By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Sixty-two New Zealand gun owners had their firearm licenses revoked, not for anything they said or did, but for what they allegedly believed.
The 62 licensees must now surrender their firearms. None were ever charged with a crime. Instead, New Zealand government officials accused them – and more than a thousand others who did not own firearms – of being “under the influence of sovereign citizen ideologies,” which stress the illegitimacy of the national government.
These types of anti-government beliefs, according to the New Zealand newspaper Waikato Times, violate the “fit and proper person” clause as defined by New Zealand law, which is a requirement for anyone who applies for or possesses a firearm license.
The New Zealanders who allegedly harbored anti-government views were discovered though a national intelligence operation known as “Operation Belfast,” which targeted ordinary citizens and was orchestrated by New Zealand police.
Officials took the guns based solely on what the licensees may have believed.
For law-abiding American gun owners, the Kiwis’ plight should serve as a stark reminder of the dangers of firearm registration, especially when coupled with a government that doesn’t care about an individual’s inherent rights, such as the right of their citizens to defend themselves and their families.
Vice President Kamala Harris has praised Australian gun control, which is somewhat more restrictive than that of New Zealand. Australia’s “mandatory buyback” netted more than 700,000 individual firearms. Harris has repeatedly called for a “mandatory buyback” of American firearms, which is nothing more than forced confiscation by armed government agents. However, in order for Harris’ confiscation plan to work, it would have to be preceded by national registration of the firearms she finds objectionable, namely ARs, AKs and other extremely popular semi-automatics.
“I support a mandatory buyback program,” Harris has said during numerous interviews.
Other comments show she is not concerned about time-honored constitutional protections that shield law-abiding Americans from government intrusion and overreach.
“Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs,” she has said.
George Orwell, in his dystopian classic “1984,” defined thoughtcrimes as thinking in ways the ruling party does not approve.
He was only off by 40 years.
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