Announced on Thursday by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, all weapons that have the capability of being modified, including MSSAs and assault rifles, as well as modification equipment that converts weapons into MSSAs, will need to be handed back to the New Zealand government.
The buyback of the estimated 1.2m guns in circulation, as well as the regulation of firearms and other ammunition, will cost the country over £100 million pounds, which, according to Ardern, “is the price that we must pay to ensure the safety of our communities.”
This announcement comes after New Zealand’s cabinet agreed, 72 hours after the attack, to ban these weapons.
This legislation will be put in place on April 11 and it is expected to pass with little resistance.
On March 15, in the worst mass shooting New Zealand has ever seen, the shooter using an AR-15, a semi-automatic weapon, opened fire on two mosques killing 50 and injuring 40.
A “nationwide reflection” will be held on Friday to commemorate the lives lost, marking a week since the terrorist attack.
Within a week of the attack, New Zealander’s have banded together in support of gun control, with over 70,000 signing and delivering a petition to Parliament in the country’s capital.
This is in stark contrast to the United States, which has experienced five mass shootings in six years, with no gun control bans and only minor regulations on weapon’s sales.
In comparison, the majority government leaders in New Zealand, despite their varying stances on guns, agree that changes need to be made to prevent another mass shooting from occurring again.
Part of the struggle between gun control and the government in the United States rests in the Constitutional right for Americans to “bear arms,” causing division between those political parties more inclined to take the document written during the birth of the nation as “gospel truth” rather than the over 150 lives lost.
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
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