Prosser Richard: Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Prosser Richard: Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7244. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on this third reading of the Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill but I find as is too often the case with many bills brought by this Government that I am also a little disappointed. 
This bill has come about because of the case of  
Lincoln v New Zealand Police 
. The essence of this case is that the police sought to reclassify a particular semi-automatic rifle the Heckler and Koch SL8 held lawfully by an A category firearms licence owner as a rifle of sporting configuration as being a military-style semi-automatic firearm which requires an E category licence. The owner took the police to court wherein the learned judge decreed that the police had no authority to make such a reclassification. The classification issue centred on the stock of the rifle which incorporates a thumbhole. 
The present Act the Arms Act specifies that military-style semi-automatics must incorporate a free-standing military-pattern pistol grip which a thumbhole is not. The difference between a pistol grip and a thumbhole is as plain as daylight and frankly anybody who cannot tell the difference between them should not be making decisions or laws about such matters. 
Mr Lincoln won his case and the police were sorely aggrieved about that. They went to the then Minister of Police seeking redress and this bill is the result. The bill addresses the issue of changing rifle configurations due to the evolution of design and manufacturing techniques which the police contend they must be able to respond to and it makes some other changes to the importation of firearms airguns and their various parts and also some changes to the records that licensed dealers must keep. These we generally agree with. We are pleased to see that airsoft and paintball guns have been removed from the restricted list but disappointed that realistic replicas will still be available to unlicensed 18-year-olds. My Supplementary Order Paper 36 would have addressed this. Various members have made mention of the fact that we have one incident a week of people presenting replica firearms to the police. This bill without the Supplementary Order Paper in place does not address the fact that 18 and 19-year-olds can go out and buy a realistic replica airgun. 
The single most significant element of the bill concerns regulation-making powers that allow the Governor-General by Order in Council to declare makes models descriptions and parts of semi-automatic firearms to be military-style for the purposes of the Act with the potential that some firearms that were previously classified as being sporting configuration may subsequently be reclassified as military-style. The Minister of Police and other speakers have claimed that the bill makes the definition of a military-style semi-automatic more clear. It does not. It makes it less so. 
The E category licence that is required for ownership of military-style semi-automatics is more difficult to obtain than an A category licence. It is more expensive and it demands a higher level of security. E category gun safes are more expensive than A category safes and security inspections are more frequent. 
When the changes are brought in some firearms owners will be put in the position of owning firearms for which they no longer hold the appropriate licence. Their options then will be limited to two choices. They will either upgrade their licence or dispose of the firearms in question. Some will upgrade. I will do so myself because I can afford to and because I make the presumption that I will pass the character test. Those who are forced by circumstances to dispose of their reclassified firearms will be faced with the reality that only E category licence holders will be able to buy them so they will be selling into a restricted market with limited demand. Their only other option will be to sell them for cash to any buyer who is not asking questions. The consequence of this is that an indeterminate number of very powerful semi-automatic weapons will find their way into the hands of criminals who do not currently possess them. These firearms will be used in the commission of crime and innocent people will be killed and maimed by them. 
The reality is that 79 percent of firearms deaths in New Zealand are suicides and about half of the rest are hunting accidents. Of all death and injury incidents with firearms fully half involve .22 rifles 20 percent involve shotguns and another 15 percent involve pistols despite this latter class already being the most heavily restricted type of firearm in this country. The remaining 15 percent includes every other type of firearm. Military-style semi-automatic rifles owned legally by E category licence holders do not feature in the crime statistics in this country. 
This bill has come about because the police are seeking to gain control over an aspect of firearms law that they do not currently control and to address a problem that does not exist. The direct consequence of that will be that New Zealand will become a less safe place than it currently is criminals will gain access to firearms that they do not currently possess and innocent people will die as a result. 
I have to question the motivation of a certain few individuals within the New Zealand Police who are seeking to have this change to our law brought about. New Zealand’s firearms law is widely regarded internationally as being the best in the world and this change will diminish it. It will detract from it and it will make less good law with which more people will feel disinclined to comply. 
When the Australian Government instigated its buy-back scheme for certain types of firearms a few years back following the Port Arthur massacre more long guns disappeared underground than ever went into the Government’s incinerators—and I mean “underground” in a literal sense as much as a criminal one. Thousands upon thousands of rifles and shotguns went into the ground inside lengths of PVC pipe there to await a change of Government and a return to sensible law. 
Bad laws are ignored by good people. It is human nature and an inherent part of the Anglo-Saxon character to ignore bad laws. Firearms licence holders in this country are a careful responsible tribe. Today in New Zealand 1.1 million firearms owned legally by firearms licence holders killed no one at all. So those owners do not take kindly to the Government treating them unfairly or breaking its word in the social contract with them. 
When a previous Government reneged on its contract to make firearms licences last a lifetime and replaced those licences with 10-year licences a very large number of previously law-abiding firearms owners and users felt disenfranchised and disgruntled to the point that they opted for civil disobedience in the form of not bothering to renew their licences when the new agreement-breaking 10-year period expired. They became lawbreakers. 
This is bad law and people will ignore it. They will not meekly sell their prized and valuable firearms at a loss to reluctant dealers or carpetbagging collectors. They will bury them in the ground instead or sell them to gang members for cash. Buried in the ground these firearms will be less secure than locked in a safe. In the hands of criminals they pose a danger to innocent citizens that they do not currently pose. My Supplementary Order Paper would have addressed this very real probability in a very tangible manner but this Government has chosen to ignore it. That is a great shame. 
I look across the Chamber and I see that there are a number of honourable members who have served in the blue uniform who have given service to the nation as police officers and I wonder whether they are happy to have blood on their hands as a result of giving blind party-whip support to this fatally flawed bill. Mr Mitchell Mr Sabin and Mr Borrows are all former police officers who do know about firearms who do know about criminal behaviour and who do know I would suggest that some of the consequences I foretell here will indeed come to pass. Any one of them could stop this bill or the Minister could withdraw it. I implore the Government to do just that. Withdraw this bill take it away ruminate on it over the summer adjournment consider what I have said and listen to the experts it does have within its own caucus—the former police officers and the Deputy Speaker whose knowledge of firearms probably exceeds the combined total of most of the rest of the House. This bill could easily be pushed on to the back-burner for another few months because there is not any pressing issue that demands a solution by way of its passing into law that cannot already be addressed by regulation. 
This bill as I said earlier seeks to solve a problem that does not exist. This bill does not address the functionality of firearms as I alluded to earlier in this debate; rather it concerns appearance. Functionality has long since been addressed through the regulations on magazine capacity in 1992. The matters of appearance that this bill addresses relate to a certain appearance giving the appearance of menace. I ask the question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? By the same token if a firearm is out in the bush and there is no one there to see it can it still appear menacing? Because that is the reality. 
These firearms are not used by criminals and they are not used in the commission of crime. There is no purpose identified or served in reclassifying them and thereby removing them from legitimate owners and users on the basis of some misplaced perception of a menacing appearance. The police do not have the power to make that distinction under current law which is working well as it has done these past 20 years. It is widely regarded as being the best in the world. That power rests here in this House and I would contend that altering the law in this way will make the country a less safe place and will result in innocent citizens being killed by criminals. That will happen. Call it the law of unintended consequences if you wish but that is what will happen. 
Lastly the bill as proposed with the Minister’s amendments which were passed during the Committee stage against my advice contains yet another technical fault which I identified but very deliberately did not mention during the Committee stage. In their fruitless attempts to find an alternative wording to my own Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 36 in terms of describing a .22 calibre the Minister’s advisers have succeeded in eliminating yet another calibre this being the .17 calibre from the bill’s ambit. I now invite the Government members to pass this bill into law with this technical fault in place knowing that an entire class of firearm has been left out of it. They have missed the target. They have shot themselves in the foot. 
I ask the Government members opposite to withdraw this bill and to bring a successor to it back to the select committee next year where it can be examined by people who do know what they are talking about. New Zealand First does not support this bill.