OPINION:
When Jacinda Ardern and Joe Biden sat down, one subject was totally inevitable.
Touring the US in the days after its latest massacre(s), the New Zealand Prime Minister was asked by almost every politician or late-night TV host about gun reform. As far as they were concerned, the March 15, 2019 mosque attacks happened and within days her Government acted. Almost immediately she took steps to get military-style semi-automatics off the streets. To many Americans, it was the sort of common-sense policy-making that seems desperately distant in the United States of Mass Shootings.
Of course, the real story was more complex. At the same time as Ardern was being celebrated by the American left as a heroic bastion of gun reform, Auckland recorded yet another worrying series of public shootings. Police have arrested 19 gang members for firearms and drug offences in relation to the incidents, but over the last few weeks, it has felt like only a matter of time before someone innocent ends up catching a bullet.
In one sense, this spike in gun crime isn't an aberration: 2021 had the highest number of firearms offences in at least the last 15 years. But the events of the last few weeks represent the crossover between two intertwined problems: gangs and guns.