NZ gun owner has legit concerns on nation's gun registration :: 10/11/2023

A lot of people think gun registration is a good thing. I fail to see how it’ll accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things, but a lot of other people disagree.

In New Zealand, enough of them disagreed that the nation got a registration scheme.

Since June, 50,000 people there have registered their guns with the government, just like the law requires of them. I’m not sure if that’s a good number or not–It’s not like New Zealanders are Americans, after all–but that is what it is.

One of those number, though, has concerns about gun registration we’d do well to keep in mind here as well.

Newshub can reveal 50,000 guns have been registered since the Firearms Registry went live in June.

Labour said over time, it will help police track stolen firearms seized from criminals.

But a gun owner Newshub spoke to worries his data in the wrong hands could lead criminals to his home.

Patrick does everything a legal gun owner should do, like keeping them under lock and key – but the recently introduced Firearms Registry is making him feel like the target.

“If that’s leaked, that follows you,” he said.

“All it’s really doing is basically creating a shopping list.”

Police have blundered with gun owners’ data several times in the past few years. Most recently in July, when the new Firearms Safety Authority accidentally copied 147 gun owners into an email.

Now, as Americans, we often like to think we’re better than that. We’re not.

When you create a database of people with desirable goods, sooner or later, someone’s going to want to access it. Especially in a nation where guns are more limited than here in the US, but it’s likely to happen here as well.

Hell, hackers will hack something just to prove they can. They’ll grab data to prove they had it, then maybe make a few bucks selling the list on the dark web where criminals can then target homes.

“That’s never happened!” someone might say, and to the best of my knowledge, they’re right. It hasn’t.

But there’s a lot of stuff that never happened until it did.

Yet this is something that can and likely will happen, unlike many other things. Anti-gunners pushing gun registration need to account for that when they try to sell this and we need to make it a point to bring up the risks.

I mean, even the feds aren’t immune to data breaches, so why would individual states get it right?

Gun registration puts all of us in the crosshairs of those who would seek to profit by stealing guns and trafficking them to criminals, thus allowing them to commit more violent crimes, which then is used to justify still more gun restrictions.

it’s insane and yet that’s the ridiculous status quo.

New Zealand is dealing with it and California had to deal with it. Everyone who has to register their firearms will, in time, likely have to deal with it as well.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/10/11/nz-gun-registration-2-n75927