Thread: Paula Bennett. Le ther know how pissed off you are

Just a note to indicate my concern at the recent firearms committee report into criminal access to firearms..

From my reading of this, it would appear that the committee has neither addressed the purpose for which it was supposedly created nor has it adequately examined the performance of enforcement agencies under the current law.

The police I understand had a considerable amount of input through both their association, and the current administration not all of which was public and that is disturbing in a democracy that requires the police to be both impartial and non-political. For such a standard to be met, any contribution to policy must be subject to public scrutiny.

While the flavour of legal development in this country appears to have moved to account for potential issues before they occur, the impact of regulation on individual freedoms on the law abiding in areas like firearms law and the legitimate choices that we as individuals are able to make, is not an equitable response to a non-existent problem.

More regulation and control is certainly is not a solution when the current environment is more than capable of dealing with any issues that actually exist. Enforcement is the issue, any sociologist will tell you that more regulation will not solve problems in the absence of compliance, and compliance is directly related to the fear of consequences and actually being caught.

This I am sure that you know, so increasing regulation will only increase the cost of enforcement. If that extra regulation does nothing to prevent the problems, they will remain but with added resource requirement and no-one is further ahead.

The solutions if a problem actually exists and to be honest this appears to be entirely unsubstantiated, is to improve enforcement. The current laws are more than sufficient for that purpose, although thought could be given to making criminal offending with a firearm a more serious class of offending.

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute perhaps to your thinking in this area…

Sent this today to Aunty Paula....