Committee Meets To Lock In Ammo Ban

The monkeys are meeting tomorrow to further consider the bill that confirms the Prohibited Ammo Regulation.

The one that Jacinda just made up.

The one that likely made you a criminal.

Details at the bottom of this page.

Their report to Parliament is due on 9th December.

 

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/BILL_89827/subordinate-legislation-confirmation-bill-no-4

It will lock in this:

Complaints can be made HERE:

Committee Secretariat

Regulations Review Committee
Parliament Buildings
Wellington

rr@parliament.govt.nz

 

DEMAND FAIR COMPENSATION!!

 

This from COLFO regarding steel shot:

If you have steel shot as from 1 October you’ve been a criminal, liable to up to two years in prison.

And the Government has deliberately, on Police advice, decided not to pay you for the cost of the ammo you must now get rid of. The only reason seems to be that it would be rewarding you – apparently on the assumption that people consider you’ve always been a wrongdoer by having such ammo.

So the Fair and Reasonable campaign has written to the Minister of Police, to demand that he revoke the Order and regulations with this effect. We’re looking for the same change on behalf of other categories of innocuous ammo that the Police have decided to prohibit – apparently because they think it has “military specifications”.

When we created the Fair and Reasonable campaign we said we’ll go to court if necessary. We are coordinating many efforts to reduce the damage from the Government’s highly publicised reaction to the terrible events in Christchurch in March. Now we can tell you more about the steps being taken to stop this particular part of the Government’s exploitation of the tragedy, to punish law-abiding firearms users for the actions of a criminal.

Many of the law changes in June, and what’s coming down the line, offend against principles that have long been seen as basic to the protections of our rule of law.

A few weeks ago our lawyers were looking carefully at the Police Minister’s definitions of newly prohibited ammunition. One category  – termed “enhanced penetration ammunition” – likely includes all steel shot in shotgun cartridges.  The definition reads: “Projectiles that have a steel or tungsten carbide penetrator intended to achieve better penetration.”

The legal advice speculates that could be an unintended accident of rushed and uninformed drafting. But having come into effect on 1 October Minister Nash’s Order has the effect of making every owner of steel shot apparently guilty of an offence punishable by up to 2 years imprisonment.

The lawyers think it unlikely the Police would prosecute duck shooters en masse. They would be much more likely to select someone prominent and try to make an example of them, to scare everyone else. But we are extremely concerned that the Order has a definition that almost anyone who knows firearms could see would catch ammunition with no special safety issues. It catches not only duck shooters this way. There are many other types of ammunition which use steel in some form, and many if not all of them present no more danger than any other comparable ammo.

People like you and I who strive to stay within the law, should be able to expect the Police, Government, and Minister to take special care before criminalising people with absolutely no safety purpose.

Did no one advising the Minister know that duck shooters must use steel shot when shooting over water?

We have put the Minister on notice that unless he corrects this error immediately, we will be going to Court seeking an urgent Judicial Review to declare the Order void. You can read the letter to Stuart Nash from our lawyers here.

The decision not to provide compensation to ammo owners

The letter also tells the Minister we will go to Court over the failure to assure compensation for newly prohibited ammunition. Up until this year, the Arms Act had the normal careful assurances of compensation for seized property. As you’d expect. That is consistent with hundreds of years’ of our history, where the state cannot expropriate without compensation.

Worse, the mean-spirited refusal to compensate is likely to frustrate the claimed purposes of the law changes. They are far less likely to get surrender of property they’ve decided to prohibit, if the effect is the same as stealing it.

As it currently stands buyers of ammo in good faith from the Government (such as tracer ammo and other expired Defence/military stock) get absolutely nothing.  How is that fair?

We’ll go to Court if we have to

I strongly encourage every person with an interest in sensible laws and regulation of firearms to read the letter which steps through the mistaken logic of the Minster’s Order.

As you can see Nicole, we’re taking this effort to protect the rights of firearms owners seriously. People should not be criminalised, even if accidentally, for doing precisely what they should do – replace lead with steel shot.  Likewise, if politicians decide to curry favour on the basis of ignorance, by declaring property illegal, they must at least pay compensation.

We’re demanding that the Government be Fair and Reasonable, to you as a responsible firearms owner.  There will be more court challenges to the Government unless they become more Fair and Reasonable.

We’ll keep you updated on what the Minister comes back with.

Here is the actual ban: