No tightening of gun regulations – even post Molenaar


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It is unfortunate that the

High Court

has knocked back the Police decision to reclassify some rifles with pistol grips as military style semi-automatics (MSSAs). Justice Jill Mahon said legislation was necessary to implement the change.

The Greens will support such legislation. In fact, we want it to go further down the road towards registering all firearms, and not just MSSAs. The present system of registering firearms owners, but not what weapons they have, allows people like the Napier gunman  Jan Molenaar to amass an

armoury without the Police knowing

.

Some gun lobbyists argue that general registration is bureaucratically cumbersome. However, we live in a computer age and it is not too hard to require gun traders to input details of sales into a database. In Australia the trading is supposed to be through registered traders, which makes recording who owns what guns relatively easy.