COMMENT: You know I like Stuart Nash. We get him on my Newstalk ZB programme every Wednesday after Annette King retired because we literally went through the entire Labour Party list - and he stood out as the most, normal ,sensible and untainted one of the lot.
But on the gun buyback issue he's in trouble and sadly he's stepped over the line by suggesting National is ignoring the plight of gun violence victims by not carrying on with the support they offered in the initial days after the Christchurch mosque shootings.
The mistake Nash makes (and in reality I doubt it is a mistake, it's more likely a cynical political move designed to score points as opposed to anything else) is that the gun buyback wasn't invented because of what you would call traditional gun violence. It was started as a direct response to a type of event we had never seen in this country.
And in that lies a real fault. The gun buyback will not prevent such an event happening again. Because, as has been laid out for all to see, the people adhering to the gun buyback aren't terrorists, vigilantes, or mass murders. They are regular every day New Zealanders who happen to own a gun.
And the gun violence Nash talks of doesn't actually largely exist in this country. People getting shot because someone else set out to shoot them is extremely rare, always has been. We are statistically not a violent gun society, which if you think about it, makes the gun buyback scheme even more pointless.