun registry earlier this month. Residents will be required to update the registry as they buy or sell guns.
It might seem tempting to dismiss the idea of such wide-reaching gun control ever taking effect in the United States. After all, the right to keep and bear arms is explicitly protected in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
However, liberals have made it clear that they see abolishing the Second Amendment as part of their long-range plan. The late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote as much in a 2018 New York Times Op-Ed titled “Repeal the Second Amendment.”
Liberals and Democrats should look at the statistics in New Zealand and here at home before moving ahead with their gun-control agenda — even though these statistics probably will have the New Zealand effect, causing liberals at home to push for more gun control, not less.
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