Fantasy in the South Pacific

"Has Marian Hobbs been asleep these last few years when gun laws were debated in Parliament," wonders Libertarianz spokesman Peter Linton, responding to Hobbs' claimed 'wake up call' supplied for her by long-time anti-gun campaigner Philip Alpers. "Gun registration proposals were very sensibly thrown out following extensive, countrywide select committee hearings three years ago. Why wasn't Marian awake for those hearings?" asks Linton. "Why do we see the same draconian proposals back on the table, having already been thoroughlyh dismissed?"

Linton, Libertarianz spokesman to deregulate firearms, calls Alpers' report 'Small Arms in the Pacific' "a report full of fantasy & fabrication, but little fact." He says that Clark's Labour government is surely aware that gun registration, as Alpers' report called for, has been a disaster wherever it has been introduced; it has, he says, "been expensive and unworkable worldwide. The Canadian Gun Registrar, for example, was originally only going to cost $23 Million, but has now cost over $1billion with very few guns registered."

New Zealand Gun owners have stated they will sabotage any attempt to register their property by burying guns. Libertarianz say they support the right of New Zealanders to protect their right to self-defence.

"There is good reason for gun owners to protect their firearms from the government," says Linton. "Police have used the Gun Register on four previous occassions (1920,1940,1950,1974) to steal the private property of ordinary New Zealanders. Gun owners are not about to give the Police a fifth opportunity. After all it was Plato who wrote: "It is an unjust man who obeys unjust laws".

Linton notes that police have also admitted on a number of occassions that "Gun Registration does not reduce crime & is worthless as a crime-solving tool. A logical statement as Criminals & Governments, for some reason, never register their guns." He says the statement is backed up by experience in Australia and the UK, where gun confiscations and buy-backs have led to an increase in violent crime, rather than a decrease. Australians and Britons are learning the lesson that when you outlaw firearms, you leave firearms in the hands of outlaws.

"For Clark's Government to put registration back on the agenda on the basis of a trumped up report by an ex-TV frontman is dangerous," concludes Linton. "I trust gun-owners across the country will take note of this new threat to their liberty."

© Scoop Media