Thread: Firearms Registry Consultation Open

I doubt that any notice will be taken of any submission opposing the register. I doubt it because the Govt. here is following the UN template for small arms control: https://www.un.org/disarmament/wp-co...-2012EV1.0.pdf

"Stopping diversion from civilians. An estimated 75 per cent of small arms are in civilian hands. This encompasses all kinds and categories of arms and owners: security guards' pistols, farmers' shotguns, hunting rifles, collectors' displays, retailers' stocks, gangsters' crime weapons, as well as the many millions of guns sitting in homes and cars around the world for no particular reason or in the general name of security.

Part of this huge private arsenal consists of illegal guns (ie in the hands of people not entitled to possess them) and part consists of legal or semi-legal (grey) guns. Due to lack of data we can only guess at the relative distribution between legal and illegal. We know that many illegal guns came originally from Government stockpiles. Others have come from private owners, either deliberately through trafficking or unintentionally through loss, theft or private transfers. Globally, the private civilian stockpile is less accountable, far less strictly guarded and three times as plentiful as its state counterpart -- all qualities that support easy diversion of weapons to the illegal sector.

The best way to reduce diversion from the civilian stockpile to the illegal market is to reduce the size of the civilian stockpile, slow the arming of the population, and strengthen regulation of civilian ownership. Reducing the number of owners is reducing the number of potential points of diversion. Strengthening controls makes it much harder for guns to migrate into the criminal market. For example, a regulatory framework without firearm registration enables an owner to sell the weapon to a private buyer easily, without having to consider whether the buyer is legally authorized to acquire it. On the other hand, a regime that includes firearms registration necessarily imposes a higher degree of responsibility. The gun is registered in the seller's name with the State; thus the seller cannot transfer the ownership unless the State confirms that the buyer is authorized to acquire the weapon. This measure, firearm registration, is perhaps the single most effective tool in stopping diversion of legal small arms from civilians.

The other provisions are also anti-diversion and anti-trafficking measures, by stopping people from acquiring large numbers of guns and ensuring that the purchase or disposal of a gun is not a decision to be taken lightly. National firearm laws should recognize small arms as a product manufactured for killing, and therefore a product requiring strict control."