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That the police raids on Tuhoe households turned up illegal firearms came as no surprise to those who live in this hunting and fishing part of the country.
Te Kanapu Tamaki's reaction was typical: "We own firearms up here and some can't afford to get a licence. We
just use them for hunting."
The Weekend Herald set out to gauge how prevalent gun ownership is in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, how many firearms are illegal and what, if anything is being done.
Both experience and surveys indicate that Tamaki is dead right - there are firearms everywhere in the region, not least in the Tuhoe rohe.
A former policeman recalls collecting guns from unoccupied hunters' huts and campsites in the Ureweras in the early 1990s: " ... at least two dozen - .303s, shotguns, smallbore .22s for wood pigeons; well-used old hunting guns," says the man who worked as a Whakatane-based gang liaison officer.
He recalls only one person coming forward to claim his gun and assumes other owners didn't have licences and didn't want to buy one or face a fine.
"It's the lifestyle," says the former officer, who asked not to be named. "Hunting and fishing grounds are so close and game meat is plentiful."
He says there is nothing unusual in heading into the forest with a gun to fill the family freezer. For young people in an area where opportunities are limited, being taught to hunt develops self-reliance and self-esteem.
In his time in the area (until 1994) illicit guns did not feature in violent crime. Available figures support the former officer's view that gun ownership including illegal ownership is widespread in rural Eastern Bay of Plenty and also that guns don't figure unduly in recorded crime.
A survey conducted of Tuhoe gun owners, presented at a firearms safety seminar in February last year, found at least half owned their guns illegally. Of 170 people who responded, 51 per cent said they did not have a firearms licence.
Reasons given for having the firearms were hunting, pest control and stock destruction. And the reasons given for not seeking a firearms licence were cost ($123.75), inconvenience, and an historical dislike of police. "You are talking about the late 1800s, probably culminating with the prophet Rua Kenana [Kenana was arrested in 1916 by 70 armed constables who killed two Maori in a subsequent gunfight].
"We are doing something about it, we being the police and the Mountain Safety Council," says police head of firearms licensing and vetting, Inspector Joe Green.
Green says the raids earlier this month were about the control of arms; the other part of the Arms Act is about the safe use of arms. This, he says, is being tackled through education in the form of marae-based training and a DVD being remade in Maori, with a Tuhoe former policeman providing the translation.
Green says he's met the Tuhoe Hunting Club and Tuhoe's trust board and they want the low level of licensing addressed. Yet, education aside, nothing is aimed at increasing firearms licensing.
Australia introduced a buy-back scheme following the Port Arthur massacre. An amnesty was announced to mop up old guns and a financial inducement offered. Some reinvested in new guns but authorities got to update licensing records.
New Zealand's records are shambolic. Guns were once regarded as familiar and useful tools which caused few problems but a surge in reported gun offences in the late 1970s put the focus on gun control.
The system of licensing each firearm was found to be impossible to organise with limited resources, and in 1982 keeping records of firearms was abandoned for a system of licensing owners.
The result is police have no accurate idea of how many guns legal and illegal there are in the country or how many stolen guns are in circulation. Estimates from Sir Thomas Thorp's 1997 Review of Firearms Control in New Zealand are still quoted: 100,000 held by unlicensed owners (referred to as "grey guns") of a total of from 700,000 to 1 million.
"In the nature of things it is impossible to get an accurate count of the numbers of guns held for criminal purposes," Sir Thomas wrote. "However, there is evidence of a substantial pool ... estimated at between 10,000 and 25,000."
Anecdotal data indicates the total number of guns is static but that some categories, such as handguns, are rising.
Green quotes Australian research indicating the buy-back had minimal impact on safety. Although he concedes the amnesty may have resulted in more accurate records, he says, our gun safety statistics are similar to Australia's. Both are improving - suicide by firearm is down from 20 per cent in 1983 to 5 per cent; homicide from 35 per cent to 13 per cent; violence using a firearm down from 1.7 per cent of all reported violent crime to 1.28 per cent.
His own research into deaths of hunters indicates Maori are under-represented. "Of 33 deaths only one involved Maori and it was the only one where the person was carrying a deer on his back, so you could say the target was correctly identified ...
"The big thing about the grey guns in Tuhoe country is safety."
But Waikato-based Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Whitehead, says the public should be concerned there is an unknown pool of semi-automatic military-style and fully automatic firearms the only types where law requires the gun itself rather than the owner to be registered.
Undercover police officers bought two such guns from Hamilton dealer and collector Dale Jenner in December. Although not stolen, they had come into the country and never entered the legitimate system. The police seized about 230 military-style weapons from Jenner along with 600,000 rounds of ammunition.
Jenner was part of a larger firearms bust, dubbed Operation Daisy, which seized 800 weapons.
Arms caches have been found in the hands of criminals. A recent example involved Kim Smith, who was sergeant at arms of the Outcasts Motorcycle gang. Smith was the subject of a manhunt following a Tribesman gang member being shot dead at Waingaro last year.
Whitehead says a significant number of firearms including fully and semi-automatics, that had entered the country illegally, were found in associated inquiries and that was a factor that prompted Operation Daisy.
A black market exists in which a gun that a licensed firearms owner could legitimately buy for $3000 can be sold illegally for $12,000.
"We come across these types of weapons quite often when executing search warrants, especially in the drug field."
Jenner pleaded guilty to illegally selling two military-style firearms and is likely to be deemed unfit to hold a firearms licence. But the law does not allow police to destroy his collection. They are required to release the collection to any firearms licence holder Jenner nominates.
Whitehead suggests cases such as Jenner's might spark a wider gun debate. "Seasoned police officers were astounded when they saw some of these collections," he says. "Perhaps you should ask Mr Jenner's neighbours how they felt that he had that sort of collection sitting in his garage in suburban Hamilton. That, to me, is the untold story. Sure, the law allows this to happen but does Joe Public realise that?
And if he did, would he allow that to happen?"
