We can be like the US, or pass common sense laws

New Zealand can pass common sense laws to make sure it is more difficult for an event like the Christchurch terrorist attack to happen again, writes Dr Kate Prickett, director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children in the School of Government.

In January, my colleagues and I published new research showing that Americans' increasing love of handguns was partially responsible for the rising rate of firearm-related fatalities among toddlers. We posed a solution: if parents have firearms in the home, why not keep them locked up so their kids can't get them? This research was met with vitriol … from New Zealanders.

This research on handguns and toddler deaths was published a week after my family and I resettled in Wellington after many years abroad. As a New Zealand researcher in the United States, my work focused on children's health. Firearms are one of the leading causes of injury-related death among American children, so understanding why they were dying from preventable causes was an obvious thing to investigate. The study generated a lot of international interest, so, understandably, New Zealand media outlets also picked up the story about the Kiwi researcher studying guns in the US.

Journalists asked what these findings meant for Kiwi families, given gun violence isn't seen as a problem here and pistols are harder to obtain. I happened to mention that New Zealand has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the developed world. The response was electric. I received a dozen emails from many disgruntled Kiwi men (or people who identified themselves with male names). Angry I had said New Zealand has lax gun laws. Livid I was making Kiwis afraid of guns. Accusing me of jumping on a bandwagon akin to liberal virtue signalling.

Trying to understand the response, I went down a rabbit hole of New Zealand gun advocate Facebook groups. What I found was alarming. Facebook users were adopting a rhetoric similar to what is commonly observed in the US. Despite being under a different jurisdiction, people were talking about the second amendment (a feature of the US Constitution and not a governing document of New Zealand).

They were discussing the natural "human right" to own firearms and dissecting every minutiae in policy through the lens of a political conspiracy to limit free access to guns, such that any political discussion on firearm safety (eg, implementation of a gun registry or changes in which guns could be used by different graded-levels of licence-holders) was a slippery slope to a socialist-led agenda to disarm all New Zealanders. Finally, there were many defamatory comments about me and my work and remarks tying this work to a grander conspiracy, saying I'm funded by George Soros, a US philanthropist whose name has become synonymous with a "deep state" progressive agenda among US right-wing extremists.

This 'us' against 'them' tribal mentality, and the equation that any movement towards tighter firearm regulations and safety measures is part of a broader effort to completely eliminate guns, is a threat to real and sensible policy. In the real world, laws should be responding, as technology, people and the world around us change. And if one side of this discussion starts at "from my cold, dead hands", it leaves little room for serious discussion around what can be done to identify when someone is, perhaps, gathering a small armoury of dangerous weapons in a short period of time, as in the case of the terrorist in Christchurch.

The political response to Friday's terrible shooting, however, has been nothing like the US. Within days of the Christchurch massacre, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced there would be policy change, and all political parties - with varying degrees of enthusiasm - indicated their support for change. New Zealand has shown you can be completely overwhelmed by grief, show immense respect for those killed and those still suffering, and simultaneously call for action.

While the National Rifle Association (NRA) has a stranglehold on US political will for sensible gun laws, the next few weeks will be a test of whether the online rhetoric in New Zealand reflects the strength of the gun lobby here. As our politicians turn to address the events of Friday, New Zealand has a choice: be like the US or show we're better than the rhetoric, that democracy is stronger than the gun lobby, and that we can pass common sense laws to make sure it is more difficult for this to ever happen again.

Read the original article on Stuff.co.nz.