Letters: We all possess a dangerous weapon

Anna Burke-Pohiva, 7, reads messages left by well-wishers outside the mosque on Vermont Rd in Ponsonby. Photo/File.

We all possess a deadly weapon — our brain.

A brain does not need guns to cause mayhem if it snaps or is driven to madness. Banning gun ownership and censorship of what we can share on social media is not the solution.

Telling us that we face 14 years in jail for sharing a genuine news item is clearly out of proportion to the situations where most people might do this.

We should not be intimidated or frightened into surrendering yet more of our rights to a war on terror in which we have little say. Critical thinking and statistics tell us that we have little to fear from the direct effects of terrorism. There is a difference between sensible precaution and fear-driven acceptance of censorship and other loss of hard-won rights.

We should all be aware that after we gave up many of our freedoms and rights after 9/11 that all the problems this was supposed to solve got worse. Let's not make the same mistake here. Perhaps we have more to fear from yet more mistakes by our politicians than we do from the appalling actions of a rare individual whose brain we don't yet understand.

Robin Wakeling
Wellington

Warrant of Fitness

I have been issuing warrants of fitness for over 25 years. The change by NZTA to yearly WoF has contributed to more unsafe vehicles on our roads.

The yearly WoF starting for vehicles from the year 2000 is a mistake and should have been from 2010 on. Many cars from 2000 have travelled 300,000-400,000km, and many are past their use-by date.

NZTA says that "common sense is not very common nowadays". It would appear they follow that example.

The change to yearly WoF should drop the older cars back to six monthly WoF, year by year.

Every week I see cars with safety defects which still have months to run on a 12-month WoF.

John Currie
Rotorua