Thread: Feeling sick after reading this !

Yes it could go both ways. It may actually prove that the majority of criminal firearms do not come LFAOs.

If you think about it there are two sources of firearms from LFAOs, those who willingly onsell to the likes of gangs, and those whos firearms are stolen.

In the onselling situation as firearms sales are now recorded, those firearms are traceable and as we have seen over the last couple of years that leads to those selling them being prosecuted. But there have been less than a handful of cases indicating this is not widespread.

With regards to the stolen firearms, most LFAOs will report stolen firearms (at the very least for insurance claims if nothing else). We have never seen police put out stats around recovered stolen firearms - and you can guarantee if these were showing a correlation the police would've published the numbers. But at the end of the day a register is not going change this if it was a source of firearms for crims anyway.

What will be interesting is after 1 year doing an OIA for recovered firearms statistics, e.g. how many stolen firearms were recovered and traceable in the register. In fact it may be more revealing about how effective the police are, and potentially customs (e.g. if they start recovering firearms that have no NZ 'trail' of ownership).

As LFAOs there is an opportunity here to use the register to prove what we are saying, to reveal the truths and shut down the lies. It's coming whether we like or not, so lets make the best of it.