The purpose of the Firearms Registry is to help make our families and all New Zealanders safer. Licence holders have a key role to play filling in the Registry and keeping their information up to date.  This means the Firearms Registry, when full, will provide a complete record of all lawfully held arms items in New Zealand.

Better visibility of where lawfully held firearms are improves licence holder and public safety in many ways, including: 

• Reducing the opportunity for non-licence holders to acquire lawful firearms and then use them recklessly, dangerously, or to commit crimes.
• Improving the traceability of firearms recovered from crimes. Improved traceability will make it more likely that stolen firearms can be returned to their lawful owners.
• Giving licence holders more confidence when buying and selling firearms, as the Registry lets them know they are dealing with a current licence holder; and that the firearm they are buying has not been stolen.  
• Promoting individual accountability which encourages licence holders to maintain robust firearms practices. The stronger the actions and systems licence holders continue to place around the safe storage and transportation of their firearms, the harder it is for:
  • would-be thieves to locate and steal licence holder’s firearms;
  • children in households to inadvertently gain access to a licence holder’s firearms; and
  • for other family members who may be suffering mental distress to access licence holder’s firearms for self-harm.
• Providing frontline Police better information about the firearms that may be present at volatile situations they are called to.
• Improving the safety for the victims of family violence, as Police have greater assurance they have removed all the firearms from a domestic violence situation they attend at a home containing lawfully held firearms.
• Improving intelligence across the firearms system helping to identify unusual purchasing patterns that may indicate firearms are being passed into the wrong hands.

How the Firearms Safety Authority will help

To help licence holders fulfil their regulatory obligations, especially recognising that rural New Zealanders may have more limited access to online services, the Firearms Safety Authority will endeavour to provide a range of service offerings.

The Authority will provide reliable online and phone-based mechanisms to assist licence holders to register and update their records when buying, selling and supplying firearms, and will regularly review and update these services so they respond to changing technologies and needs.

Keeping licence holders’ information safe and secure is also critically important. The Authority must take all required steps to ensure its systems and processes are robust and are able to protect the information it is entrusted.

It has cost $10.4 million to establish the Firearms Registry. The estimated ongoing costs associated with the Firearms Registry are outlined in the following table and are within the baseline budget of Te Tari Pūreke (estimates as at Feb, 2025).

We recognise that how we manage and protect personal information is important for maintaining your trust and confidence in us.

Our technology and processes

We have been purposeful in making decisions on how licence holders are able to register their firearms and other arms items. We know it’s significantly more complex to keep paper forms and documents private and secure, so you will not be able to register using a paper form.

Any personal information you provide for the Registry will be held and managed in accordance with the Privacy Act.

The Arms Information System, which supports MyFirearms and the Firearms Registry, has been classified at RESTRICTED under the Protective Security Requirements (PSR). The PSR outlines the Government's expectations for managing staff, physical and information security.

This RESTRICTED classification recognises the potential national security impacts of an unauthorised release of the information held in the Registry. It therefore requires strong protections to safeguard the information from unauthorised access.

This level of classification means we have implemented a range of security controls to help protect the confidentiality and integrity of the information held in the Registry and ensure we can maintain its availability. These are similar controls to what you would see at your bank, and includes things like:

• strong data encryption of all information stored in the Registry
• robust authentication, including two-factor verification
• limits on what data can be accessed by staff in different roles, and what can be accessed via MyFirearms
• maintaining records of what actions are taken in the system, both by Police staff and users of MyFirearms, and processes to review these records for suspicious or unusual activity.

The Arms Information System has been through multiple security assessments by Government approved independent security consultants – the same security professionals regularly conduct these assessments across New Zealand businesses, including banks, telecommunication providers, government departments and insurance companies.

In accordance with the Government’s ‘Cloud First’ policy, we have chosen to use a cloud-hosted service over a traditional ICT system. AIS is hosted by Amazon Web Services in Australia, in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. Its data security and privacy requirements have been assessed against government standards for the use of cloud-hosted services.

Our people

The only people who have access to the Registry are staff who need it to do their jobs. This will include Police and Te Tari Pūreke staff and authorised suppliers.

All our staff with access to the Arms Information System undertake privacy and security training and are bound by employment conditions and/or contractual agreements related to confidentiality. This access is audited and subject to the same professional conduct standards that apply to other Police systems. Audits included both planned activity and randomised checks.

Strict protocols are in place regarding access to the Police network and Police IT systems, and the Registry is no different. All Police staff with access to the Arms Information System must pass Police vetting processes and can only access it using a Police device while on the Police network.