Hunting & Fishing pulls 'military-style' semi-auto

""Following Jacinda Ardern's comments on Saturday morning, gun shop owners - at bricks and mortar stores, and online - experienced a jump in sales. The Christchurch branch of Gun City was busy on Saturday, with people buying guns and equipment. Firearms owners posted online about “panic buying”, where people were rushing to stores to purchase firearms, following the prime minister’s comments about plans to tighten gun laws. On the Facebook group Kiwi Gun Blog, firearms owners and sellers said there was heightened buying of semi-automatic weapons, ammunition and magazines around the country on Saturday."" https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/03/17/491934/panic-buying-of-guns-ahead-of-ban Pistols and military-style semi-automatics (MSSA) need to be registered and require a special licence. Non-military-style semi-automatics are not registered and can be purchased with a regular Class A licence. It's too easy to upgrade from the permitted 7-round magazine to the 50-round type. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111361160/a-beginners-guide-to-firearms-gun-licences-and-gun-law-in-new-zealand

""The Government will announce gun law reforms within 10 days and Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the Government is considering a gun buyback scheme"" https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/03/christchurch-terror-attack-tuesday-live-updates.html

If I'm looking at [this graphic](https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/total_number_of_gun_deaths) of gun deaths in Australia I see it dropping off way before the 1996 massacre, and dropping at the same rate after, until the level steadies. Is that the correct reading? If so, it means the program did not achieve anything that was already being achieved.

I don't think that is a correct reading. The graph you link starts at 1987. If you look at the raw data, it provides figures back to 1979. Including that data makes more clear a stepwise drop around the time of enactment of the National Firearms Agreement (1996). That drop in total number of gun deaths (from approx 500 to 3000 has largely been maintained, despite the weakening of the Agreement by individual States and increase in population. Gun legislation is not the only lever that needs to be used, imo, and it's not just about banning weapons. However, I would have thought that these measures should be accepted (demanded?) by most of the population : 1. ban assault/military style weapons 2. create a register of all weapons 3. maintain a comprehensive licencing system In Australia, there are still many banned weapons in the hands of criminals and illegal imports are a serious on-going problem. However, the weapons used in this latest atrocity would be nearly impossible to acquire in Australia.

Can someone with reasonable hunting experience tell me please if semi automatics are any good for hunting? From what Ive read they are not that accurate and you are not likely to get a worthwhile second shot in most hunting situations even with the semi auto feature as the animal will have bolted. Even if you are successful and get half a dozen deer how do you carry out all that meat. If this is correct there is little in the way of a valid argument for owning one except as a conversation piece at the local gun club. I dont hunt and have never owned any firearm and dont have a licence but I do fish. I have eaten every fish I caught and kept.

I've plotted the data since 1979, thanks for figuring that out. Still looks to me the same thing: since 1989 gun deaths were steadily dropping, gun law did not make much difference.  PS: updated image at 17:23, so please reload to get a better formatted version.

geeves, target shooting is also popular. Guns are not just used for hunting.

"Gun deaths" includes suicide, accidental deaths and 'other', as well as mass shootings. Note that there were no mass shootings in the decade after the NFA. It is true, however, that several studies over the intervening years have concluded that there is no statistical evidence to confirm the NFA has been solely responsible for the decline in gun deaths. It is also true that suicide by gun was in decline before 1996 and accounts for some of the pre-NFA decline. Further, it is not justified to assume that any pre-1996 decline would have continued. All that said, imo, it is reasonable to require the 3 points I noted above as a minimum.

@bernieq, with regards to your 3 points: 1. I don't know what assault or military style weapons are, so I'm taking this as banning the AR15 specifically or semi-autos. If this loser had just 5 bolt action rifles, would the death toll have been significantly different? Take into account that he had plenty of time, nobody including the police was stopping him. 2. How would a register of all weapons have prevented this mass shooting? 3. How would a comprehensive licencing system have prevented this mass shooting? No need to go into generalities, we have a very specific case. I can't see any of your 3 points doing anything here. I rather see proposals that would have: 1. Lowered the death toll. 2. Even prevented this.

@waynowski, that's clearly incorrect. Some mass shooters have used bolt action rifles on purpose to make that point. For example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting When googling if you were right, I also find this: https://www.quora.com/When-is-the-last-time-a-mass-shooter-used-a-bolt-or-pump-action-rifle-for-their-killings Again confirming semi-automatic is not very relevant when it comes to mass shootings. What is relevant is what you said: people confronting the shooter. On shooting fast, is that true? I have seen videos of people shooting a bolt action rifle almost as fast as a semi-automatic. On reloading: perhaps irrelevant, you just bring multiple guns. This guy had multiple bolt action rifles as well. Note that he illegally modified his AR15 to take high capacity magazines, and illegally bought high capacity magazines. I'm all in favour of making this stuff as hard as possible, this is an area where I think a register could be useful. Also just looking at the Gun City AR15 page, I see .22 AR15s. Do we even know what capacity his AR15 was? PS: I know nothing about guns, I'm asking these questions in order to learn actual facts.