Locke Keith: Arms (Military Style Semi-Automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Arms (Military Style Semi-Automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 May 2011. Volume:672;Page:18614. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 It is with pleasure that the Greens will be supporting the Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill. It is a very good bill to restrict access to dangerous firearms and to put the right regulations around them. The bill is appropriately called the Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill. As the material surrounding the bill explains there has been a problem with the evolution of military-style semi-automatics or MSSAs in that they now have a variety of forms. They were defined previously by having the military pattern free-standing pistol grip but there has been some variation on that and this bill allows those firearms to be included under the regulations if they fulfil a number of requirements. Among the most important requirement is what every person would probably expect—that the gun can fire off a whole lot of bullets in quick succession. There are various figures depending on the size of the ammunition from seven rounds to 10 rounds or 15 rounds in the regulations.  
There is some resistance in the community to the passage of this bill and I have no doubt that other MPs have been getting emails from what we might sometimes loosely describe as the gun lobby although I do not want to be too pejorative. It varies in its composition. At the extreme end it includes people whose views are closer to the American concepts of having weapons for self-defence and not needing any regulation etc. and at the other end it includes the more responsible gun owners. It is interesting to look at some of the emails that come through and some of the arguments that are used. One of the arguments I got in an email on Monday was that this law will affect only law-abiding citizens and it will not affect the criminals. Well that view is a bit strange. If we were to apply it to legislation we pass quite regularly in this House we might say that we do not really need tax laws because honest people will pay taxes and dishonest people—tax criminals—will not pay taxes so we do not need any laws because they will affect only honest people. Clearly laws are intended to constrain behaviour in a proper manner.  
In fact regulations like these do limit the availability of such military-style semi-automatics which can be quite dangerous in the hands of criminals for example. This legislation will limit criminals’ ability to obtain such weapons both in terms of the way the regulations are formulated and because criminals in gangs will be more wary about keeping such guns in their gang headquarters knowing that there will be penalties if in raids they are found to have them. So it will restrict the availability. There are already according to the regulatory impact statement 8000 military-style semi-automatics in the country. I think it is important to make sure their possession is restricted to trusted and registered gun collectors and the like. There is the idea that somehow—and sometimes the gun lobby make this argument—it is just criminals who are creating the problem with military-style semi-automatics but in fact we often find that it is mentally disordered people. If we look at some of the killings that have taken place so far we see that they have involved people who are either mentally disordered or have gone a bit crazy for a period. Often they involve registered gun owners—for instance David Gray who killed 13 people at Aramoana down south in 1990 was a registered gun owner. Jan Molenaar who killed a police officer very sadly in Napier a little while back had not renewed his registration as a gun owner but he was still on the books as someone who had registered as a gun owner. So it is important to see this problem not as one that affects just the criminal fraternity. Both David Gray and Jan Molenaar seem to have gone a bit crazy at a particular point.  
There is also the question of accidents. Clearly because military-style semi-automatics fire off a lot of bullets in quick succession they are more likely to cause casualties in the population. We do get some absurd arguments from the gun lobby. An email I got on Monday said that it is absurd that anyone would think that a military-style semi-automatic is any more or less dangerous than any other firearm. Well clearly a weapon that shoots off multiple bullets is more dangerous.  
There is sometimes—and this adds to the danger sometimes—a bit of a mystique around military-style semi-automatics guns that fire off a lot of bullets and military-style guns. We saw that in the case reported in the  
Sunday Star-Times  
and on Radio New Zealand about how the SAS was conducting little sessions with business people from a group called Direct Capital. During the exercise they had last October the SAS let people from that group fire off automatic guns. Jerry Mateparae when he did his review said that they should hold on that that was not very good and that they should not be doing that. But I think it shows that military-style semi-automatics can be a bit dangerous and people can be attracted to their use for no good purpose.  
Once people who have military-style semi-automatics go a bit crazy they can cause a huge amount of damage. We had the case back in 1996 in Tasmania in what is known as the Port Arthur massacre where Martin Bryant killed 35 people. Because he had military-style semi-automatics he was able to kill 20 people in the first 90 seconds. That is what happened and it would not have happened with a single-shot rifle. So regulations and restrictions are very good.  
It would have been good if there had been more of a registration system for firearms. The Green Party does advocate a more systematic registration system for firearms. It would be good to have known how many firearms David Gray or Jan Molenaar had in their possession. At the present time once someone is a registered gun owner—which is a separate issue from that of the registration of military-style semi-automatics—that person can have as many guns as they like and each gun is not registered. Someone is registered only as a gun owner. It would be good to register individual guns against the name of the owner. That process could begin in a cost-efficient way by doing something similar to what happens in Australia where people have to trade guns through a registered gun trader computer records are kept and stored and then the trader forwards those records on to the Government database. That provides a lot more control and means that when the police roll up to a property suspecting an offence has taken place they are not met by a hail of bullets from guns they did not know were present.  
The other part of the bill which has been referred to already is the provision to reduce control or stop the import of airguns that look like real pistols or military-style semi-automatics. I think that is a good provision too because people use those fake pistols in hold-ups at banks or for all kinds of things. It is very very dangerous. Even if someone is not firing real bullets it is dangerous in the sense of bank robberies and people living in fear etc. So that is a very good provision.  
All in all the Green Party is very much in favour of this bill. We would like arms control to go somewhat further towards more systematic registration of firearms in the community.