The Act Party is claiming a victory for duck shooters, days after it said it would take legal action against the government's ammunition bans.
"The police have acknowledged, after five days of denial, that the Ministerial Order our lawyers warned would ban steel shot ammunition would be 'clarified' (i.e. changed) to specifically exclude shotgun ammunition," Party leader David Seymour said last week.
"Of course, no one seriously thought the government intended to ban shotgun cartridges, but that was the result of how poorly they have managed this whole process and how sloppy they had been in drafting the law.
"The police issuing a press release clarifying that they did not intend to enforce the Arms (Prohibited Ammunition) Order as prohibiting steel shot in shotgun cartridges is a win for duck hunters, but it's a sad state of affairs when the laws are so ambiguous they have to do it this way."
The police had claimed it was wrong to interpret the law as banning steel shot in shotgun shells, because shotgun cartridges were specifically excluded from the prohibition order, but that was demonstrably untrue, he added.