Nicole McKee, ex gun lobbyist now Cabinet Minister, on sidelining personal views, disappointing firearms groups

She used to be a lobbyist for firearms licence holders, and is now the minister in charge of gun laws. But Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee has a message for those in the firearms community expecting her to roll back all the post-terror attack law changes: they’re going to be disappointed. She tells senior writer Derek Cheng why.

The first thing Nicole Mckee was going to do when she was put in charge of gun laws was unwind the new regulations around shooting clubs and ranges.

“And then I came in and realised, actually, there are a whole lot of safety measures that we need to keep,” the Associate Justice Minister told the Herald.

“If I was to get rid of it all, there would be issues like no requirement for clubs to have security on premises, and that’s a danger that we can’t stomach. So I’m not just going to repeal it all.”

The former spokesperson for the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners was a vociferous opponent of the changes to gun laws following the Christchurch terror attack in 2019, which saw the banning of military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs), stricter rules on the “fit and proper” test to hold a licence, the establishment of a gun registry, and a set of rules designed to ensure gun clubs and ranges are safe places.

But McKee has, unsurprisingly, been privy to information she never had in her former role, or even when she was an Opposition MP, and it has broadened her perspective.

She doesn’t want to rewrite the Arms Act - which will be reviewed this parliamentary term - based on her personal beliefs. Instead she sees herself as a “conduit” for pulling together everyone’s good ideas into legislation that will survive a change of government - somewhat akin to what former Climate Change Minister James Shaw did with the Zero Carbon Act.

“I’ve got to make sure it’s not my personal views that go forward but rather collective views. Good legislation involves everybody, and bad legislation is usually when somebody goes off and does something by themselves.

“With my background in firearms safety and education, I’m well placed to look at what would be the public safety interest. But I’m never going to be arrogant enough to think that I have the answers to everything. I need to be able to pull on everybody else’s expertise from all different areas to get enduring law.”

Former Colfo spokeswoman Nicole McKee was recruited to stand for the Act Party, and is now the Associate Justice Minister in charge of reviewing the Arms Act. Photo / Mark Mitchell

That means disappointing those among the firearms community who expect her to unwind all the changes to gun laws that followed the 2019 Christchurch terror attack.

“There’ll be people from the firearms group that may not be happy with what the end game looks like, and there will be people from the non-firearms groups that will be in the same situation.

“Finding that balance is going to be difficult. And I expect that I’ll get a fair bit of grief from both sides as I go through the process. I’m not going to keep everyone happy. I can see that already.”

She will also be restricted by coalition politics.

Having recruited McKee into politics, Act campaigned on greater access to MSSAs and scrapping the gun registry, but these didn’t make it into coalition agreements.

Instead the National-Act agreement committed to repealing the regulations around gun clubs and shooting ranges - which McKee has now backed off from doing completely - a review of the registry, a rewrite of the Arms Act, and moving the administrator of the Act to a department other than police.

Deregulating non-pistol ranges

McKee’s proposals for shooting clubs and ranges - obtained by the Herald - are currently out for consultation. They were largely unregulated before the new regulations, which required clubs to have rules for the safe storage and use of firearms, and for ranges to be ballistically safe. There are also mandatory reporting requirements, and hefty $10,000 fines for operating without police approval.

She thinks there is currently too much regulation. The balance she seeks is for some rules to help ensure safety but not so many that clubs and ranges - which educate licence holders on how to use firearms safely - close due to the costs of complying with those rules.

How many have closed so far is impossible to know.

Te Tari Pureke/Firearms Safety Authority says one pistol club was closed for not meeting reporting requirements that existed before the regulatory changes, and one shooting range complex (with four ranges) was shut because it didn’t have the council consents it needed (and claimed to have had) in order to operate.

But the authority only registers a closure if they shut it, and McKee says many have closed voluntarily - but this is only anecdotal.

“I had one guy in tears turn up to a [campaign] event in Hamilton last year, and he told me he was going to the AGM that was going to shut down his club because they don’t have the people or the manpower or the money to be able to do whatever is required of them,” she says.

“The public safety message is actually about keeping these places open rather than having them forced shut because of the inability for compliance.”

Nicole McKee has gone from being a lobbyist for firearms licence holders to the minister in charge of rewriting the Arms Act, sharing the Cabinet table with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / Mark Mitchell

McKee wants pistol clubs and ranges to remain regulated. These are considered higher risk because pistols can be concealed more easily, and are therefore more likely to be used for nefarious purposes.

But she doesn’t think non-pistol ranges need to have police oversight. Instead she wants them to self-regulate, with range standing orders approved by a governing body - and no penalities for non-compliance.

Her proposal document says: “Before 2020, non-pistol ranges were overseen by a governing body, or a parent organisation. Police also issued a Range Manual which provided guidelines for operating a range safely. There was no evidence to suggest that non-pistol ranges were operating unsafely under that system. This may have been as effective, with less overall burden for operators.”

She says this might actually be more effective than the status quo.

“The National Rifle Association of New Zealand, for example, already had a number of volunteers within their community as qualified range certifiers who would go through and certify the ranges. One would arguably offer a higher standard.”

The potential problem is not all clubs and ranges are 100 per cent harmless, nor are all licence holders.

Would governing body oversight with zero consequences for non-compliance be enough to prevent anything harmful from happening? Even if the answer is no, might it be better than the status quo, which has led to the closure of some places that would have otherwise provided a net public safety benefit?

Te Tari Pureke/Firearms Safety Authority says for each of the three recorded injuries since September 2022, range standing orders were either non-existent or not adhered to:

• September 2022: Pistol club. Experienced shooter shot himself in the foot. Issues identified were flawed holster setup and adherence to training and range standing orders.
• October 2022: Black powder shooting on private range, no range standing order in place. Limited disclosure of actual events by patrons. Significant musket ball injury.
• March 2023: Pistol club. Provisional shooter shot himself in the foot. Issues identified were lack of supervision and adherence to training and range standing orders.

The authority has also issued 254 improvement notices to pistol ranges for “non-compliance with range standing orders and ballistic safety issues”. Prior to the regulations, these ranges were self-certifying. A review of non-pistol ranges is ongoing.

Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee with Senior Armourer Terry Quirke, left, and Senior Sergeant Paddy Hannon, inspecting seized illegal firearms after announcing the Firearms Prohibition Orders bill. Photo / Mark Mitchell.

The ‘bad eggs’: a fraction of 1 per cent

“I refer to the firearm owners as being the golden apples in a big barrel, but there’s still some rotten ones among them,” McKee says.

“You’re always going to have rotten apples and police have done an amazing job in finding over 130 of those rotten apples in more recent times, [including] 24 gang members given firearms licences that have been revoked over the last term of Government.”

That’s a tiny fraction of 1 per cent out of 240,000-odd licence holders.

“We can’t treat a quarter of a million people like the 0.04 per cent of bad eggs that are there. What I think we need is to get our clubs, our ranges, our people being the eyes and ears of the community, like they were once before.”

But if something goes horribly wrong, detractors will immediately ask why there weren’t regulations in place that might have prevented it.

“Yeah, they will. But then the question I need to ask is, with the regulation we have in place, would that have stopped it from happening? And some of the things I see in the regulations, the over-burdensome stuff, I think: how is that going to stop a situation like that from happening again?

“There was discussion about [Christchurch mosque shooter] Brenton Tarrant being at a club or a number of clubs, but at the end of the day, he turned up with everything he legally needed to have in order to be on those ranges. I don’t think any of the changes is actually going to make any difference to a person like him turning up with a licence.

“What we need is the ability for people in these clubs and on these ranges to have the confidence to approach police or the administrator when somebody does something wrong or brings alarm.”

Nicole Mckee wants non-pistol shooting ranges to be self-regulating. Photo / Bevan Conley

McKee has also announced a review of the gun registry, with terms of reference including looking at whether the requirements on licence holders are appropriate.

“A lot of people don’t realise that if you have an activating circumstance, you’ve got 30 days in which to register all your firearms, and it’s a $10,000 fine if you don’t do it within that time. And then if you knowingly record something incorrectly in the registry, it’s a $20,000 fine or [up to] two years’ imprisonment.”

This wasn’t scaring licence holders into registering their fireams, she says, but was pushing them into hiding in the corner.

“I’ve got people ringing me up saying they don’t have their firearms in the drop-down menu or ‘I’ve incorrectly entered it, but I have to sign off that everything is correct but I can’t even go in to see whether or not it is correct.’ So people are really worried about the financial implications if they get it wrong. Many people would just go, ‘This is too hard. I’m not going to do it.’

“I’m looking at this thinking: ‘This is doing nothing to take the firearms away from criminals. This is actually just putting a lot of pressure and anxiety on law-abiding people in the hope that maybe we catch a bad apple somewhere.’ And I just think that’s unfair.”

Police, however, see the registry as helping to put the squeeze on the “straw buyer” pipeline: licence holders who legally buy firearms and then sell them to gang members. Police believe this is the main way guns end up on the black market, and the registry is already helping to deter this, and will be more effective in 2028 when the registry is meant to be fully populated.

McKee concedes there are “aspects” of the registry that are good.

“But if the fees are so high that people don’t comply, then you don’t know who they are, you don’t know where they are and you don’t know what [firearms] they’ve got. So from my point of view, it’s better to have it affordable and have people in the system.”

The other concern is the privacy breaches of licence holders’ information, for which the authority has repeatedly apologised.

“I am hearing that almost daily from firearm owners who won’t register,” McKee says.

“The main reason is if that data gets out, they fear for the security of their homes and their families and their property. There’s been six data breaches of firearm owners’ information since 2019. So you can’t blame them for being concerned.

“And if you don’t get the compliance, then of course, it’s not going to be effective anyway. So how do we encourage compliance - that may be looking at what we’re registering - and is it going to be effective in the long run? At the moment, there’s just so much distrust.”

Part of improving that trust is removing Te Tari Pureke/Firearms Safety Authority from police, which is a commitment in the National-Act coalition agreement.

“We have to move it because the trust and confidence is so low. I’m still waiting for advice on what would be the best place.”

McKee is adamant wherever it is moved to, the authority must still be able to share intelligence data with police in real time about, for example, what firearms might be in the house that police are heading to.

“It’s essential that that is preserved, and that frontline police have immediate access to the information they need. Our frontline police have to be protected I don’t want to do anything that will undermine that,” McKee says.

She concedes it’s been a wild ride from Colfo spokesperson to Cabinet Minister in charge of firearms law within five years.

“I hope that at the end of it all, I end up serving the country, not just the firearms owners but everybody, with good firearms law.

“That’s my goal. I hope I get there.”

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.