Yeah, I guess it's easy to forget the massacre in Perth last year where seven people were shot dead....
I didn't forget it at all, it simply was not relevant to what I was talking about. That killer used bolt action hunting rifles and a 12 gauge shotgun. He was also a family annihilator, killing his family in his own home while they slept. That also makes it not relevant to this situation.
And don't try moving the goalposts to talk about the 2014 Sydney hostage killings. That killer used a single weapon, a sawn off Manufrance La Salle pump action shotgun.
We learned our lesson at Aramoana.
Well I guess we didn't learn it well enough did we?
Yesterday's event was an aberration that even Australia's laws could not have prevented.
Rubbish. It was carefully and meticulously planned. It would have been far less likely to have happened in Australia
There has been no spree-shooting in Australia using a semi-automatic weapon since Port Arthur.
I disagree with this. Semi-automatics merely reload for you, that is it. There are a lot of semi-automatic hunting rifles, which means that if you miss you can quickly fire again without having to take your eyes off your target to reload. Considering that in NZ all semi-automatics have very restricted magazines, they are not for the purpose of killing people, nor killing them quickly. Not all semi-automatics are AR-15s or AK-47s.
Wrong again, they allow you to fire at a much higher rate of fire than a single action or bolt action rifle. With my Remington 700 I can
accurately fire all 10 rounds in the magazine in about 15 seconds. When I was in the Air Force I could
accurately empty the 20 round magazine on a 7.62mm FN-FAL in about 4½ seconds... 40 rounds per minute v 265 rounds per minute
GlennB predicted someone would try posting your hunting fallacy, and I'll tell you why he's right and you're wrong.
This always bears repeating. However, cue the poster who reckons that hunters sometimes need to get off multiple shots quickly .... No hunter me, but I'd say that that hunter needs to be a better shot rather than rely on semi-auto capability.
THIS!
Being able to fire shots in quick succession using a semi-auto is not about necessity, it about convenience. Anyone who calls themselves a hunter, and feels the need to use a semi-automatic, isn't fit to call themselves a hunter.
When I hunt, I take my Remington 700; a bolt action .270 cal. I don't squeeze the trigger until I am sure of a kill-shot, and I almost always drop the animal with the first shot, but on the rare occasion that I only wound the animal, it becomes my responsibility to track it until I find it, and then end its suffering.
Again you are either misrepresenting the facts or you don't know them, but he stated in his many page diatribe that he didn't come to NZ to do the attack, but to train, and it was only when he realised that NZ was "not safe from the invaders" and "filled with targets" that he decided to do the attack here.
Facts are stubborn things, and the facts are that he did the killing here and not in Australia where could not get the weapons.
As to the guns, assuming the PM was correct as well as experts who have discussed it, the guns were A class ones that had been modified to be E class, so it's quite possible he might have been about to get and modify them in Australia too. The Magazines are totally illegal here, so here or Australia doesn't matter.
This is a very naive viewpoint. You can't just take any old single action or bolt action rifle... throw a few parts at it and voila, you have a semi-automatic weapon. It simply does not work that way
*
The only way a single shot can be converted to semi auto is if the action and the trigger mechanism
was originally designed to be a semi auto in the first place, and then it was either disabled, modified or completely redesigned by the manufacturer before sale. "Modifying" it involves messing with the mechanism to restore the original functionality. This would requires some considerable skill in gunsmithing.
* Note: Disclaimer - there was once a bolt action rifle that was made semi-automatic. About 100 years ago, a Remington employee figured out how to convert a Springfield 30-06 bolt-action rifle to semi-auto. It used an 'unlocked' blowback system relying on the mass of the bolt and spring tension to work the action. He designed a device to be inserted into the breech that replaced the bolt, and provided a chamber for a smaller 30 cal pistol round to be fired. The weapon would reload automatically, but the small round came with a range penalty. It proved unreliable and in the end, it was never issued.
