10. Question No. 10—PoliceGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu) to the Minister of PoliceQuestion No. 10—Police10. GREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu) to the Minister of Police: Will the proposed changes to the Arms Act 1983 improve public safety in New Zealand; if so how?Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Our gun laws date from 1983 and are dangerously out of date. Since then the firearms industry the market place and the threat environment have changed considerably. Successive Governments have known since the Thorp review of 1997 that our gun laws were too weak. Further attempts to change the system in 2005 and 2016 both failed. A firearms register a tighter licensing system for gun owners and a new emphasis on safety and personal responsibility is the focus of upcoming legislation that we announced yesterday. In April we acted to take the most dangerous weapons out of circulation by prohibiting assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics. We are now moving to stop other firearms falling into the wrong hands.Greg O'Connor: Why will a firearms register help keep New Zealanders safe?Hon STUART NASH: The majority of firearms licence holders are law-abiding citizens and we have seen this through the initial stages of the buy-back scheme and amnesty. Based on the experience in some Australian states we expect the registry will make it more difficult for firearms to fall into the hands of people who intend to use them to cause significant harm. The ability to track possession of a firearm over time will provide police with information to better manage the risks to personal and public safety from firearms. We know that firearms are increasingly being used in the commission of violent offences and increasing numbers are being seized by police. For example 950 firearms have been seized since March this year. Police in their line of duty also have to face firearms every day and as the Police Association has stated A register will also provide valuable intelligence on the number of firearms registered to an address and this should help police officers turning up to volatile family harm incidents which account for a huge percentage of an officer's daily work."Greg O'Connor: What reports has he seen in favour of the Government's reforms?Hon STUART NASH: These changes have been decades in the making and I have seen numerous reports in favour of the changes but if there is one report I would like to share with the House today it is a letter I received from an individual in Waipukurau who wrote to me on 15 July about Constable Len Snee who was fatally shot 10 years ago in Napier: "I am an old school friend of the late Constable Len Snee. We were at Takapau Primary School. With that I would like to see a gun register of weapons and their owners as we had back then in our school days. Len might still be here if we had the old register going." As the Minister of Police it is my responsibility to ensure that police have the resources to keep our community safe and be able to go home to their families after their shift. We as a House need to work together to make changes to our outdated firearms laws. We owe it to Constable Len Snee the 51 people in Christchurch and their families and friends to ensure that we do all that we can to find the right balance."