The Council of Licensed Firearms Owners (COLFO) is calling for the Auditor-General to investigate the New Zealand Firearms Register after a survey found almost one in four users have encountered errors in their personal records.
“Of the people who used it, 24.2%, almost one in four, had found errors in either the firearm make and models that were registered under their names,” says Hugh Devereux-Mack, Spokesperson for COLFO.
“There had either been serial numbers that were wrong or firearms they had never owned being registered to them, failure to transfer between people, double-ups, wrong addresses, or wrong contact details.”
The errors arise from both the manual registration process and the online system, he says. Registering a Tikka T3, one of the most common hunting rifles in New Zealand, requires knowing the rifle is manufactured by Sako, not Tikka, or the model will not appear in the pull-down menu.
“There’s a level of knowledge required to use the license that average firearms owners probably don’t have, and the system itself is run by people who likewise don’t have a lot of knowledge about firearms, and are just ticking the boxes.
“We know it’s going in the wrong direction, and we’d like the Auditor-General to step in and say, ‘How far is this going? What steps can be put in to either fix those errors or stop them happening?’”
The register currently scores three out of 10 on usability, he says.
“If the register was completely accurate, had no errors, was easy to use, and would remain free for all firearms owners, we could probably say ‘actually, we support it,’ especially if there was actual evidence that it’s reducing firearm crime in our community.”
That evidence has not emerged.
“The international evidence is overwhelmingly that it’s always been a waste of money.
“It doesn’t reduce gun crime, it puts law-abiding people at risk, and now we know it’s full of errors.”
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