Ian McCrae fording the Mohaka River in the winter of 1983.
Ian McCrae is the founder and former CEO of Orion Health.
OPINION
Last year was gun licence renewal time and typically the police letter got lost in my to-do pile. Then, at a Chicago software conference, my mobile phone rang and it was the NZ Police.
“Mr McCrae, are you aware that your gun licence expired two days ago?” (unfortunately I sort of was) and so my two +80-year-old unserviceable guns needed to be removed from their cobwebbed locked gun rack and stored elsewhere. No amount of charm could dissuade the officer and so my brother took the guns away.
I arrived home six weeks later and promptly went through the licence renewal palaver, police interviews, gun rack inspections etc and duly got a new licence.
The licence not only allows me to store these vintage guns, but it is also a fantastic photo ID. For some reason, I get far better service and attention when I flash my gun licence rather than using my passport, driver’s licence or anything else.
Now some of you may be wondering how a computer software guy (me) came to be the owner of two guns.
Well, I grew up on a farm and have vivid memories at the age of 8 having breakfast in the sun on the veranda and passing the .22 around to shoot pine cones off the nearby trees. By 10 I was hunting alone and at 13, my brother and I had our guns temporarily confiscated by the ranger for sneaking on to our neighbour’s property to shoot ducks. At 16 a school hostel master loaned me his .303 to go hunting in the heart of the Ureweras where I shot my first deer.
It probably wouldn’t be a Ministry of Education curriculum-approved activity these days.
A few months later I had my own ex-army modified Lee Enfield .308 and a licence that I got in 30 minutes at the Hamilton police station.
In my school uniform, I took that gun home from boarding school on an NZ Railways bus simply stowed in the luggage rack above my seat.
Over the next 10 years, this .308 went on many hunting trips in the Kaimanawas, Kawekas and Ureweras, often for several weeks and something had to be shot (or a trout or two caught) to have enough food.
After one Kaimanawas trip, I found that I had missed my ride back to Auckland. So the only option was to hitchhike, which was pretty common in the 1970s when fewer people owned cars. At 7pm I was standing on the main street of Taupo with a .308 strapped to one side of my backpack, the bloody hind legs of a deer sticking out the other side and after a couple of weeks in the bush, I didn’t smell that great.
After 30 minutes with my thumb out, a car pulled over and I had a ride all the way to my flat in Grey Lynn, Auckland. I must confess, even I was a little surprised.
What may amaze many is that such a casual laissez-faire relationship with guns was once very common, particularly in rural areas. Many of my contemporaries had more guns, hunted more and had very casual attitudes.
In this environment, it is hard to understand that from a period of 39 years (1951 to 1990), New Zealand had no mass shootings (two or more deaths). Then over the next 30 years, New Zealand have had eight such events with 99 fatalities, a shocking number and a societal change that is hard to explain.
In any case, it is a disappointing reality that we must live with.
In the late 80s circumstances changed for me and marriage, work and five children meant no more hunting and the .308 was mothballed.
Also, the gun had brutal kickback and a mate ended up with the telescopic scope hitting him squarely on the forehead causing copious bleeding, requiring stitches and the rifle now shoots a couple of metres to the right which I have never been able to fix.
My other gun, a vintage Damascus steel wound barrel shotgun, would be exceedingly dangerous to use with modern cartridges. It was my grandfather’s proud purchase about 100 years ago. That evening he went hunting and shot a rabbit which startled his horse and he was thrown off, breaking the stock of his new gun.
With my gun history, some might expect me to be complaining about all the hassle of getting my licence renewed. The answer is absolutely not! The morning after my Chicago police phone we casually heard that there were a couple of shootings the previous evening in the nearby park. Then we were told that the suburbs we strolled through on Sunday really weren’t safe.
So I am very happy to jump through all sorts of licensing hoops if it means our parks are safe and there aren’t no-go zones in our cities. Also, I am puzzled by complaints about registering firearms with the police. For me, this was a very simple online process that took all of 10 minutes.
I also find it difficult to understand why citizens would ever need guns that are only really useful for killing people. Handguns are a waste of time for hunting. So are high-powered military weapons for deer stalking. Any poor animal shot would be obliterated and you would be taking minced meat home.
So the trade-off is simple. Population safety versus a few having a bit of gun range fun, wannabe Rambo types prancing around with fancy guns, criminals being armed, etc.
I am completely in favour of option one being population safety and peace of mind.
Furthermore, owning a gun in New Zealand is a privilege, not a right as it is in some other parts of the world and it should remain so. The Act Party’s proposed rewriting of the Arms Act 1983 and subsequent amendments does appear to have merit. However, I believe few New Zealanders (including myself) wouldn’t support any weakening or rolling back of the rules we have today. Indeed Act’s proposed changes seem to be a mix of simplification, and bureaucracy elimination, with some strengthening and closing of loopholes which mostly makes sense (if my reading is correct).
Finally, I have always wanted one last hunting expedition (or two) to Fiordland and Stewart Island. With my .308 now buggered, I have been out looking for a replacement and to my absolute surprise, it turns out that one of the most advanced hunting rifles in the world is made in Palmerston North, New Zealand!
The Hardy Hybrid is a paltry 3.09kg of carbon fibre barrel, stock, bipod and other accessories versus 4kg of my .308. It has a silencer and a quarter of the kickback of my old gun.
Barrels can be swapped so that a .308 can become a .223 in minutes.
World-leading! And all I now need to do is convince my wonderful wife that I deserve one of these.
Heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture and draught-stopping standards all coming in.