Matthew Martin: Care needed on gun laws

Aramoana, the scene of New Zealand's worst mass-shooting in 1990. Photo / File

I well remember the day of New Zealand's worst multiple shooting at the sleepy seaside town of Aramoana, near Port Chalmers, on November 13, 1990.

I was finishing my last high school exams before university and first heard about it on the radio before heading to bed.

The incident unfolded overnight before David Malcolm Gray was shot dead by police around 6pm the next day. But not before he had killed 13 people and wounded three others.

Gray was well armed, mostly with .22 calibre weapons, however, one of the weapons used was similar to the infamous AK47, a semi-automatic weapon known as a Norinco 84s sporting rifle.

Half a dozen years later, at the end of April 1996, 35 people were killed and 23 wounded when Martin Bryant went on a killing spree at Port Arthur in Tasmania.

He was most notably armed with military weapons - the Colt AR-15 SP1 Carbine and a L1A1 SLR battle rifle - very serious stuff.

Both shootings led to almost immediate changes to gun laws in both countries, especially in Australia, placing restrictions on military-style weapons and making a raft of changes to firearm licensing rules.

Currently people who own these types of weapons need to go through a rigorous vetting process and the guns are tracked so police know where they are.

In the last few days the New Zealand Police Association has claimed that firearms are "ridiculously easy" for criminals to get their hands on and police are confronted almost daily by gun-wielding criminals.

Association president Greg O'Connor has long been a proponent of arming all police in New Zealand and is now saying gun crime is the rule rather than the exception.

He wants to know where people are getting them from, which is a fair question, and that an inquiry should be done now before one of these incidents escalates into a mass-killing.

I worry this is scaremongering.

He says he's not using this latest report to back up his stance on armed police, but I just don't believe him.

He's big on anecdotal evidence, saying; "Contrary to police assurances that armed incidents are 'rare', hardly a week goes by that police are not coming into contact with illegal firearms in the hands of offenders.

"A steady stream of information is coming in from cops on the street. They say there is no doubt that the number of weapons out there is on the increase."

He should provide some statistics.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush has.

He said police data for 2010 to 2014 showed gun-related crime had averaged 1.3 per cent of all violent crime recorded, or less than half a per cent of total crime in the past five years.

"While we acknowledge that any firearms incident is a concern, overall, firearms-related offending has remained consistently very low," Mr Bush said.

Mr O'Connor said the stats did not show the reality of frontline policing and he is helping to compile a database of assaults on police and incidents involving firearms based on accounts from members.

He says crims have "too much firepower". But from what I've seen they have a few old, mangled sawn-off shot guns, some .22s, hunting rifles and very rarely a "serious" weapon.

On the other hand our police Armed Offenders Squads have access to top of the line weaponry and tactics.

No law is perfect, and maybe it is time to review our gun laws considering what happens frequently in the United States; regular reports of mass-shootings and cops shooting unarmed people.

Do we want repeats of innocent bystanders being shot by police, such as the accidental killing of courier driver Halatau Naitoko on Auckland's north-western motorway in 2009?

Do we want a US-style police force where it's shoot first and ask questions later?

I hope not, because to put it very simply, more guns means more gun crime and more shootings - no matter who is holding the weapon.