New Zealand To Greatly Tighten Gun Laws After Christchurch Massacre

sunraiser

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It's a shame this had to happen first, though.

Hopefully they'll follow suit with Australia and Scotland who both responded to similar massacres with tightened laws and have both not had a mass shooting since.
 

Cirion

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While that's a horrible thing to happen, I always dislike when governments respond by decreasing freedoms in the name of "safety". Though I admit I am not familiar with their laws compared to here (US)? Do they do background checks there currently?

For example of iodicy (I could name many) - the whole desire to ban bump stocks was absolute lunacy here in the states. I can't think of a single time bump stocks have been used in a crime, ever. Zero logical sense. They claimed it was because of the one concert shooting some time back but it was already disproven that a bump fire stock was used by veterans at the scene who know the fire rate of bump fire vs. belt fed etc. That's another pet peeve of mine. Most people advocating gun control don't even understand how firearms work. IMO, one should not even make arguments if they don't even know the difference between a barrel and a heat guard. I kid you not, I remember one time on CNN when the talk show host said there was desire to ban heat guards because they "Look scary". Hey, let's paint all AR's hot pink then they won't look scary anymore!

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. Lol.

BTW, you won't ever hear about all the times mass shootings have been STOPPED by a good guy with a gun- because that won't fit the narrative. Heaven forbid the narrative be challenged.

Leftists/liberals are the party of "Emotion" and not of logic. They are great at taking a tragedy (like this) and using it to stir up peoples' emotions to make an emotional, not logical, based decision.
 
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TeaRex14

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Or, an alternative: Mandatory open and/or conceal carry for every citizen without a felony record. There's a lack of logic in blaming a particular weapon on the primal nature of humans. We're not a peaceful, egalitarian species. We have very violent roots, and at the core of every man is the possibility and the propensity to kill. Taking away certain weapons won't change the nature of mankind. You can take everything away and we would still kill with our bare hands. The greatest evil in this world isn't the actions of wicked men, it's the lack in action of indifferent good men. Besides, on a much less philosophical point, in my country (America) taking the guns, legally speaking, would spark one of the biggest black market trades we've ever seen. Quite possibly even more dangerous than the drug prohibition. Prohibition of any kind is doomed to fail.
 

LuMonty

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@Cirion it's interesting you mention that, the stop a bad guy with a good guy with a gun. The original reports I saw coming out during the shooting say a Muslim from the second mosque went home and came back with a gun to stop the shooter. I'd have to check some archived sources to make sure.

Anyways, the now-previous laws in NZ were supposed to prevent what the shooter did. Last count was he had two "assault rifles" (sarcastic rather than scare quotes) and two shotguns. It's still unclear to me, but apparently he had a shooting club and that's how he got the guns. Rumor is that he and the club were reported years ago, but I can't find anything to confirm that. Thing is, he's Australian, so I'm not quite understanding if it was an importing problem when he visited or moved to NZ, or if he was allowed 4 guns. I say that because self-defense isn't a reason to be allowed a gun under previous NZ laws, from what I've been told from residents there. It's strange he ended up with more than one, or even one of each.

I'm all for preventing carnage, but I agree with what you're saying. Power grabs and authoritarianism are bad, and playing on emotions to do it is awful. Then there's the irony that the shooter said he wanted exactly this to happen in his manifesto. That it would be ignored that he's an immigrant who wanted death upon other immigrants, but it would still result in what's happened. It's like the Twilight Zone.

Lastly, there are countries that can, apparently, do this due to geography. I doubt with the cartels coming from anywhere south of Texas that the USA could keep black market guns out. I don't have a dog in this fight, but seeing as how I don't see any logic in the solutions, I'd still be pro-responsible-firearms-ownership outside of the 2A.
 

postman

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I'd rather have a christchurch attack every day than for basic human rights to be taken away.
 

Cirion

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Or, an alternative: Mandatory open and/or conceal carry for every citizen without a felony record. There's a lack of logic in blaming a particular weapon on the primal nature of humans. We're not a peaceful, egalitarian species. We have very violent roots, and at the core of every man is the possibility and the propensity to kill. Taking away certain weapons won't change the nature of mankind. You can take everything away and we would still kill with our bare hands. The greatest evil in this world isn't the actions of wicked men, it's the lack in action of indifferent good men. Besides, on a much less philosophical point, in my country (America) taking the guns, legally speaking, would spark one of the biggest black market trades we've ever seen. Quite possibly even more dangerous than the drug prohibition. Prohibition of any kind is doomed to fail.

Yes exactly. Cain killed abel with a rock after all. They didn't even have spears or knives/swords back then. BTW at least here in the states, as Japan found out - "You cannot invade mainland USA. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass". Gun confiscation will never happen, if an attempt is made, it may not end well.

The one problem with mainstream media is when a big tragedy happens, it is readily world news and makes it seem like this happens all the time. The fact is you are far more likely to die in a car crash than be murdered by a firearm.

This applies even to the recent 737 aircraft crash. Another horrible tragedy, but the fact is, even flying in the specific 737 that crashed not once but twice in a 6 month span is still safer than driving. The aircraft in question had I wanna say several hundred thousand flight hours without issue. I'm not saying it wasn't bad and they didn't need to fix it, just saying that main stream media can blow things out of proportion in your mind by playing on emotions.

The mind is easily fooled with cognitive dissonance if you aren't aware of what's going on. Car crashes happen extremely frequently, many of which are fatal, even on a city-by-city basis. Several hundred people die or thousands even per year in a single city easily. Yet no one is interested in this, because it's "expected'. And it's just life as usual. Why aren't we focusing more on this issue? Just one example of the disconnect of things.

Speaking of church shootings. One of my favorite "feel good" stories was somewhere in I believe Africa? some church was attacked by a group of fanatics, they even had military style equipment (grenades even). A grenade was lobbed inside, immediately injured and killed many, but then one guy who happened to be conceal carry literally warded off the whole group single handedly. Probably they freaked out because they didn't expect resistance. Without him, they probably would have ALL died (100+). He even wrote a book, I think it was titled "Shooting back" or something like that?
 
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TeaRex14

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Yes exactly. Cain killed abel with a rock after all. They didn't even have spears or knives/swords back then. BTW at least here in the states, as Japan found out - "You cannot invade mainland USA. There would be a gun behind every blade of grass". Gun confiscation will never happen, if an attempt is made, it may not end well.

The one problem with mainstream media is when a big tragedy happens, it is readily world news and makes it seem like this happens all the time. The fact is you are far more likely to die in a car crash than be murdered by a firearm.

This applies even to the recent 737 aircraft crash. Another horrible tragedy, but the fact is, even flying in the specific 737 that crashed not once but twice in a 6 month span is still safer than driving. The aircraft in question had I wanna say several hundred thousand flight hours without issue. I'm not saying it wasn't bad and they didn't need to fix it, just saying that main stream media can blow things out of proportion in your mind by playing on emotions.

The mind is easily fooled with cognitive dissonance if you aren't aware of what's going on. Car crashes happen extremely frequently, many of which are fatal, even on a city-by-city basis. Several hundred people die or thousands even per year in a single city easily. Yet no one is interested in this, because it's "expected'. And it's just life as usual. Why aren't we focusing more on this issue? Just one example of the disconnect of things.
Yeah that's a good point, and probably the only reason mainland USA wasn't invaded. Even in California, the gun ownership is off the charts compared to other countries, lol. You basically hit the nail on the head my friend, it's not the guns, but rather the media that is the main culprit behind most of this. I've never in my life, seen a more dishonest and conniving media than the one we have right now.
 
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sunraiser

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While that's a horrible thing to happen, I always dislike when governments respond by decreasing freedoms in the name of "safety". Though I admit I am not familiar with their laws compared to here (US)? Do they do background checks there currently?

For example of iodicy (I could name many) - the whole desire to ban bump stocks was absolute lunacy here in the states. I can't think of a single time bump stocks have been used in a crime, ever. Zero logical sense. They claimed it was because of the one concert shooting some time back but it was already disproven that a bump fire stock was used by veterans at the scene who know the fire rate of bump fire vs. belt fed etc. That's another pet peeve of mine. Most people advocating gun control don't even understand how firearms work. IMO, one should not even make arguments if they don't even know the difference between a barrel and a heat guard. I kid you not, I remember one time on CNN when the talk show host said there was desire to ban heat guards because they "Look scary". Hey, let's paint all AR's hot pink then they won't look scary anymore!

Sorry, that turned into a bit of a rant. Lol.

BTW, you won't ever hear about all the times mass shootings have been STOPPED by a good guy with a gun- because that won't fit the narrative. Heaven forbid the narrative be challenged.

Leftists/liberals are the party of "Emotion" and not of logic. They are great at taking a tragedy (like this) and using it to stir up peoples' emotions to make an emotional, not logical, based decision.

The problem with your perception of freedom is that it's based on a fallacy.

Society works because of inhibition of freedoms that allow a greater collective freedom for the commonwealth. A person with lots of funds that can buy up lots of land and monopolise it might kick up a fuss that his freedoms are being inhibited by regulation that prevents such an act, but in actuality his perceived freedom is simply REDUCING the freedom of others. The common good, common freedom, becomes greater by inhibiting the freedom of the individual in a sensible, well intentioned way.

Looking at things from the perspective of the individual isn't logical, it's simply selfish and is at direct odds with civilized society. It's certainly passion provking though - and it's a rhetorical tool used to stir people and direct them a certain way, especially so in the USA. The same tools were used in the UK to manipulate the public into leaving Europe. European legislation protects rights of workers and has heavy environmental protection and targets in place, but this was reframed as taking away sovereignity and freedom. The IDEA of threats to individual freedom is an extremely useful tool to control the masses.

Regarding not hearing about the times a gun has been used to stop a mass shooting, it's irrelevant. Of course there might be an occasion where a person can only take a couple of people out before being shot, but we have HUGE scale evidence in both the UK in Australia that proper legislation completely stops massacres. You have a choice between a person on the ODD occasion stopping a massacre, or completely stopping massacres altogether.

Violent crime is a social issue, so these will never stop all violent crime. They'll just make it MUCH harder for the violent person to take down so many people when they're driven to violence. Guns and automatic weapons make it easier to take lives and injure others. They're literally designed for that purpose. They're designed to inhibit the freedoms of others. You can't conceptualise freedom on an individual level - it's one dimensional.
 
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sunraiser

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I'd rather have a christchurch attack every day than for basic human rights to be taken away.

Utterly disgraceful. You have no concept of the loss and pain this kind of thing causes because you live in a bubble.
 
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sunraiser

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Or, an alternative: Mandatory open and/or conceal carry for every citizen without a felony record. There's a lack of logic in blaming a particular weapon on the primal nature of humans. We're not a peaceful, egalitarian species. We have very violent roots, and at the core of every man is the possibility and the propensity to kill. Taking away certain weapons won't change the nature of mankind. You can take everything away and we would still kill with our bare hands. The greatest evil in this world isn't the actions of wicked men, it's the lack in action of indifferent good men. Besides, on a much less philosophical point, in my country (America) taking the guns, legally speaking, would spark one of the biggest black market trades we've ever seen. Quite possibly even more dangerous than the drug prohibition. Prohibition of any kind is doomed to fail.

Nobody, in ANY sense is blaming the weapons for the crime.

Violent crime is a product of social issues and it's not going to stop just because guns are banned. It just stops LARGE scale violent crime from an individual.

A person will not massacre 39 people with their bare hands as they'd simply run away or overpower him. It's madness to suggest otherwise - the legislation simply minimises risk.

What you've written is common sense but it's not, in any way, an argument against sensible legislation.
 

postman

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Utterly disgraceful. You have no concept of the loss and pain this kind of thing causes because you live in a bubble.
I think you're disgraceful, an authoritarian tyrant who want to take away peoples rights. A little mini-Hitler, if you will.
 

Cirion

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The problem with your perception of freedom is that it's based on a fallacy.

Society works because of inhibition of freedoms that allow a greater collective freedom for the commonwealth. A person with lots of funds that can buy up lots of land and monopolise it might kick up a fuss that his freedoms are being inhibited by regulation that prevents such an act, but in actuality his perceived freedom is simply REDUCING the freedom of others. The common good, common freedom, becomes greater by inhibiting the freedom of the individual in a sensible, well intentioned way.

So basically you are saying you're a socialist then?

Looking at things from the perspective of the individual isn't logical, it's simply selfish and is at direct odds with civilized society. It's certainly passion provking though - and it's a rhetorical tool used to stir people and direct them a certain way, especially so in the USA. The same tools were used in the UK to manipulate the public into leaving Europe. European legislation protects rights of workers and has heavy environmental protection and targets in place, but this was reframed as taking away sovereignity and freedom. The IDEA of threats to individual freedom is an extremely useful tool to control the masses.

So my arguments are emotional, not logical, but not the anti-gun groups? How is what you just posted not intended to be passion promoting? Freedom controls the masses, really? Tell that to north korea, cuba, venezuela or other ultra communist countries that have no freedom.

Regarding not hearing about the times a gun has been used to stop a mass shooting, it's irrelevant. Of course there might be an occasion where a person can only take a couple of people out before being shot, but we have HUGE scale evidence in both the UK in Australia that proper legislation completely stops massacres. You have a choice between a person on the ODD occasion stopping a massacre, or completely stopping massacres altogether.

It's not irrelevant. RE my example of cognitive dissonance and bias comfirmation - hearing no news must mean it doesn't happen, and hearing news must mean it happens a lot. Sorry just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean it isn't the case, most of the time. Again, a story about someone STOPPING a massacre isn't going to be popular news. And no you will not stop massacres by banning guns. It is easy enough to make something home made from parts from lowes, or even 3d print one.

Violent crime is a social issue, so these will never stop all violent crime. They'll just make it MUCH harder for the violent person to take down so many people when they're driven to violence. Guns and automatic weapons make it easier to take lives and injure others. They're literally designed for that purpose. They're designed to inhibit the freedoms of others. You can't conceptualise freedom on an individual level - it's one dimensional.

What about grenades? Bombs? Tractor trailors? Hint - all three of these have been used in terrorist attacks. Or the concert shooting which involved a belt-fed MG? (Not bump fire like the media reported). You can't even readily buy belt-fed MG's legally.

Because belt-fed MG wouldn't have fit the narrative they used it as excuse to ban bump fire. No wonder trump calls the media fake news - because they are.
 

Nebula

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I'm kind of neutral on gun control, because the root cause of mass violence seems to be social alienation often along with metabolic/developmental dysfunction that intensify existing issues. Even where guns are banned those who feel severely alienated just as often use homemade bombs, acid, or knives to inflict just as much damage on average.

There are limits to human nature to adapt to social and cultural change without feeling overly threatened, so it is in society's best interest to put a lot more focus on intentionally directing those who feel alienated into a healthy meaningful social environment and perhaps slowing down some of factors that aggravate social alienation (which may include limiting mass immigration in many areas and instead use a model similar to Singapore, which has a much better track record of success).

Somewhat at the root of mass violence is that men in particular can become easily alienated in the modern world for various reasons especially in cities. This is a spiritual and social crisis for men around much of the world. I believe its likely one that only men can solve for themselves. We must recreate meaningful fraternal organizations for men that are centered on a positive brotherhood where we seek each other's well being and success in life in harmony with others. Many of the old organizations/religions that served this purpose have become eroded or are no longer able to transmit the wisdom necessary for well being in the modern world.
 
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Cirion

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I'm kind of neutral on gun control, because the root cause of mass violence seems to be social alienation often along with metabolic/developmental dysfunction that intensify existing issues. Even where guns are banned those who feel severely alienated just as often use homemade bombs, acid, or knives to inflict just as much damage on average.

There are limits to human nature to adapt to social and cultural change without feeling overly threatened, so it is in society's best interest to put a lot more focus on intentionally directing those who feel alienated into a healthy meaningful social environment and perhaps slowing down some of factors that aggravate social alienation.

Somewhat at the root of mass violence is that men in particular can become easily alienated in the modern world for various reasons especially in cities. This is a spiritual and social crisis for men around much of the world. I believe its likely one that only men can solve for themselves. We must recreate meaningful fraternal organizations for men that are centered on a positive brotherhood where we seek each other's well being and success in life in harmony with others. Many of the old organizations/religions that served this purpose have become eroded or are no longer able to transmit the wisdom necessary for well being in the modern world.

Agreed. If we REALLY want to solve crime we must fix the ROOT CAUSE which as you alluded to is more often than not, metabolic dysfunction, mental health etc, Haidut posted something to this effect a while back. There is a ton of spiritual dysfunction nowadays as well as you said.

Too much time is wasted on "band aid solutions" which isn't gonna fix anything at the end of the day.

At least in the USA, virtually all school shootings involved a kid that was on high dose SSRI. The better thing to do then is ban SSRI, not guns... SSRI have many negatives that Haidut has repeatedly posted about.
 
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Jem Oz

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I'm Australian, and I remember vividly the Port Arthur Massacre and the resulting gun ban. It was STRONGLY presented at the time as a universally good, strong, bold, positive step. We were encouraged to cheer as they ground the guns to dust in their thousands. We were (subtly) encouraged to view gun owners as dumb, overly aggressive simpletons.

Now, all these moons later, I think it was an unfortunate step that took away our rights and helped make us more compliant, enslaved and afraid of the big bad government. I'm sure somewhere in the government they viewed it as a litmus test to increase control. Just because there haven't been any large gun massacres in Oz since then isn't enough for me. I don't think there were that many before Port Arthur, but I could be wrong. In any event, I agree with above posters that these issues aren't about guns. They are about childhoods. Wretched, rancid, abusive childhoods filled with neglect and violence that many people couldn't even fathom.

Until we 'fix' that, there will ALWAYS be murder and hate in this world.
 

KennethKaniff

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What is this authoritarian nonsense doing on a Ray Peat forum?

Go cheer on taking away people's rights somewhere else.
 

Waremu

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Those who advocate that law abiding citizens have no right to self-defense with weapons are not anti-gun. They are in fact very pro-gun. They just want government to have all of the guns. And therein lies the problem. They think they are in some moral position by thinking all guns should be outlawed, but they lose the moral argument because the very act of what they advocate (government only having weapons) is, by any historical metric of how many innocent people governments have killed, immoral, if we were to judge by outcome alone, which is the only truly objective way to judge morality. So put aside the fact that gun bans won't stop black weapons markets from growing, even if they did work, all you're doing is trading in one thing for another --- by advocating that government have all the weapons to stop mass shootings (which until this day strict gun laws do not do), you are but merely trading in the bodies of mass shooting causalities in for the many bodies which will and always have historically come at the hand of government itself. It's akin to trusting in a corrupt Police department to investigate itself for officers who murder innocent people and take drug money. When only government has the weapons, then truly, there is no real accountability and, as human nature assures, absolute power will always be corrupted. I went on a long drive throughout central America a few years ago. I went through the good and bad parts. During that time, I was held at gun point and robbed by corrupt police officers on five different accounts. A few of them got very heated. I easily could have died and would have never been heard of again and the officers could have easily gotten away with it too. These were places where no guns were allowed for citizens to own. It is easy to ignore history when you live in a developed country that hasn't 'yet' seen such hardships and infringements on freedoms, where you feel fairly safe, and say it doesn't matter if government has all the weapons because it won't ever happen in said country. But when you have a rogue government who has all the weapons, and you have experienced it firsthand, and how quickly things can go wrong, and how great they can abuse their power, it is an entirely different situation and experience and often, those who advocate such ideas have not had such experiences. At least, if I am well armed, my freedoms are taken into my hands and are my own responsability, and I am not on my knees to government, at their mercy seat, hoping that they remain good. And of course, even if they remain good for some time, I am still defenseless against the people who do not obey laws and will therefore use illegal weapons to terrorize the innocent. So, like in those places I visited, you're at the mercy of the government that they not become bad, but you are also at the mercy of the drug lords and gangs that they not come after you and all that you worked hard for.

With freedom comes great responsability, and punishing those who abuse their freedoms to hurt others rather than dishing out collective punishments by restricting rights of the people is the only thing that works in a truly free society. It may sound nice to the utopian authoritarians, but their perfect view never works in reality and always ends up leading to a dystopia rather than a utopia. Governments will always work in their own self-interest to keep power, and as technology progresses, this consolidation of power will only make this even more dangerous to free innocent individuals. With robotics being used more in military and other such advancements, it makes it even more important than ever that checks and balances remain on the other side of the isle so that government is kept in check --- because with technology advancing, there may come a day where it only takes one time for them to consolidate enough power and they will have the technology and leverage to keep that power over a once-free peoples, forever. And I assure all, they will always have plenty of excuses like mass shootings to try to dupe people into giving up that power to them, by pulling at our emotional heart strings. And that time will come when there will be no going back.
 
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schultz

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On a positive note, Jordan Peterson's book has been banned from Whitcoulls book store in New Zealand, so at least that will prevent further tragedies...
 

Jem Oz

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On a positive note, Jordan Peterson's book has been banned from Whitcoulls book store in New Zealand, so at least that will prevent further tragedies...

Truly pathetic. The long white cloud has been lost to the virtue signalers
 

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