BYBRENDAN COLE
@brendanmarkcoleGUN CONTROL“The Church has no reason to fear history.” » P.
NEWSWEEK.COM 11
Recoiling
from
Gun Control
New Zealanders were united in wanting to toughen
their country’s gun laws after the 2019 Christchurch shooting.
A year later, however, the momentum has fadedDouglas High School in Parkland, Florida, said: “It
took just days there to do something that in Amer-
ica we have been working on my entire life.”
Within a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
announced that all military-style semi-automatic
and assault rifles would be banned. On April 10,
every lawmaker in New Zealand’s parliament bar
one, voted for the first of two rounds of changes
to the country’s gun laws, which banned semi-au-
tomatic firearms, magazines and parts. In June,
a six-month amnesty and buyback scheme was
announced as was a second round of legislation
that includes a gun registry intended to let police
keep tabs on all of the estimated 1.
million weapons in the country.
Philippa Yasbek, co-founder
of lobbying group Gun Control
NZ, says, “Obviously no buyback is
going to get every firearm out of theon march 15, 2019, a gunman walked into
two Muslim places of worship in Christ-
church, New Zealand, and shot 51 people dead.
He started at the Al Noor Mosque, continued
to the Linwood Islamic Center and was merci-
less; the youngest of his victims was 3 years old,
the oldest 77. Forty-nine people were injured.
Police found five guns at the scene—two semi-au-
tomatic weapons, two shotguns and a lever-action
firearm. The alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant, a
28-year-old Australian, had acquired a New Zea-
land gun license in November 2017, and had col-
lected these weapons legally.
New Zealand’s political response
was swift. Briana Spainhour, 20,
regional organizing director for the
student-led March for Our Lives
movement formed in the wake of
6($1/$':(//ʔ(77< 7235,+7 %(770$11ʔ(77<the killings at Marjory Stoneman