Registration of all guns needed, says arms officer | Bay of Plenty News | Local News in Bay of Plenty

The district arms officer says without firearms being registered in New Zealand there is no real control over them.

Paul McLennan, who has been in the role 27 years, said registration of individual firearms - scrapped in New Zealand in 1983 - once kept holders of firearm licences accountable and responsible for their weapons. It also helped identify stolen firearms.

Today, firearms are not registered and there is no restriction on how many firearms a licence holder can own.

"If we had a registration system we could have firearms licence holders accountable for their firearms," said Mr McLennan.

On Thursday morning, the Tauranga armed offenders squad raided a Pyes Pa home where they found 18 firearms or pistols and 2000 rounds of ammunition. The hoard allegedly belonged to David Bryan, 48, who is expected to appear in Tauranga District Court on Monday for a bail application.

Bryan does not hold a firearms licence.

Among the cache found at Bryan's home were two military-style semi-automatic (MSSA) weapons.

The guns require a special endorsement on a firearms licence, brought in after David Gray killed 13 people in Aramoana in 1990.

Mr McLennan said about 200 people across the Western and Eastern Bay of Plenty held licences for MSSAs.

Owners must be over 18 years old and endorsed by police to own or use an MSSA. These firearms are subject to increased security and checks are carried out every one to three years.

"If there's one missing then an inquiry starts," Mr McLennan said.

He said the lethality, look and size of the magazine required for MSSAs meant they were a favourite for illegal gun owners.

He said there were also about six weapon collectors in the district who had large numbers of firearms stored under high security.

He said firearm owners were often reluctant to invest in it, but if security was taken seriously, New Zealand should not have a problem with stolen firearms.

"We're one of the toughest (districts) in New Zealand for security and I think that reflects on the number of firearms we have stolen in burglaries," he said.

Mr McLennan had heard of situations where entire firearm cabinets had been removed during burglaries and opened later.

About 14,000 people in the Western and Eastern Bays hold firearms licences with about 60 new applications from the Western Bay alone, each month.

All applicants are interviewed and vetted by police and complete a lecture and test on the Arms Code, run by the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council, which Mr McLennan said did an "extremely good job".

Their homes are checked to ensure security is provided.

A firearms licence can only be held for 10 years, with licence holders contacted by police when their licence expires.

However, Mr McLennan said one of the biggest problems in firearms licensing was people not notifying police when they changed their address.

The Government scrapped lifetime firearm licences in 1992.

Ten years later nearly 50,000 people failed to respond to a campaign appealing for lifetime gun licence holders to renew or surrender their weapons.