18 March 2019 - New Zealand to implement new gun laws after Christchurch attack
New Zealand To Announce New Gun Laws To Make Country Safer, Says PM Jacinda Ardern
Rohini Chatterji (The Huffington Post, 18/03/2019)
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday she would announce new gun laws within days, after 50 people were killed in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5 where police said he was likely to face more charges.
“Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer,” Ardern said at news conference after her cabinet reached in principle decisions on gun reform laws in the wake of New Zealand’s worst ever mass shooting.
New Zealand welcomes gun control after mosque massacre: 'There will be no opposition'
Stephen Wright and Kristen Gelineau - Associated Press (Washington Times, 17/03/2019)
The New Zealand leader’s promise of tightened gun laws in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings has been widely welcomed by a stunned population.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her Cabinet will consider the details of the changes on Monday. She has said options include a ban on private ownership of semi-automatic rifles that were used with devastating effect in Christchurch and a government-funded buyback of newly outlawed guns.
While curtailing gun owners’ rights is a political battleground in the United States, Christchurch gun owner Max Roberts, 22, predicted Ardern won’t face serious opposition to her agenda.
It's a watershed moment for gun control in New Zealand, but there are no quick fixes
Tim Lister (CNN, 18/03/2019)
In the wake of last Friday's attacks in Christchurch in which 50 people were killed, New Zealand faces a defining moment on the availability of guns in society.
Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has pledged tough measures to limit their circulation -- but in a country with a strong hunting tradition, where there is roughly one gun for every four people, it will be no easy path.
As Arden herself said at the weekend, there have been unsuccessful attempts to tighten gun control in the past -- in 2005, 2012 and again two years ago. For previous governments, it has not been a priority -- because while having relatively high gun ownership, New Zealand has until now had relatively few gun-related deaths.According to figures compiled by the University of Sydney, New Zealand had 1.24 gun related homicides per 100,000 people in 2015. This is in contrast to the United States, which had 11 deaths per 100,000 people in 2015, according to a report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Unlike in America, New Zealand is likely to make 'huge changes' to 'liberal' gun control laws after attacks, experts say
Chantal Da Silva (Newsweek, 15/03/19)
March 15 will forever be synonymous with what New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Adern called one of the nation's "darkest days," with at least 49 people killed and almost 50 wounded in shootings at two mosques in Christchurch.
In the country's first gun massacre for nearly 30 years, gun control experts told Newsweek that Friday's shootings, which Ardern said "can only be described as a terrorist attack," are likely to bring about "huge changes" to New Zealand's gun control laws.
"I don't know the details of exactly what will happen in New Zealand. All I know is that there is bound to be change," gun control expert Philip Alpers, a New Zealand-born researcher at the University of Sydney and founding director of GunPolicy.org, which tracks gun laws around the world, told Newsweek.