New Zealand's gun buyback passes amnesty date with less than 50,000 guns turned in

Police handle an AR in New Zealand. Washington Post/AFP/Getty.

New Zealand's gun buyback has passed the amnesty date and only 47,000 of the banned weapons have been turned in. Washington Post. It is unclear how many of the banned weapons are still in circulation with estimates ranging between 50,000 and 170,000. A local gun rights group says that as many as 2/3rds of the weapons were not turned in. New Zealand banned semiauto rifles in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shooting, which was committed by an Australian. The gun owners that did not turn their weapons in could face five years in prison if they are discovered, though New Zealand has no records of who owns these firearms. Critics say the buyback was a failure as compliance was low in a country that did not have a strong firearms culture. 

My Comment:

If the Washington Post is critical of this gun buyback you have to know that it's actually a disaster on the ground. Having less than 50,000 of these guns turned in is a huge problem for them as they were expecting more than that. 

The fact that there are people that are risking five years in prison to give a middle finger to the left wing government of New Zealand is a good sign. It shows that even in a weak country like New Zealand which does not have anything like our protections for civil rights, people will not comply. 

This matches what has happened in the United States when gun control has passed. In places like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, people have largely ignored new gun laws that ban or force registration of firearms. And in Virginia people are so mad at proposed gun laws that the majority of the state is now a 2nd amendment sanctuary with people actively forming militias to possibly engage the governor if he tires to take guns. 

Unfortunately that hasn't happened in New Zealand, even though it should have. The people of New Zealand don't seem to value their rights that much and the media makes it seem like the main reason people didn't turn in their firearms is because the government was offering such miserly rates for them. Given that the people of New Zealand also didn't overthrow their government after they blocked their rights to read and see what they wanted, I don't have much hope of things getting better there. 

I have to say I am still totally disgusted by what New Zealand did in response to the Christchurch shooting. Indeed, Brenton Tarrant predicted that his actions would lead to more gun control, in New Zealand and abroad. And he was also right that that gun control could cause a civil war in the United States. It hasn't come to pass yet but I would say that leftists acted far to predictably in the wake of his attack. 

Thankfully, America is still a free country and this should be a lesson for the gun control movement here. Even in New Zealand, a country with no real gun culture to speak off and in the wake of  a terrible mass shooting, people did not turn in their arms. The best case scenario they got was 50 to 33% of the arms being turned in. And that's in a country that has no 2nd amendment and no gun rights movement to speak off. If it's a total failure in New Zealand what do you think will happen in America if they try to ban semi-autos?