Associate Minister of Justice, Nicole McKee announces new measures that will enable police to crack down on gangs through Firearms Prohibition Orders. Video / Mark Mitchell
The review of the firearms registry recommends keeping it with minor changes, saying early signs are that it is cost-effective and improves public safety.
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee wanted another review, saying the logic for the cost-benefit justification could be applied to ovens and toasters to reduce the risk of house fires.
Cabinet did not support another review, though Act invoked the “agree to disagree” clause in its coalition agreement with National.
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee compared firearms to toasters and ovens in her criticism of the gun registry review, which she said fails to fulfil the Act-National coalition agreement.
Her view is not supported by the Justice Ministry, which said the review met the terms of reference she had set,or by Cabinet, which led to Act invoking the “agree to disagree” clause in its coalition agreement.
In her Cabinet paper about the review, McKee’s chief concern was the cost-benefit justification for the registry, which she said was “speculative and unsupported by data”.
“It is not based on any modelling of actual risk reduction, changes in [retail] diversion rates, or registry-specific attribution. This is not a credible basis for maintaining a registry,” she said in the paper.
“The same logic could be applied to justify any number of costly interventions. For example, while house fires do cause fatalities, it would not follow that we should create a register of ovens and toasters on the speculative assumption that doing so might reduce risk.”
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Gun Control NZ co-founder Philippa Yasbek said the comparison was “probably one of the most ridiculous things ever presented to Cabinet”.
“It’s not like toasters and ovens are designed to kill. There aren’t criminal gangs trying to get their hands on toasters and ovens because they are so lethal,” she said.
“Suggesting that stopping the wrong people from buying toasters could have a similar effect on public safety as preventing criminal access to firearms is ludicrous.”
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee compared the firearms registry and the justification for keeping it to a registry for toasters and ovens. Photo / 123rf
In a statement, McKee defended the comparison: “The toaster and oven analogy was obviously not intended to be literal. The point is to stress that policies must be based on evidence of effectiveness, not speculative benefit alone.
“Owners of legally-held firearms are already subject to a high level of legal control. That is precisely why any additional control, such as a registry, must be justified rigorously and specifically, not just assumed to be beneficial.”
McKee pushed for a second review, but Cabinet rejected this, saying the review met the National-Act coalition commitment to “review whether the firearms registry is effectively improving public safety”.
Mitchell said advice to Cabinet was that a second review would add little to the existing one, which he described as evidence-based.
He and McKee said the coalition wasn’t about to collapse, with both parties maintaining a constructive relationship.
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee and Police Minister Mark Mitchell say they have a constructive relationship, despite Act and National invoking the "agree to disagree" clause over the firearms registry. Composite Photo / NZME
Early signs of positive impact
The review was always going to be limited by available data as it only looked at the registry’s first year, when 20% of licensed firearms owners had registered their guns (full compliance is not required until 2028).
The aims of the registry include deterring retail diversion, where a licensed firearms holder sells guns to an unlicensed person, and making frontline police safer by creating a fuller picture of firearms intelligence.
The review said it was too early to say how much the registry is impacting public safety, but “there are early signs the registry supports the safe possession and use of firearms and other weapons for legitimate purposes, and imposes controls that protect the individual and public from firearms-related harm”.
“Early signs therefore show that the registry appears to be putting controls in place that make diversion more difficult once a firearm has been registered.”
NZ Police have been vocal about how useful the registry is in tackling gun crime, but the review only found at least one case in the registry’s first year where it stopped a sale to an unlicensed person - a gun buyer who had had their licence suspended.
There were also at least two instances where such a purchase took place pre-registry, which the registry would have prevented.
Evidence of deterrence included police intercepting communications between straw buyers (licence holders who purchase firearms on behalf of unlicensed persons), who said the registry prevented them from doing it.
“While selling a firearm to an unlicensed individual is already illegal, without a registry this can easily occur without any evidence or detection,” the review said.
Police also valued the registry for the intelligence it provided when investigating family harm.
“In almost all instances, without a fully populated registry, it is not possible to know beforehand how many lawfully held firearms may be present at a family harm incident involving licence holders,” the review said.
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee says the registry has benefits, but questions whether they’re worth the costs. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The value of human life
The review noted several stakeholder concerns about the registry’s lack of usefulness in targeting criminals with unregistered guns, illegally imported guns, or 3D printed firearms, but the review said that didn’t mean the registry wasn’t useful.
“No regulatory system can remove 100% of all risk ... The key is ensuring a regulatory system mitigates the risks to every extent possible.”
McKee has conceded the registry has benefits, but questioned whether they’re worth the costs.
The review said the registry is expected to improve public safety “in a cost-effective way once it is fully embedded”, noting that “just one manual approach” for police investigating retail diversion costs about $120,000 in baseline funding.
Having the registry not only makes this process cheaper and more efficient, the review said, it also frees up resources for other purposes.
“By making it more difficult for unlicensed individuals to be sold firearms, the registry is expected to help prevent firearm fatalities, injuries and other firearms violence such as aggravated robbery,” the review said.
“The exact number of lives that may be saved is difficult to predict given that the purpose of the registry is to reduce the flow of firearms from licensed to unlicensed individuals.”
It noted the transport sector put the cost of a fatality at $8.1 million. The registry would then be worth it if it saved two lives a year, given the annual operational costs of running it is estimated at $8.5m – “if this methodology is applied to the registry”.
McKee pointed to this part of the review to say the cost-benefit assessment was flawed.
“I am alarmed at the basis of this conclusion being linked to a hypothetical reduction in fatalities. I think the burden of the review was to draw a firmer link based on the evidence of firearm enforcement and international experiences,” she said in her Cabinet paper.
The review did look into the use of gun registries overseas, noting they are not directly comparable to New Zealand’s registry. On the registry cost blowouts in Canada, the review said this was because of the “overarching firearms regime” rather than the registry specifically.
Gun Control NZ co-founder Philippa Yasbek says comparing guns with ovens and toasters is "ludicrous".
Gun Control NZ pointed to correlations between the registry in Canada and firearms-related crime.
“Canada abolished its gun register in 2012 for ideological reasons. Statistics Canada observed that ‘firearm-related violent crime declined 33% from 2009 to 2013, reaching its lowest point in recent years. The downward trend stopped in 2013 and, since then, it has gone up 42%’,” Yasbek said.
Privacy breaches and ease of use
One of the major concerns has been the privacy breaches in the early days of the registry and the Firearms Safety Authority. There have been six data leaks since the registry started, the last major one in July 2023, but the review said the registry “meets government certifications for restricted information”.
It added that the breaches were related to emails and authority processes rather than the registry itself.
Feedback also noted stakeholder complaints about passing information to the registry, the most common being the requirement for a RealMe account to verify identity. This is a platform used across government services, and was not in the review’s scope.
The authority said 63% of users had a positive experience with the registry call centre, while only 4% had a negative one. The registry’s digital services “meet and exceed government usability standards”, the review added.
McKee has questioned whether certain firearms need to be registered, including shotguns and rifles, but the review recommended including them because “70% of seized firearms were rifles or shotguns”.
She also challenged the review in terms of “actual and potential costs of the registry, including compliance costs to licence holders”, the lack of which undermined the cost-benefit assessment.
The review noted there had only been one prosecution in the first year for a licence holder failing to register all their firearms, while six licences had been revoked because of non-compliance with registry obligations.
It also recommended deferring registry obligations for gun dealers to ensure it can be done in a transparent and user-friendly way, which Cabinet accepted.
As the Herald revealed last month, the Ministry of Justice review of the gun registry recommended keeping it, and keeping the requirement to register all firearms. Photo / 123rf
‘No concerns raised’
McKee also wanted to push back the purchase of ammunition as an activating circumstance, which is coming into effect next month and would mean the buyer would have to register all their firearms.
“I believe this is necessary to avoid any confusion due to ‘ammunition’ not currently being defined in the act, to avoid potential stockpiling of ammunition as an attempt to delay entering the registry, to make improvement changes to the registry, to help rebuild trust and confidence in the regulatory regime, and to be transparent with the licensed firearms owners on the intent of data use by the police,” she said in the Cabinet paper.
Cabinet rejected this, as did NZ Police and the Justice Ministry, which noted stakeholder feedback for the registry review.
“No concerns were raised specifically about this activating circumstance, the definition of ammunition, or that it was encouraging firearms users to stockpile ammunition,” the ministry’s regulatory impact statement (Ris) said.
Maintaining the current timeline would be better for public safety, the Ris said, because a more populated registry provides a fuller intelligence picture for police and more information to tackle retail diversion.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell also pointed to public safety benefits.
“There is no clear policy basis for deferring the ammunition as an activating circumstance regulation. Police advised that that was a simple implementation and, if not implemented, would put the public at risk.”
Cabinet said the review met the terms of the coalition agreement (though Act and National agreed to disagree), and advice to Cabinet was that a second review “would provide very little further value”, he said.
“There is value in even a single life being saved by having a firearms registry in New Zealand. Firearms are not a thing New Zealanders should just have to learn to live with and nor are firearm deaths.”
Police acting executive director Superintendent Richard Wilson also welcomed the review.
“The registry gives frontline police access to real-time information to support risk assessments about firearms in a property or vehicle when they’re responding to critical incidents. It also supports the work of police intelligence and criminal investigations.”
While most licence holders were law-abiding, “unfortunately there are still a few who divert firearms to unlicensed offenders”.
“The registry is a significant tool to support police to detect this offending. Over time the registry will increasingly make it more difficult for firearms to move from lawful hands into the black market of unlicensed people, including gangs, extremists, or criminals,” he said.
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Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
