Gun control

Within the last hour, a stand off between a nineteen year old Dunedin man and the Armed Offenders Squad was peacefully concluded. The man had holed himself up in an empty building in the central business district, armed with a flare gun, knife and hammer. We don't yet know why he did this: perhaps he has mental health problems, or is going through some crisis in his personal life. On hearing he'd been apprehended without harm to himself or anyone else, my first thought was one of relief that I live in a country which restricts gun ownership and use. With a firearm, the man could have done irreparable damage.

Irreparable damage is what has been done to the family of Navtej Singh, the Auckland store owner who was shot at close range in the weekend. He died this morning, leaving behind him a wife and three young daughters.

I don't believe that gun advocates are a particularly strong lobby in NZ, but I was disappointed recently with the vocal support received by Garth Gadsby, the so-called 'Sheriff of Ngawi', who was convicted for discharging a firearm with reckless disregard for the safety of others. Gadsby had shot at a carload of teenaged burglars fleeing from his property. His friend told the media, 'No one here is a vigilante. We are hardworking people who are proud of what we have. We have a right to protect our homes.'

When you think about it, the right to protect yourself is a pretty hollow one. Far more valuable is the right to live free from fear of attack in the first place. The pro-gun lobby, particularly in the US, seems to have a kind of stand-off mentality. Assume everyone is a potential danger, and arm yourself accordingly. The way to secure a peaceful life is to be prepared to shoot first. In the wake of the Virginia mass shooting of some months ago, a spokesman for the pro-gun lobby had the bizarre audacity to claim the tragedy as an argument for relaxing gun controls. If the victims had been armed, they could have pumped the shooter full of lead before he had the chance to take out so many innocent victims. People who make this sort of argument stun me: they seem to treat deaths by gun violence like scores notched up on an X-Box game between good guys and bad guys.

The right to protect yourself is often sold to women as a kind of pseudo-feminist empowerment. I've occasionally heard feminists criticised for 'moaning' about rape, victim-mentality style, instead of getting out there and taking self-defence lessons. Terrible examples of this sort of argument can be found on the NRA website (for example, www.nrahq.org/women), where a programme called 'Refuse to be a victim' is advertised thus: 'Experts agree that the single most important step toward ensuring your personal safety is making the decision to refuse to be a victim. That means that you must have an overall personal safety strategy in place before you need it.'

I actually don't want to make myself more proficient at violence, whether through self-defence lessons or gun use – it's something I only ever do with deep reluctance. Having the legal right to shoot someone wouldn't make me feel any safer, not least because it would give others the legal right to shoot me. I find that whole way of thinking repellent. And I'm incredibly relieved that the nineteen year old Dunedin man never had the option of taking a gun, turning in on others or himself, and doing irreparable damage.