Kiwi Gun Blog

Protecting Responsible Firearms Ownership in New Zealand

The New Zealand Army Lose Some Machine Guns

Finally!

The great Minister of Defense responds.

The Kiwi Gun Blog had asked how many firearms were unaccounted for in our armed services.

Gerry Brownlee now informs us that:

Both the Royal New Zealand Navy and the Royal New Zealand Air Force report no weapons unaccounted for.

Good job team.

The NZ Army however has lost five weapons and one rubber pistol training aid.

asp-red-gun-handgun-training-replicas_21-2100

Two of the five weapons were lost on deployments overseas.

Three were lost here at home in New Zealand.

It is assumed that these are Steyr assault rifles. We are confirming this.

We at the Kiwi Gun Blog will of course forgive a gallant serviceman losing a weapon in the chaos of enemy contact (Even though we know that at least one of these was simply forgotten by a moron now working for the Labour party).

But losing more at home on exercise than at war seems inexcusably careless.

According to the Minister – So far the machineguns have not appeared in criminal hands.

Upgrading the Steyr

This is only after the year 2000. ‘When electronic record keeping began’.

Because our armed services have only had computers since then?

Right…

Not a good look – but our Police have lost more guns than all three of our fighting services combined and they have not gone to war.

The weapons here were lost near Lake Moawhanga and Lake Coleridge.

UPDATE

The Kiwi Gun Blog has now had further confirmation from the office of the Defense Minister – Gerry Brownlee.

The five weapons were as follows:

1 x LSW C9 Machine Gun
3 x IW Steyr
1 x Rifle 5.56mm SP

Further detail (noting the rubber training pistol is included):

Machine Gun Light S/No: NZDAA870767 Date: 11 Dec 2012 (Lost in Lake Moawhanga on Ex Bunny 1, wpn not recovered)
2 x Steyr IW S/No: NZ8905679 & NZ8906145 Date 24 Jul 2012 (Lost overboard on Ex Goose Green Dec 2011. Recovery attempts made however depth of water deemed too deep)
Steyr IW S/No: NZAB8700162 Date 01 Apr 2012 (Lost on TU CRIB 19)
Rifle 5.56MM SP S/No: NZ8909816 02 Apr 2010 (Lost on TU CRIB 16 during a patrol)
Weapon – Training aid 1 x Rubber CQB Pistol training aid Date 25 Jul 2015 (Lost on exercise in Waiouru)

The Kiwi Gun Blog

March 16, 2017

News

7 responses to “The New Zealand Army Lose Some Machine Guns”

Kevin Fewtrell

March 16, 2017 at 7:23 pm

It also has to be recognised that NZDF Personnel do not carry their Firearms in Public as a matter of course so one would assume they were lost on training exercises within DF land. The NZ Police on the other hand are a different scenario completely.

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1. The Kiwi Gun Blog
  
  March 17, 2017 at 2:33 am
  
  Neither do the Police Kevin. Their actual time handling arms would be very small. Thanks for the feedback.
  
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Alan Freeman

March 16, 2017 at 7:46 pm

I wouldnt read too much of this, and calling them machine guns without actually knowing what has been lost is a bit of a stretch.

Going by recent events the lake moawhanga case will be a weapon lost when a soldier drowned during a boating exercise.

Defence moves slowly, so I would say that a lot of recording was indeed done by hand before 2000 – having served from 2001, I can recall green screens and text based systems as well as hand written records for aircraft maintenance.

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1. The Kiwi Gun Blog
  
  March 17, 2017 at 2:38 am
  
  Hi Alan. We are confirming the details now but the Steyr is a safe assumption and it is indeed a machine gun. So hardly a ‘stretch’. Pretty sure that we are not talking about swords here? We take your point about record keeping. But they were still kept. So it is suspicious to us when arbitrary start dates are decided to answer Official Information requests. If my girlfriend asks me if I have ever cheated on her – I wont have much luck offering “Not since June love”. Thanks for your comments.
  
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  1. LT
    
    March 18, 2017 at 8:23 am
    
    The Steyr is referred to correctly in the article as an Assault Rifle. That is what it is, not a machine gun.
    
    Oh, and hand written records are still used for Aircraft Maintenance.
    
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  2. The Kiwi Gun Blog
    
    March 19, 2017 at 1:52 pm
    
    machine gun
    noun
    noun: machinegun
    an automatic gun that fires bullets in rapid succession for as long as the trigger is pressed.
    
    (So its obviously both LT. Please dont be a pedant. I dont think the Police will let you have one on ‘E’ but try)
    
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Michael N

April 9, 2017 at 6:29 am

Respectfully, I’ll be a pedant.
The Steyr rifle is, by its very definition, not a machine gun. It is a rifle. The definition you posted is US specific. In the US, any full auto firearm is legally defined as a machine gun. This definition is as unfortunate, and militarily incorrect, as the definition “assault weapon”. In NZ those definitions are not applicable in civvy street (to the best of my knowledge), so I submit that it is sensible to default to military definitions. The C9 LSW shown on this page is a machine gun. The Steyr is a rifle. The fact that it is select fire is irrelevant. I think it is important not to feed the anti gunners with misappropriated emotional terminology, hence my pedantry.

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