The Question of Gun Ownership By John Steele

     Back to the issue of gun banning in New Zealand:
  https://www.wishtv.com/news/international/proposed-new-zealand-law-says-owning-guns-is-not-a-right/?fbclid=IwAR1Su0p46JoNHDm-nJ5kmzJHxBL-W2WMuUuVgSFHyIY0vWbWNm3ZCKBnT1E

“New Zealand’s government is planning further restrictions to gun ownership in a law proposed Monday that emphasizes owning guns is a privilege and not a right. The new law would ban the sale of guns to overseas visitors, create a register to track all guns in the country, and require gun owners to renew their gun licenses every five years instead of every 10. It would also allow police to weigh other factors such as a person’s mental health and even what they had been posting on social media to determine whether they were fit to own a gun. The government hopes lawmakers will approve the legislation by the end of the year. The proposed measures come after New Zealand in April rushed through legislation to ban so-called military-style weapons such as AR-15 style rifles after a lone gunman in March killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques. The government has launched a buyback scheme to compensate people for the outlawed semi-automatics, and has so far collected and destroyed more than 3,200 weapons. The gun buyback and amnesty runs until December. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she thinks the vast majority of New Zealanders disagree with the U.S. model under which gun ownership is seen as a constitutional right and is interpreted by many to be a defense against potential government overreach. Ardern said that growing up in a rural farming area, she always understood New Zealanders had a practical need for owning guns. “But at the same time I don’t think that extends to this view that every New Zealand citizen has the need and right to generally arm itself,” she said. “We’re a society that I think has always drawn that very clear distinction.”

     New Zealanders are “free” to do what they want, but they are only free if their decisions are based upon reasoned evidence, not government propaganda. Much of the present-day establishment position on weapons ownership is nothing more than a product of the past politics of people control. The US experienced a revolution which gave birth to the nation and made clear the possibility of government tyranny. This lesson was never learnt by Australian and New Zealanders, and the very idea that the government could be corrupt is regarded by our local new class as an extremist idea.

     This claim does not withstand a moment’s scrutiny, since the progressives also want to claim that the Trump government is tyrannical, and parts of the Left, especially segments of the antifa, advocate armed revolt. So, the elites can’t have it both ways. If governments can get corrupted beyond democratic repair, then there needs to be the option that the American founding fathers advocated. That Australia did not have the same mentality, indicates that our nation was just banged together to get commerce between the states flowing to make money for the capitalist elites of the day. There was no thought of preserving Australia for thousands of years, otherwise our constitution, an “enabling document” would have put in more checks and balances, especially on immigration, than the blank space that it left, not to offend India it seems.