We support amendments to the NZ firearms law

Written by The Trade Me team in General at 4:00pm, Thu 21 Mar 2019

We are supportive of today’s announcement by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to reform New Zealand’s firearms laws.

We have pushed for stronger gun laws for a number of years and we’re pleased to see the changes signaled today. We think today’s announcement was a move in the right direction.

Clearly New Zealand has indicated, since the horrific attacks on Friday, that it wants change and we support that.

Our halt on sales of all semi-automatics onsite will stay in place.

We have never allowed military style semi-automatics (MSSAs) or high-capacity magazines on our site and we’re pleased to see the ban extended to the rest of the country. We already go beyond the new standards that the Prime Minister has announced.

In addition to the changes announced today, we repeat our call for a firearms register. We’ve been on public record advocating for a firearms register, including in a submission to Parliament in 2016. While we appreciate there is substantial work in the set-up of a register, we believe it would lead to a safer New Zealand in the long term.

We’d also like to acknowledge the good work done by the NZ Police within the framework of the law. In 2017 the NZ Police worked with us to ensure that any firearm sale required the buyer to have a valid licence through a real time check.

Our requirements for buying firearms onsite have always gone above and beyond the minimum legal standards and we intend to continue doing that.