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This gun dealer and ammo manufacturer Paul Clark is skipping straight from soap box to ammo box. The people elected at the ballot box must have something to say about that. At a minimum his contract to supply Police and NZDF with ammo must be reconsidered
Paul Clark's argument is that in a society where law-abiding citizens no longer have recourse tolegal means, they can be forced into illegal means. This is harsh, but basically accurate. HOWEVER. The buyback has provision for gun owners to appeal to court. ...
... And he has said that he intends to avail himself of that appeal process. Godspeed and all power to him and all other gun owners who want to do so. They should give it their best shot. But if the courts find against them, they have one more legal avenue: the 2020 election.
(Or the 2023 election or whatever.) They can vote for a govt that will change the law. Godspeed and all power to them! And if they fail in both avenues, the legitimacy of any armed uprising is zero: they have availed themselves of legal and democratic means, and fallen short
Legal and democratic remedies do not guarantee success; only a fair hearing in what remains, for all its faults, one of the cleanest political and judicial systems in the world. You don't get to start shooting because a call doesn't go your way. That's a coup.
Someone needs to sit down with him and have a word. Because the endgame here is not "freedom-loving irregulars defeat tyrannical state", it's "bipartisan, national state of emergency and permanent disarmament of the entire population". I don't think he wants to push that button.
And yeah, you can have a laugh about how there are 250k gun owners and only 12000 police and 15000 NZDF personnel. But nobody will be laughing when they're deployed in your neighbourhood going house to house because one gun owner in 100 is deranged enough to try it on.
And one more thing: All insurgencies fold without popular civilian support. All of them. Always. So even though gun nuts might think they have the power, they most emphatically do not. We do.
