New Zealand Struggles Enforcing New Gun Control Measures

By Tom Knighton

AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Many people in the United States have kept an eye on New Zealand. Gun control activists have watched and lamented that the U.S. supposedly can’t respond as aggressively to a mass shooting while pro-gun voices have kept an eye on the nation because we know how well gun control is going to work.

It seems that while everyone is applauding New Zealand’s new assault weapon ban, they never bothered to think about how enforceable it would be.

Spoiler: It’s not.

Growing opposition from New Zealand’s pro-gun groups has complicated efforts to round up the now-banned firearms under a buyback program. Lawsuits are threatened.

Gun-control advocates argue that compensation rates may not be fair and warn of a possible spike in black-market sales.

The government, meanwhile, is faced with a sobering set of challenges over how to enforce the new law.

There is no national registry for many of the weapons targeted by the ban, including the AR-15 — a semiautomatic rifle that has been used in mass shootings in the United States and is often at the center of American gun-control debates.

As a result, estimates of the numbers of newly banned weapons vary widely. So far, about 700 firearms have been …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms