{"id":3282,"date":"2019-03-15T19:07:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T19:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/?p=3282"},"modified":"2019-03-15T19:07:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T19:07:47","slug":"new-zealands-gun-laws-draw-scrutiny-after-mosque-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/2019\/03\/15\/new-zealands-gun-laws-draw-scrutiny-after-mosque-shootings\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s Gun Laws Draw Scrutiny After Mosque Shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The shootings that killed at least 49 people at two mosques in New Zealand<\/a> on Friday have placed new scrutiny on New Zealand\u2019s gun laws and sparked a fervent debate about whether they were a factor in the gunman\u2019s decision to carry out his attack there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police have described the gunman as a man in his late 20s and officials have said he was an Australian citizen, which has led to comparisons between gun laws in that country and in New Zealand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While New Zealand\u2019s laws governing the purchase of semiautomatic rifles are more restrictive than those in the United States, the country is much freer with firearms than Australia is, allowing most guns to be purchased without requiring them to be tracked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNew Zealand is almost alone with the United States in not registering 96 percent of its firearms \u2014 and those are its most common firearms, the ones most used in crimes,\u201d said Philip Alpers of GunPolicy.org<\/a>, a clearinghouse for gun law data worldwide. \u201cThere are huge gaps in New Zealand law, even if some of its laws are strong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is not yet clear what kinds of guns were used in the terrorist attack, which occurred in central Christchurch, but the authorities have said that a number of firearms were recovered from the scenes of the shootings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf he went to New Zealand to commit these crimes,\u201d Mr. Alpers said, \u201cone can assume that the ease of obtaining these firearms may have been a factor in his decision to commit the crime in Christchurch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[<\/em>Get the latest updates on the New Zealand terrorist attack here.<\/em><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the years since a gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur<\/a>, Tasmania, in 1996, Australia has embarked on one of the world\u2019s most expansive efforts to rid a society of gun violence. Officials significantly strengthened gun laws, severely restricted semiautomatic weapons and engaged in a buyback program that took more than 650,000 firearms off the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gun laws in New Zealand are more layered, and do not fit easily into a pro or anti-gun rubric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Semiautomatic rifles and handguns, for example, require special licenses; a person can only buy one semiautomatic weapon at a time. \u201cThe police will look very askance at you if you want four or five of them,\u201d Mr. Alpers said. \u201cIt gets harder and harder if you want more and more.\u201d Still, Mr. Alpers said, it is possible to obtain a large cache of weapons \u2014 either by acting alone or if more than one person is purchasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the law stands now, any person age 16 or older with an entry-level firearm license can keep any number of common rifles and shotguns without an official record of those guns being kept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of the guns in circulation can be sold on the internet or through ads in newspapers, and the most popular types of firearms can lawfully change hands in private homes or even hotel parking lots with no requirement that a record of the transaction be kept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the country has generally been safe from gun massacres. Its last mass shooting, which left 13 people dead, was in 1990 \u2014 and it led to tighter rules around semiautomatic weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police officers do not generally carry firearms and murders are rare; in fact the death toll from Friday\u2019s terrorist attack is roughly equivalent to the number of murders<\/a> that occur in the country each year. The annual tally of gun homicides specifically is even lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNew Zealanders are by and large safe users of firearms and that has led everybody to relax,\u201d Mr. Alpers said. \u201cIt\u2019s led New Zealanders to think they don\u2019t have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[<\/em>The gunman appeared to be steeped in the culture of the extreme-right internet.<\/em><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, however, New Zealand\u2019s gun culture is significant and deeply ingrained. Like the United States, Australia and Canada, New Zealand\u2019s frontier history has led to a proliferation of guns used for sport, for protecting wide open spaces from animals, and for dealing with problems like wounded cattle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the 3.9 million New Zealanders of gun licensing age, 238,000 \u2014 6 percent \u2014 have a firearm license, according to GunPolicy.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helen Clark, the country\u2019s former prime minister, told The New Zealand Herald<\/a> that \u201cdeep reflection\u201d was required in the wake of the attack. She also said that she hoped the country would re-examine its gun control laws because \u201cwhile we do have gun control, we can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Alpers predicted that lawmakers would work to make guns harder to obtain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis will certainly change things in New Zealand,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t think of a country that\u2019s more likely to change its gun laws after something like this.\u201d
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The shootings that killed at least 49 people at two mosques in New Zealand on Friday have placed new scrutiny on New Zealand\u2019s gun laws and sparked a fervent debate about whether they were a factor in the gunman\u2019s decision to carry out his attack there. The police have described the gunman as a man in his late 20s and officials have… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3283,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3282\/revisions\/3283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}