Napier Mayor Bill Dalton says under-fire firearms store Gun City has every right to open a new store in the city.
Gun City managing director David Tipple confirmed yesterday that his business sold four weapons and ammunition to accused mosque gunman Brenton Tarrant.
Tipple said he and his staff were "dismayed and disgusted" by Friday's shootings but did not feel responsible for the shootings.
The news has cast a shadow over the proposed new Gun City store in Napier, which Dalton doesn't believe is fair.
Dalton does not own guns and said that those who choose to should only have them if they are for a hunting purpose.
"For me personally I wouldn't own a gun because I believe that unless you're a hunter or duck shooter there is no need to have a gun," Dalton said.
Napier councillor Maxine Boag also said that Gun City had a right to open up shop unless the community had an issue with it doing so.
"In my own personal view I don't like guns so I won't go to the store when it comes, but at this stage Gun City is a well-known business and, as a councillor, I work for the community and if the community don't want a gun store to move to Napier then we will look into what we do," Boag said.
Tipple said in a statement released at an earlier press conference: "I and Gun City fully support the Prime Minister's swift and decisive actions following this tragedy.
"We will be fully co-operating with police and government to ensure that any review and changes to legislation prevent a reoccurrence."
TradeMe also announced it has pulled the selling of semi-automatic firearms from its website.
Dalton said that if a new law came out in support of tighter gun laws he would be fully on board with it.
"At the end of the day if a law was proposed to put stricter restrictions on who can buy guns and what guns they can get I will be right behind it."
The owner of a local outdoor retailer, which sells firearms, said the terror attack in Christchurch on Friday was horrific to even think about and that changes will have to be made.
"It was one of the darkest days in New Zealand, just an absolute tragedy," the owner of the business, who did not want his name or business name published, said.
"There will obviously be some drastic changes and so there should be."
He said certain areas in the law needed to be changed to tighten up the availability of some of these guns.
"There are areas in the gun law currently that need to be tightened up and I'm in favour of those and I'm just hoping that the right people are present when that does happen, which means having industry experts who can help make a safe and reasonable decision."
The store owner said there had already been a ripple effect in the industry, but people were not panic-buying guns in Hawke's Bay.
"It has had a huge impact in the industry already. There are just some really upset people, not because of the gun laws being changed. We are just all sickened by what this horrific person did," he said. "He's just evil, really, really evil."