As you might imagine from my posts for Crush The Street, I’m not a big fan of liberal policies. I’m especially not a fan of restrictions on firearms. But as the Associated Press recently reported, New Zealand is taking leftist agendas to another dimension with gun confiscations. According to AP contributor Nick Perry:
New Zealand authorities said Saturday their country will be a safer place after owners handed in more than 50,000 guns during a buyback program following a ban on assault weapons. But critics say the process was flawed and many owners have illegally stashed their firearms.
The government banned the most lethal types of semi-automatic weapons less than a month after a lone gunman in March killed 51 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques. The police then launched a six-month program to buy the newly banned weapons from owners.
The buyback ended midnight Friday, with gun collection events staying open late as police reported in a surge in last-minute returns.
Now, I realize that this initiative is a buyback program where complying gun owners receive compensation. However, with the banning of semi-automatic firearms, this de facto amounts to gun confiscations.
And the way I see it, New Zealand’s gun confiscations have done nothing more than disarm the 33,000 people who cooperated with the request. Is that supposed to make the country safer?
Gun Confiscations Are Never the Answer
Unlike other pro-firearms advocates, I don’t view the issue with rose-tinted glasses. Of course, you can never take the gun out of the equation. While almost anything can be turned into a weapon, a semiautomatic firearm can dish out devastating destruction rapidly.
You simply can’t do that with a knife. But are widespread gun confiscations the answer?
Unfortunately, liberal politicians throughout the western world think so because it’s the lazy scapegoat. People see the platform but not the root cause of criminal behavior. And while addressing this core issue will take significant time, disarming law-abiding citizens really only makes the problem worse.
After all, if I were a criminal, I would recognize that 33,000 Kiwis are (presumably) without their firearms. Whatever the real number is, my odds of a successful crime would go up because of this stupid law.
Indeed, almost any other action would be preferable to gun confiscations. But I worry now that a precedent has been set. This sets in motion the possibility that we’ll see soft confiscations before an outright seizure of weapons in the U.S. at some point in the future.