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Heather du Plessis-Allan: Ban on gun ads is silly

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Fri, 1 Nov 2019, 4:05PM

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Ban on gun ads is silly

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Fri, 1 Nov 2019, 4:05PM

I think we’ve got to the point of actually being unfair on gun owners now.

I know guns are not the flavour of the month in the wake of the March 15 Christchurch attack.

But some of what’s going on now is just silly.

It’s come out today that a media outlet has banned pretty much all firearm-related advertising for the foreseeable future.

The CEO made the call after the Christchurch shooting to reflect the “sense of responsibility” to the “”audience and communities” served, whatever that means.

I don’t have a massive problem with dropping gun advertising, it’s a bit weird that firearms retailers can take out full page ads to advertise guns like Briscoes advertises toasters.

But then, it gets silly.

The ban also prevents ads for things like gun shows. This has been overturned but was also said to include gun club meeting notices like AGMs. You know, where people talk about club finances over tea and scones. That’s ridiculous

This has affected the organiser of the Taranaki gun show who can’t advertise in his local paper, even though the event’s been run for 40 years apparently, even though the cops have approved the event and the cops will be there.

Even though the guns at the event are antiques. which is very different to the military style automatic weapons the country’s banned.

Despite all of that, the show can’t advertise because all guns are a no no.

I think we have to be a bit more grown-up than this.

Not all guns are banned, only MSSAs are.

Guns are not inherently bad things, they’re used for sport, for hunting, for pest control, there are good reasons for Kiwi gun owners to have, buy and sell these things.

This debate is going to be a little heated for a while yet.

The government’s imposing reforms on gun owners that gun owners don’t want and gun owners are pushing back because not all of the government’s ideas are necessarily good.

In fact, it’s possible to argue that Stuart Nash is doing the right thing but doing it very badly.

So this will be a debate for a while, it will be heated for a while, but we can probably handle it a bit better than by imposing bans which just reinforce the idea that guns and gun owners should be vilified completely.

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