Kiwi gun owners are up in arms over changes to the licensing rules for semi-automatic rifles.
Many gun owners are angry at the changes, with some taking official steps to try to stop them. One has applied for a judicial review of the police decision, while a group has complained to the Independent Police Conduct Authority.
Compared to most of the world, New Zealand has traditionally had relatively sane gun laws, which is a bit like saying compared to Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia wasn’t such a bad place. The problem for the Kiwis is they acquiesced to licensing. We have avoided that in this country, even though for a lot of things licensing could make life easier. But it’s a road to disaster. It’s bad enough we have a licensing system to carry concealed, that creates a patchwork of different regulations from state-t0-state on where and whether you can carry. We can’t really ever acquiesce to licensing for purchase or possession, unless we want to end up like the Kiwis, or, you know, New Jersey.
UPDATE: Looking at the Kiwi laws on the matter, it would seem the change is that you need a C (Collector) or (E) (Shooter) endorsement on you’re license. Seems if you have a C endorsement, you aren’t allowed to fire the gun without an E endorsement. With the exception of the B (Pistol) endorsement, which is common, the other two never applied to anything other than machine guns, so police in New Zealand often won’t issue C and E endorsements at all. The Kiwi law is also very strict in it’s definition, and would include M1 Garands and the Marlin Model 60.
This would be roughly analagous to having a much stricter assault weapons ban here, where they were made to follow the same NFA rules that would apply to a machine gun. A shame for the Kiwis.