Abstract
The Ministry of Justice has released a discussion document for the rewrite of the Arms Act 1983. The discussion document sets out a series of questions on almost every element of the Arms Act but makes no concrete proposals for change. It also fails to provide an overall assessment of the effectiveness of individual and multiple combined measures designed to limit the public health harms from firearms.
The Swiss cheese model provides a useful framework to consider firearms policy. Australia implemented new firearms laws in 1996, using multiple defensive layers, and has been
remarkably successful in preventing mass shootings since then. There are synergies between individual firearms policies and they need to be considered collectively. Aotearoa
New Zealand needs to maintain and ideally enhance its current approach, modelled after the successful Australian laws.