The Washington Post:

New Zealand’s gun lobby shares many of its goals with the United States’ National Rifle Association, the world’s biggest gun lobby organization, which supports aligned politicians financially and uses social media to attack its opponents. Some of the NRA’s frequent arguments may also apply in New Zealand, with an estimated quarter of a million gun owners in a country of only 5 million people.

[ … ]

But unlike the NRA, New Zealand’s interest groups have predominantly lobbied the government quietly, rather than threatening politicians with the scorn of their powerful voter base. The perceived silence of those lobbying organizations led to some calls from gun enthusiasts for a bolder and more vocal stance. New Zealand’s gun lobbies were probably well aware, however, that they are not the NRA and never will be, despite the aspirations of some of their members.

The country’s lobby mainly represents a core of rural supporters, whereas more than 86 percent of New Zealanders now live in urban areas and form a largely liberal majority. In the United States, the ratio of citizens living in urban areas is slightly lower. More important, however, the U.S. system of representation and the way congressional districts are drawn increase the significance of rural Republican voters disproportionately. That helps explain why the NRA can pressure politicians into following its demands, even though NRA supporters account for only a fraction of all U.S. voters.

[ … ]

“Our form of government, with a Senate that gives extraordinary power to rural states over urban states and is deferential to states’ rights, makes it difficult to advance relatively modest gun-control measures, much less more sweeping measures,” said Webster, the gun policy expert.

In contrast, New Zealand’s election system is designed in a way that the number of lawmakers a party has in Parliament is aligned with its share among all votes cast. The mixed member proportional voting system — which is also in place in countries such as Germany — is supposed to prevent small interest groups from being able to gain disproportionate influence over lawmakers. To pass legislation, only a simple majority is needed.

This is what happens when writers who have no knowledge of American culture consult with “gun experts” (i.e., progressive gun controllers) for analysis and perspective (take a quick look at their creds, they’ve likely never set foot in middle America among the “great unwashed masses”).  The entire article turns out to be a joke.  So let’s spend a few minutes fisking this, shall we?

First, we learn this from WiscoDave at Kenny’s place about what is going on in New Zealand.

My brother is a plumber in NZ he said a lot of work sites have come to a grinding halt because they can’t buy PVC pipe. ….he said NZ is basically burying their guns and gun City is running low on stock of semi autos.

It isn’t obvious whether there will be turn-ins, confiscations, or massive non-compliance.  We’ll wait and see.

Next, it’s the bad ole’ electoral system that’s at fault.  It can’t be the millions upon millions of AR-15 owners out there whom the FedGov knows will not comply with such a thing, nor the hundreds of millions of pistol owners who will do the same.  No, it’s the electoral system which is at fault.  Without it, according to the authors, we would have gun control on par with the rest of the world because that’s what people really want.

Third, notice the ubiquitous meme of the evils of the NRA, awful bullies they are, and how they can allegedly turn on their members like a light switch.  What’s not mentioned by these authors is that the NRA is losing membership, but gun owners are hardening their positions while the NRA tries to catch up.

Among educated readers here at TCJ, the NRA is known not as the largest gun rights organization on earth, but as the largest, most well-funded, most well-connected gun control organization on earth, having given cover or impetus for the National Firearms Act, The Gun Control Act of 1968, the bump stock ban and red flag laws popping up all over the nation.  It’s a game they play, you see, where they support gun control, tell their members they need money to fight it, and enrich themselves in the process.  But American gun owners, many of them, are no longer falling for it.  Thus, everyone whose address is known by the NRA is receiving ever more frantic calls for money from Chris and Wayne.  It’s sad, really.

What the authors don’t understand is that gun owners are not a top-down kind of people.  They don’t wait for “leaders” to tell them what to think like the statists do.

And that’s why New Zealand gun control won’t work in America (and may not work in New Zealand either).  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the electoral system, nor the NRA, nor any of the other bits of “wisdom” imparted to these authors by the “gun experts.”

American gun owners won’t comply.  And that’s the end of the story right there.  It’s really rather simple, and I could have boiled this all down to that single sentence.  The authors were probably paid by the word for that story.  In the future, journalism classes should force their students to go live somewhere other than Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Duke or NYU.  They need some perspective from someone other than their Marxist professors.

American gun owners won’t comply because they know the history of people who turn in their guns.  It always means loss of rights, and sometimes it means loss of life (It’s funny how someone who knows a lot more than these two authors, like Dave Kopel, can write such a clear-headed commentary for the very same news organization, The Washington Post, yes?).  Gun control always precedes utter totalitarianism.