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Gun control in New Zealand: People need to stop the misleading rhetoric.

After the horrific events in Christchurch, it’s time to pick up the pieces but there are people with an agenda who seek to twist the narrative.

Michelle Steele
5 min readOct 21, 2019
ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF
 Police officer Constable Michelle Evans in hijab with a rifle and rose outside Christchurch Memorial Pa
Image credit: Alden Williams/stuff.co.nz

I’m based in Christchurch in New Zealand and on the 15th March of this year, New Zealand got its first taste (since the 1990 Aramoana massacre) of a mass shooting event when a murderous idiot, armed with illegally modified assault weapons and a twisted ideology, opened fire on innocent men, women, and children who were peacefully assembled to practice their religion.

The shooter killed 51 unarmed people in an awful attempt to advance his views on how dangerous immigrants were to New Zealand society whilst neglecting to acknowledge that he was an immigrant himself. It’s an act that will leave a raw wound across the New Zealand psyche and damaged the assumed safety in a country that has long been acknowledged as one of the safest in the world.

This awful event also placed NZ gun control legislation front and center with an unparalleled urgency. For the last 30 years, successive governments had the option to investigate further gun control measures (the last change was made in 1992). In 1997, a study was commissioned by the NZ government…

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Michelle Steele
Michelle Steele

Written by Michelle Steele

Writing for the love of it. A puntastic atheist, an awful cook, an amateur scientist. A noob on Medium but an expert on Quora.

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