Barker Rick: Arms (Military Style Semi-Automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barker Rick: Arms (Military Style Semi-Automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 May 2011. Volume:672;Page:18616. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to support the Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill. I note that this is another piece of legislation on firearms. It has some positives and it has some negatives. 
The difficulty with firearms is that there are two distinct groups of people in New Zealand. The first group is those who are very very supportive of firearms. They write emails to tell us that there is a right to bear arms. Well that may be so in America because of an amendment to the constitution. Some people have doubts about the extent to which there is a right to bear arms but the constitution is what people believe it to be and people in the US believe they have a right to bear arms. In New Zealand we do not have a written constitution; nor do we have an amendment that says that members of the public have the right to bear arms. Carrying a weapon is a privilege and it is a licensed privileged. 
I am a member of the public who has a licence to carry a firearm. I have owned a firearm for a long time. The first firearm I got was a Lee-Enfield Mk IV bolt-action rifle with a 10 shot magazine which I got at the age of 18. I went to the local sports shop and said I wanted to buy a rifle to go deer shooting. I was told by the sports shop owner that I had to see the sergeant in charge of firearms at Greymouth Police Station and present him with the firearm so that he could record the number of it and my name and address which I did. When I came back and told the shopkeeper I had done that he completed the sale and I had a firearm. I was registered and the firearm was registered. That was the way it was when I was a young man. 
Then the police decided that it was all too complicated. We changed the law to license firearm owners not the weapons. So today we have a disjoint between the firearm owner—the person who is licensed to carry the firearm—and the number of firearms they have. But firearm owners have to have a different sort of registration. I am not licensed to have a pistol. I have no desire to have a pistol but I am not licensed for it and I am not a gun collector so I am not licensed for that. The conditions vary. 
There is still disquiet in the community about the number of firearms in the community that are unidentified—for good reason. But Parliament has failed to resolve that broader and bigger issue. Gun owners are very concerned that if there were registration of firearms and registration of owners like there was in the old system then that would be a short step away from the State deciding to take their firearms off them. This is a view that is widely held. It is one that I do not personally share but I have to acknowledge that it is a view that people have. The gun-owning community is very suspicious of this place Parliament just as many of them are very suspicious of the intent of this bill. 
It is fair to say that the nature of firearms in the community and the use of them have changed. As a young person nearly every house I knew had a firearm. Their owners were either ex-servicemen or country people who shot pests deer goats and did those things. It was an ordinary everyday event. People had them for dealing with problems around the local area—possums and so on. Slug guns in those days were .177 and pump action and if someone accidently shot a person with one it did not break the skin. One was lucky if one got a bruise. But this is not the case today. Slug guns today are of larger calibre such as .22 their pumping mechanisms are much more powerful they are gas operated and they have multiple-shot magazines. They are today a very lethal weapon and they are completely different from the slug gun that was available when I was a young man. The law has to recognise these changes and we would be kidding ourselves if we did not. 
But the issues are quite often misunderstood. Part of the misunderstanding is the definition of a military-style semi-automatic firearm. This bill started its journey because of a court decision over the way in which the law described a military-style semi-automatic firearm. It was defined in a rather negative way which led to the police being unable to successfully bring a prosecution about a particular military-style semi-automatic weapon. Therefore Parliament is back to redraw the line. 
I suggest to the Law and Order Committee that it will not be an easy matter for it to understand simply from looking at papers. It will not be easy for people to come and describe to us the various types of weapons there are how they are configured what their uses are and what their capabilities are. I suggest to the committee that it adjourn for a day or two and go to a rifle range. There we should be shown by the police and others who are opponents of this bill exactly the nature of the weapons they are concerned about and they should demonstrate their use. I also suggest to the select committee that submitters on the legislation also be invited to attend the day or the days in order to demonstrate on the rifle range the nature of the weapons they think should or should not be covered by the scope of the bill. I think we have to have a very clear and open demonstration of the nature of the weapons and the concerns people have about them. 
You see many people who in times gone by would have lived in households that would have regularly had a firearm in them do not today. Many households have no experiences of firearms. Many households and many people are very nervous and apprehensive about firearms—and for good reason. A firearm is designed with one purpose and one purpose only: to deliver lethal force at range and remotely. It is designed to kill. That is the sole purpose of firearms. Yes they are used for sport and yes they are used for entertainment but let us not misunderstand the fundamental nature of a firearm. A firearm is designed to deliver lethal force. Therefore the public have justified concern about firearms about their use their ownership and the purposes they can be put to. To put aside those public concerns—those genuine concerns—would make Parliament remiss in its obligations. 
But on the other side Parliament does have to recognise that legitimate owners are entitled to enjoy their firearms and that legitimate owners are entitled to enjoy the sport and recreation of shooting. We have a wonderful outdoors here in New Zealand for deer stalking goat hunting tahr shooting duck shooting—you name it. It is a fabulous feature of New Zealand that we have a great outdoors. It is made much more enjoyable for many people by the opportunity to use firearms and to hunt and to stalk. I for one would be completely opposed to any restrictions on that activity. But we have to find a balance and this bill is about trying to find a balance. It does have to recognise that there are significant changes in the style of firearm. One style of weapon that concerns people particularly in this case is air-powered rifles. 
I make the point again that when I was a young man the only slug gun or air rifle one could get was a pump action .177 slug gun. They were as slow as a wet week. In fact one could see the slug come out of the end of the barrel—they were as slow as that. They dropped off as one member has said like a stone off a bridge. They had no trajectory at all. They were hopeless at knocking over a sparrow—let us face it. Anything bigger than that it was impossible to do any damage to. But the modern air rifle is completely different. The modern air rifle can have a much bigger calibre can be gas-powered and can deliver lethal force—of that there is no doubt. The modern air rifle is not a single-shot pump; it very often has magazines with 20 or 30 rounds in them—multiple rounds in them. These rifles are almost like machine guns. 
Parliament has to take note and to change the law but we need to do that in a considered way. Labour welcomes this bill as an opportunity to again debate the issue of firearms the nature of firearms and to come to a considered decision. In saying “considered” decision I hope the select committee takes up my suggestion of having the police and other interested parties come with us to a rifle range and show us exactly the nature of the weapons they want to have restricted and the ones they want to have unrestricted so that we can have a really informed view and a very good practical discussion. At the end of that we will all be informed and if we are better informed we will make better law. Thank you.