New Zealand Gun Shops Forced to Send Rare Rifles to Scrappers

By Chris Eger

“Few Collectables being taken by the police to be crushed today,” noted Bronco Outdoors, a gun shop in New Zealand. (Photo: Bronco Outdoors)
As part of complying with New Zealand’s arbitrary new gun bun on popular sporting rifles, some rare semi-auto gems are headed to the scrap yard.
The country’s government last year banned a sweeping array of legal firearms, including antiques and collectibles, targeting an estimated 170,000 guns in private hands. Owners who did not choose to hand over their often treasured family heirlooms to authorities– at comparatively paltry pre-set prices– faced five years in jail if they did not comply.
Likewise, gun shop owners have had to hand over their inventory that, frozen in place by the new law, could not be sold. Guns cannot even be donated to museums, an outlet that saved many now-outlawed firearms in neighboring Australia.
“Few Collectables being taken by the police to be crushed today,” noted Bronco Outdoors, a firearms retailer in Tauranga, the fifth most populous city of New Zealand.
The guns included two Browning BAR MKII semi-auto rifles, popular with hunters, and a vintage 1950s Dutch-made Armalite AR-10.
One of the BARs was a 1983-vintage limited edition North American Deer rifle, SN 007 of 600, in

Source: Guns.com