On Friday 17 July Radio NZ asked Te Tari Pūreke - Firearms Safety Authority to respond to this comment from Hugh Devereux-Mack from the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners:

"Police have had a very rapidly declining trust and confidence with the community they're supposed to be regulating ever since 2019, when they stopped looking at licensed firearms owners as law-abiding people and started viewing us as potential criminals. So that's when it started. Since then, we've seen stand over and bullying tactics from them, licensed firearms owners having their houses raided for non-criminal reasons, and now rather than a community policing approach, which they used to have, they will now attend our homes armed with pistols by default as a general policy. So that's really just broken down the entire situation. They've also been found to try and exert their influence over lawmakers to make laws more restrictive on law-abiding people without any evidence to back up why that would actually improve public safety."

We provided the following reply, attributable to Superintendent Bruce Bird, Acting Director of Te Tari Pūreke – Firearms Safety Authority:

Since late 2022, Te Tari Pūreke - Firearms Safety Authority has had oversight for lawfully held firearms in New Zealand. As a separately branded business unit of NZ Police, we have worked hard and in close consultation with the firearms community to deliver effective regulatory services and to build enduring, high-trust relationships.

I’m extremely proud of what Te Tari Pūreke has achieved and our people come to work every day committed to making New Zealand a safer place.

We have open and normally constructive channels of dialogue with the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners (COLFO) leadership. We are incredibly disappointed to see such an inflammatory position being taken by them here. COLFO as a lobby organisation has a membership of less than five percent of New Zealand’s 220,000 firearms licence holders. 

Annually COLFO ask their members through a Facebook page to fill in a non-scientific questionnaire that invariably reaches the same conclusion, that there should be less regulatory oversight of firearms in New Zealand, and that the Police should not be the regulator. We understand this to be the evidential basis of their comments.

Te Tari Pūreke baselined trust in the regulator with a survey of both the public and licence holder community first carried out in 2022. Just 18 months after launching as a dedicated firearms regulator Te Tari Pūreke recorded a big shift in trust and confidence in its work from the firearms community.  The follow-up survey released in June 2024 showed more than two-thirds (68%) of licence holders had trust and confidence in Te Tari Pūreke's management of firearms licensing (up from 42% in 2022); and 65% of licence holders had confidence in Te Tari Pūreke being effective in controlling the safe use and possession of firearms (up from 45% in 2022).              

That survey also measured the wider public’s trust and confidence. Results confirmed the levels of trust held by the wider public had been maintained, with around two-thirds (64%) of the public continuing to have confidence in the way Te Tari Pūreke controls the safe use and possession of firearms in New Zealand (2022: 65%); and 65% had confidence in the way Te Tari Pūreke manages firearms licensing (2022: 67%). 

Such results are consistent with the interactions Te Tari Pūreke people have with licence holders on an almost daily basis through our engagement across New Zealand at places like A and P shows, community events, and our interactions with licence holders at the opening duck season and across the Roar hunting season.

Our view is that the overwhelming majority of firearms licence holders in New Zealand are law-abiding. We seek to work with them, to ensure they understand their obligations around the safe storage, transportation and use of firearms – to keep all New Zealanders safe. 

From time to time a small number of licence holders are identified as no-longer being fit and proper to possess a firearms licence. For example, they may have been involved in criminal offending, or domestic violence, or be suffering from a psychological challenge, and it is no longer appropriate that they have access to firearms. In these circumstances, we make no apologies for fulfilling our role as the regulator to uplift their licences and their firearms. The wider public of New Zealand would expect nothing less from us.