Kerre Woodham: Facts are facts, there has been no impact on gun crime as a result of the buyback

We have three ongoing investigations into three separate shooting incidents resulting in death.

You have to say that Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Clements’ comments haven't aged all that well, have they?

Back in 2019, just four years ago, he said during the first weekend of the gun buyback scheme, if we take tens of thousands of firearms off the streets during the next six months, then absolutely New Zealand has to be a safer place.

Jump forward four years; the stats don't really say that, do they?

The Deputy Police commissioner was wrong and those who said gun buybacks wouldn't have any real impact on public health and safety are right.

ACT leader David Seymour was one of them at the time. He said it wasn't going to make a blind bit of difference. Researchers from Australia, where there had been a similar gun buyback scheme, said much the same. And the stats have proved it.

When the Government clamped down on firearms and seized high-powered semi-automatic weapons, they wanted to see a reduction in violent gun crime. They wanted to make New Zealand a safer place. I have absolutely no doubt about that.

But facts are facts, and there has been no impact on the rise in gun crime and violence in New Zealand as a result of the gun buyback.  

Jacinda Ardern and her party believed absolutely in the rightness of the gun buyback.

They truly believed they would be making New Zealand a safer place, and I'm sure many other New Zealanders believed it too. Is New Zealand a safer place? It's not.

It's worse than it's ever been for many, many reasons.

I do believe that kindness and goodness can work but only when those who exploit that, only when people who deliberately choose to stick two fingers to society, to the community, continue to put others at risk, only when they understand that exploiting goodness will have consequences.

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