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The same model gun that David Gray used to kill his neighbors in Aramoana was for sale on the day of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
It is for that reason that Tim Ashton, who was a member of the Armed Criminal Squad (AOS) of the police that shot Gray, calls the aftermath of the 1990 massacre in which 13 people died as a “missed opportunity.”
He is not the only one who thinks that.
John Banks was just a few weeks into his role as police minister in the newly elected national government when Gray broke out in his deadly rampage.
He believed that if tougher changes had been made in 1992, the Christchurch terror attacks and the loss of 51 lives could have been avoided.
“I can’t get that out of my mind.”
On November 13, 1990, Gray, who had a fascination for guns and the military, armed himself with semi-automatic weapons, including a .22-caliber Remington Nylon 66 and a Norinco 84 .223, and opened fire on his neighbors in Aramoana. .
Many of the victims were shot multiple times.
Garry Holden (38) was beaten seven times, a brutal attack that was witnessed by his two 11-year-old daughters, Chiquita and Jasmine, and the 9-year-old adopted daughter of his girlfriend Julie-Anne Bryson, Rewa Bryson.
Despite the girls’ efforts to run and hide, Gray found Chiquita and shot her in the arm, the bullet entering her chest and abdomen, with a semi-automatic sports rifle.
He managed to survive, escaping through a back door and past his father’s body.
When Gray found Jasmine and Rewa, he killed them.
He then set the house on fire, meaning the coroner could not determine the cause of the girls’ deaths.
Gray, a 33-year-old unemployed loner, used guns that he legally possessed under the Gun Act of 1983, allowing him to be better armed than the police initially on the scene, Ashton said.
Roughly 28 years later, terrorist Brenton Tarrant entered the Al Noor Mosque and then the Linwood Islamic Center, shooting at those attending Friday’s prayer.
Using semi-automatic weapons, Tarrant, then 29 years old and also unemployed with few close friends, killed 49 people in about 15 minutes.
The death toll, which included fathers, children, husbands, wives and grandparents, rose to 51 in the next few days.
Crown prosecutor Barnaby Hawes told the court during his sentencing that Tarrant had begun formulating a plan years earlier and that his goal was “to inflict as many deaths as possible.”
Ashton said the semi-automatic and assault rifles had no other purpose than to cause massive casualties.
If the 2019 reforms had been in place earlier, Tarrant would not have been able to buy the firearms he used to do just for that.
A former police officer for nearly two decades, Ashton was a member of both the AOS police and the anti-terrorist squad, now called the special tactics group.
He was shot by a criminal and he was one of the AOS members who shot and killed Gray in Aramoana.
Ashton was among those who campaigned for years for stricter regulations after the shooting, but was met with varying degrees of opposition and indifference.
Now a fervent advocate for gun control says more should have been done in his wake.
While the 1992 Gun Amendment Act made some changes to gun laws in response to the Aramoana tragedy, it did not include a ban on military-style semiautomatic machines, even though one was proposed by the Labor Party, so the opposition.
Following the government’s ban on semiautomatic machines after the Christchurch terror attacks, he also insisted on the importance of a national firearms registry.
“If they called the police at my house … I could have 50 firearms, I could have 100, they wouldn’t know.
“I could have sold 99 of them and they wouldn’t know it.”
A second round of reforms was approved earlier this year, including the establishment of an independent entity to take over the licensing and administration of firearms, paving the way for a registry.
But that won’t take effect for a few years.
He is hopeful that the second tranche of reforms will help achieve his ultimate goal.
“All I want to see is New Zealand being a safer place to live.”
So does Mr. Banks, who witnessed some of the carnage first-hand when he visited Aramoana the morning after the massacre.
“I remember the abject fear trapped in the split second of death, etched on the face of a 6-year-old angelic child.”
That 6-year-old boy was Leo Wilson. He died of shock from his gunshot wounds.
Banks led the charge for gun reform in the wake of the Aramoana tragedy, but ultimately had to introduce a watered-down bill after strong opposition from many of his caucus colleagues.
The amendments meant that firearms and ammunition could no longer be purchased by mail without written permission, photos were required for new firearm licenses, lifetime licenses were scrapped in favor of 10-year ones, and the “fit and proper person” criterion introduced for gun owners.
However, an independent review of firearms control in 1997, the Thorp report, found that due to low public compliance with the amendments, the new laws were not effective and “radical” reform was needed.
Banks believes that the changes passed in 2019 after the mosque shootings should have been part of the previous legislation.
The problem in 1992 was the number of rural, agriculture-backed members of his party caucus who were receiving enormous pressure from the rural sector and the gun lobby to fight the strict restrictions, he said.
“The problem I had was that there were multiple layers of pressure from the gun lobby, and the caucus of the rural and provincial New Zealand National Party closed in and charged behind them.
“And consequently, I had no hope for Hades to implement the legislation that we have now.”
Although some reforms were passed at the time, the importation of semi-automatic weapons was not banned, something Banks now regrets.
The gun reform debate after the mosque shooting was so similar to that after Aramoana, he contacted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern “to tell her to stand up and do it,” and she did.
Julie-Anne Tamati (formerly Julie-Anne Bryson) was shot by Gray while rushing to save her daughter Rewa, who was killed, and Rewa’s stepsisters Chiquita and Jasmine.
He has an opinion on guns, but also on how the system treated victims of mass shootings.
At the time of the gun reforms that followed Aramoana, she was in America.
He recalled that arriving at an airport in the United States, where security was armed with assault rifles, meant having to face “great fear.”
While she was in the U.S., officials reached out to her to ask her questions about the planned gun reforms.
“I don’t think all weapons should be banned, but … there is no need for things like AK47 and semi-automatic machine guns,” he said.
He believed it was about regulating the owner more than the gun.
She felt there was a lack of support for survivors at the time and hoped that there would have been changes in that area as well.
“There were times when you needed someone to talk to, not just me, but my family and my extended family, and there was no access for that at the time.”
For Dunedin man Howard Halliday, preventing a tragedy like Aramoana or the mosque shootings comes down to more than just gun control.
In 1990, the 26-year-old was working as a shop assistant at the Centrefire gun store in Dunedin when Gray called to buy ammunition.
When Halliday woke up a few days later to learn that there had been a shooting in Aramoana, he immediately picked up the phone and called the police.
He was worried about Gray, he told them.
“I only came up with one person.
“I asked him how one of his rifles was doing, and he mentioned that he had gone to the beach and shot a seagull. In my opinion, that was very strange behavior.”
Almost a year earlier, Gray had also bought his similar AK47 (Norinco) and a .22 rifle from the store.
Mr. Halliday (56) worked at Centrefire, which has since closed, for 24 years. Now she works with young people who suffer from mental health problems.
While the tighter gun restrictions were positive, he felt that better research and mental health support were important to prevent other tragedies from happening.
“Like all these things, it was not the law, it was a person who was not fit to have a firearm due to his mental illness.
“With David, it turned out that there were several times when he did things that were not appropriate and he never got to the police.”
The stricter laws couldn’t stop someone who really wanted to carry out an attack, he said.
“You can minimize the chances of things happening, but you can’t prevent them from happening.”
However, the retired director of the National Center for Peace and Conflict foundation, Professor Kevin Clements, said that choosing who might be capable of such an act was not foolproof.
There were broader problems.
“It is not so much a mental health problem as it is a social welfare problem.”
One of the challenges of modernity and of a Western capitalist system was that it fostered individualism, competition and alienation, he said.
“When people don’t make it, high levels of detachment and deep loneliness.”
The role of guns in New Zealand’s “hyper-masculinized” culture also played a role.
“Weapons should not be seen or legitimized as extensions of the male ego.”
If military-style semiautomics had been banned after Aramoana, it would have been more difficult for Tarrant to have done what he did, Professor Clements said.
Five days after the March 2019 shootings, Ms. Ardern announced a ban on all military-style assault and semi-automatic rifles.
The next day, most semi-automatic firearms were reclassified as military-style semi-automatic, with exceptions for people involved in pest control.
It followed the creation of a recently banned firearms buyback program, as well as the establishment of limits on the magazine capacity of semi-automatic weapons, a national firearms registry and stricter restrictions on who could obtain a firearms license. fire.
For those who argued that guns weren’t the problem when it came to mass shootings, Banks had a simple message.
“Tell the wife and children of the late Stu Guthrie.”
The pain and guilt have been from mother shadows since the murder of members of his family in Aramoana. Check Monday’s Otago Daily Times for its history and more Aramoana coverage like the 30th anniversary of the massacre is coming.
