In response to a recent shooting spree, New Zealand decided it would disarm its citizens. The citizens, however, like their fellow Antipodeans in Australia following a similar attempt at confiscation some years ago, have generally refused to comply. Good for them.
Good for them. All that such policies accomplish is to make criminals of decent citizens, put them at a defensive disadvantage against violent offenders, remove an essential bulwark against government tyranny, and to incentivize a new black market.
Thomas Jefferson, in his Commonplace Book, quoted the Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria on laws restricting the carrying of arms:
They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
Learn more about the stiff-necked Kiwis here.