Thread: Man who shot teen dead in hunting accident 22 years ago loses firearms licence bid

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

Putting aside for a moment the case of Mr Diack, I don't believe that current firearms training and licencing is sufficient at all. I have never met even one new firearms licence holder who is actually fully up to speed with safe firearms handling. Hopefully the new system under MSC will fix this.
Then as far as field target identification, well we are relying on some silly rods in our eyes to receive refracted/reflected light waves from an object and then for our brains to correctly interpret that information. It is easy for a mistake to be made with visual identification. We must be made aware of the potential for mistakes to be made, how they are made and have a check system. For example the Graf Boys ' Assume everything is Human until you prove otherwise' is vastly superior to Positively identify etc...
So back to Mr Diack if he had undertaken training courses with MSC, assisted at a range and talked at his local school about his mistake. Then he could put his hand on his heart in front of the court and say "this is how I made mistakes leading to the fatal accidental shooting" "I can promise the court and the public that if issued with a firearms licence I will never make a firearms mistake again". That to me would be rehabilitation. Instead he has punched someone over a small debt and even the aspirations to fire chief may have a dark side - We always have two reasons that we do something, The one that we tell everyone and the real one !!

@Moa Hunter

Yes, the presumption of human till otherwise established seems correct, except hunters are tuned in to look for non-human targets, so it is as unnatural/non-intuitive as using your middle finger as trigger finger (although in theory it is the ideal finger for the job what with a straighter tendon, better hold on gun between index/thumb etc, etc).

Blaze colour choice orange vs blue has been debated a lot, but perhaps at the expense of the role of SHAPE, or lack of shape. Whether blue or orange, the current blaze hunting clothes you can buy have unhelpful black disruptive patterns which break up shape. Not super clever if adrenaline charged brains tune into shape and movement. Read: adrenaline may effectively render us partially colour blind - similar to the animals who are supposed not to notice the blaze orange - by focusing attention away from colour and on to size/shape instead!

Never mind that colour vision is poorer in lower light dusk/dawn situations. Uniformly coloured orange or blue blaze is then more likely to save your life, because your shape is less broken up.

Blaze orange:


Blaze orange, grayscale, notice the effect of the disruptive black patterns in breaking up body shape:

In reply to Cordite re 'presume Human until proven otherwise'. This is not our natural response or as Cordite says it is not our intuitive response BUT that does not mean that it cannot become our learned response and behavior. It should be taught to put a check on that intuitive response, slow it down just enough to make a definitive decision.

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

In reply to Cordite re 'presume Human until proven otherwise'. This is not our natural response or as Cordite says it is not our intuitive response BUT that does not mean that it cannot become our learned response and behavior. It should be taught to put a check on that intuitive response, slow it down just enough to make a definitive decision.

@Moa Hunter

Yes. Maybe spelling out what "identify your target" means has more mileage in it. 'Identifying' a deer would include what sex it is.


@scottyrees @SiB @systolic @Gibo

In cheering the courts, do you also agree with the deference shown by NZ Police towards a drinking-and-shooting former All Black?

Do you agree with Society's comparatively lax attitude to allowing killer drivers back on the road? What's so much more bad about killing someone with a gun, not a car?

We either demonise these shooters as bad eggs (who didn't really make an honest mistake), or we learn from their mistakes in the knowledge that if they could do it so can we. Kick or learn, we can't do both.

Originally Posted by Cordite

@Moa Hunter

Yes. Maybe spelling out what "identify your target" means has more mileage in it. 'Identifying' a deer would include what sex it is.


@scottyrees @SiB @systolic @Gibo

In cheering the courts, do you also agree with the deference shown by NZ Police towards a drinking-and-shooting former All Black?

Do you agree with Society's comparatively lax attitude to allowing killer drivers back on the road? What's so much more bad about killing someone with a gun, not a car?

We either demonise these shooters as bad eggs (who didn't really make an honest mistake), or we learn from their mistakes in the knowledge that if they could do it so can we. Kick or learn, we can't do both.

You are a difficult character Cordite forcing us to examine our prejudices. Why can't you just agree with Gibo and I and help us erect a gallows ??

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

You are a difficult character Cordite forcing us to examine our prejudices. Why can't you just agree with Gibo and I and help us erect a gallows ??

He heh, very funny mate. I'm not stopping anyone doing whatever erections they want. Just pointing out a known difficulty with gallows - if we build them we are not immune to later get put onto them ourselves, God forbid.

Originally Posted by Cordite

He heh, very funny mate. I'm not stopping anyone doing whatever erections they want. Just pointing out a known difficulty with gallows - if we build them we are not immune to later get put onto them ourselves, God forbid.

Well Cordite, not wishing to find myself hoisted on my own Gallows for challenging you, I wish instead to meekly disagree with your analogy comparing car drivers who cause road fatalities with hunters involved in fatal shootings. The primary use of cars is for transport. If a car driver was instead using the car for running over (Hunting/killing) possums at night and ran over a person that they mistook for a possum, then in my humble non-challenging view we could compare that driver with a person in possession of a hunting firearm, the primary use of which is to kill things, who then shoots another person that they mistook for the quarry sought.

Originally Posted by Cordite

@Moa Hunter

Yes. Maybe spelling out what "identify your target" means has more mileage in it. 'Identifying' a deer would include what sex it is.


@scottyrees @SiB @systolic @Gibo

In cheering the courts, do you also agree with the deference shown by NZ Police towards a drinking-and-shooting former All Black?

Do you agree with Society's comparatively lax attitude to allowing killer drivers back on the road? What's so much more bad about killing someone with a gun, not a car?

We either demonise these shooters as bad eggs (who didn't really make an honest mistake), or we learn from their mistakes in the knowledge that if they could do it so can we. Kick or learn, we can't do both.

In this case kick. Are there any instances of licences being returned after a shooting death? Would it be right to tar everyone with the same brush? Or is it dangerous territory to determine this on a case by case basis.
All I know is that by human nature, poeple make mistakes. Maybe use these cases as a learning oppurtunity for future licence applicants. Would not be hard to present half a dozen cases to them to show what basic mistakes can cause.