According to Firearm Chronicles
The controversial confiscation of firearms in ammunition in New Zealand is now playing out in court, and attorneys for the New Zealand government made a shocking argument in court on Monday in a challenge to the confiscation of legally-owned ammunition. The Council of Licensed Firearms Owners is suing the government over the fact that, while compensation was provided when residents were ordered to hand over their banned firearms, they were also told to turn in their ammunition without compensation.
Gun owners say that amounts to an illegal taking of property, but the New Zealand government argues that once they’ve banned something, you no longer have any right to keep it.
The Government did not need to compensate people for making them hand over ammunition after the Christchurch mosque attacks, a court has heard.
A High Court justice is this week hearing an argument over gun reform in New Zealand, which not only led to the gun buyback, but also to certain types of ammunition being banned.
The Government “extinguished all property rights of any kind” for gun owners when it brought in gun law reform last year, a court has heard.
In fact, the government attorneys argued that not only did the government not have an obligation to compensate gun owners for their confiscated ammunition, they didn’t need to compensate gun owners for their confiscated firearms as well.
Crown lawyer Austin Powell this morning said the Government’s decision to buy guns back from owners was a choice by Parliament, “because politically is seemed unfair to say to what had been law-abiding firearms owners who had purchased their firearms in good faith that you have to surrender them for destruction”. He said there was no obligation for compensation, because compensation was only required when property was acquired by the Government for a purpose. “If the property is taken for a purpose it is an acquisition and it must be compensated, and in New Zealand law, most often, it is.”