Hamish Bidwell: Lethal weapons rife in our country

Gunshot scenes such as this are becoming more and more common in New Zealand. Photo / NZME

OPINION:
I'm still getting over the shock of shots being fired into the Thirsty Whale bar and restaurant last year.

Just as I'm chilled to the bone by reports of a man brandishing a firearm at innocent members of the public in Hastings and Havelock North on Sunday.

If I look more broadly, barely a day goes by without news of some kind of gun crime in Auckland.

But, hey, no worries.

Shootings are going the way of the road toll and Covid death figures. We're aware of them, but we overlook them.

After all, we have to. Because the narrative, promulgated by our Prime Minister on a promotional tour of the United States, is that New Zealand has solved gun crime.

There's not a firearm to be seen in our communities and we're safe to go about our daily lives.

Oh sure, maybe there's a bit of gang-on-gang gun violence, but the rest of us are good as gold. We'll never be caught in the crossfire or have some goon pull a gun on us in the street.

Am I being unfair here? Exaggerating for effect maybe? Or is that actually a reasonably accurate precis of the situation?

I had a knife pulled on me once. I was 11.

Some classmates had stolen vegetable knives from home economics, for reasons that escaped me.

Hamish Bidwell.

They were all would-be tough guys and gals and no doubt needed them for something.

A girl (they were all stauncher than the boys where I went to school) came up behind me at my desk while we were working, pressed the tip of the knife to my Adam's apple and said she'd cut my throat if I told the teacher.

I eventually did, was seen doing so by the wrong person and then too frightened to go to school for a couple of days.

Actually, it wasn't hard to pretend I was too sick to go to school, because the fear was making me vomit.

But that was a knife. In my braver moments I reasoned that I'd maybe survive okay if push ever came to shove.

A gun, though? Guns are no good. I don't know how long it would take me to leave the house again if someone pointed one of those at me.

We had guns in one of our flats at university. Not that I knew.

It wasn't until a firearms inspector turned up one day and I realised four of my flatmates had guns in lockers, bolted to the floor. I mean I knew they went duck shooting every year, but I was too dim to put two and two together.

But these aren't the folk holding up motorists or firing into crowded bars.

We can pat ourselves on the back all we like about gun legislation and buy-backs, but lethal weapons are out there and they're being discharged in increasingly brazen fashion.

But we pretend like they're not and we tell ourselves we'll be all right, just as we think we'll never be in a fatal car accident.

For now, it's shots fired and near misses, but we won't stay lucky forever.