Just six days after the horrific Christchurch mass shooting that left 50 people dead and dozens more injured at two different mosques, the New Zealand government has taken steps to ban the sale of semi-automatic and assault rifles.
According to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the ban will be followed by official legislation that will be introduced prior to Thursday, April 11.
Additionally, the ban will include high-capacity magazines and bump stocks, an attachment that makes rifles faster and have become a point of controversy in the United States.
Prime Minister Ardern said that “every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country.”
“It’s about all of us, it’s in the national interest and it’s about safety,” Arden continued.
The New York Times reports that Ardern is expected to encounter “little resistance” to the proposed ban in Parliament as the largest opposition party “quickly said it supported the measures.”
Additionally, Prime Minister Ardern announced that the New Zealand government would be initiating buy-back programs for the banned guns.
For comparison, according to Michael Skolnik, there have been 1981 mass shootings in the United States since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, and the United States government has yet to pass a single new law to limit the sales of these weapons.
In the year 2018 alone, there were over 340 mass shooting incidents in the United States.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting is defined as four or more people being shot or killed in the same general time and location.
That is all the information that is available at this time. This article will be updated with new and relevant information should it become available at any time. If there is anything that we missed, please feel free to send an email to editor@teamcoed.com and we will respond as soon as possible.
