Thread: Thought I might post my response to NZ Fuzz consultation of licence costs.

Originally Posted by 10-Ring

While I share your your concerns about licence waiting times, I also think that has to be tempered with the fact that we had a series of lengthy lockdowns over two or more years. No firearms licensing could be done at level 2 or higher. That lead to a massive backlog.

I think that the tiresome excuse that "the lock-down" is to blame, is a crock of shyte.
Apart from the face to face interviews, all of their intel' would/could/should have been done remotely. International and local enquiries as necessary, police/criminal records, etc., etc.
The decision of hierarchy to strip the department of staff, and reassign funding to "other purposes" was a recipe for the disaster that is now visited upon the LAFO, many of whom are still waiting.

Originally Posted by no1_49er

I think that the tiresome excuse that "the lock-down" is to blame, is a crock of shyte.
Apart from the face to face interviews, all of their intel' would/could/should have been done remotely. International and local enquiries as necessary, police/criminal records, etc., etc.
The decision of hierarchy to strip the department of staff, and reassign funding to "other purposes" was a recipe for the disaster that is now visited upon the LAFO, many of whom are still waiting.

not to mention every other government department and agency was using Microsoft Teams or Zoom to conduct meetings, including meetings with external individuals. As were all schools.

Originally Posted by no1_49er

I think that the tiresome excuse that "the lock-down" is to blame, is a crock of shyte.
Apart from the face to face interviews, all of their intel' would/could/should have been done remotely. International and local enquiries as necessary, police/criminal records, etc., etc.
The decision of hierarchy to strip the department of staff, and reassign funding to "other purposes" was a recipe for the disaster that is now visited upon the LAFO, many of whom are still waiting.

It's definitely not entirely to blame but was an impediment. What I was getting at re. lockdown non vetting is that the applications couldn't be processed. The bulk of a firearms licence application is the face to face vetting procedures. The earlier pre lockdown applications were obviously slow getting processed in some but not all districts. It was also compounded by the fact that all unrelated referee interviews had to be done face to face post the 2019 firearm legislative changes. Previously, an unrelated referee interview for a renewal licence could be conducted by phone. I believe that has since been changed to a secure video interview for out of district unrelated referee's.

We all know that our current woke government is not firearms friendly. We should also not forget that National and NZ First also went along with the 'making NZ safer' agenda of Labour post the ChCh shootings to mollify their voting base and subsequently throw FAL holders under the bus.