These programs can work in the USA to reduce the number of deadly guns, but, there has to be legislation that provides for the safety of the citizen over the gun lobby. If that happens, these measures would work just as well in the USA. I am not sure it would cost anymore either. Let's see, New Zealand is a country of 5 million people and 1.5 million guns. Of those guns 1.5 million guns about 14,300 would be eligible for the buy back. There are many more guns than that in the USA and many more military style weapons.
New Zealand gun ownership is about 3 citizens to 1 gun, in the USA I think it is a 1 to 1 ratio.
September 22, 2018
By Alex Yablon
...The National Firearms Act of 1934 (click here) required owners of fully automatic guns to register the weapons with the federal government. Since 1986, Congress has forbidden gunmakers from producing fully automatic weapons for the civilian market, leaving machine gun aficionados to collect older models, and then register them. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there are roughly 638,000 machine guns in circulation in the United States, a number that includes both assault rifles like the M16 and more novel products, like the Uzi submachine gun....
It is interesting. New Zealand is a far smaller country and has about 2 percent of the number of military style guns compared to the USA. It would be more expensive, about 50 times more expensive if the USA ran a SUCCESSFUL program to remove these deadly weapons from the streets. There is a real incentive to conduct such a program, it saves police lives. If laws were passed to eliminate these weapons the incentive to buy back could be done incrementally over a few years to absorb the cost.
It would mean a major commitment to bring the number of guns on the street down significantly. It would be a good commitment.
Graph (click here)
June 19, 2019
By Charlotte Greenfield
Wellington - New Zealand’s government (click here) on Thursday launched a multimillion-dollar, six-month “buy-back” scheme to compensate owners of powerful but newly banned semi-automatic weapons prohibited in the wake of deadly attacks on two mosques in the Southern city of Christchurch.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Minister of Police Stuart Nash said in a joint emailed statement that NZ$208 million ($135.97 million) had been set aside to compensate owners of the banned semi-automatic firearms up to 95% of the original cost.
They would have until Dec. 20 to hand in their weapons.
“Police have detailed plans in place for the next step, which is the collection of firearms from the community. It will be a huge logistical exercise and is expected to get under way in mid-July,” Nash said.
Parliament passed the gun reform law - the first substantial changes to the country’s gun laws in decades - by a vote of 119 to 1 in April....
