Plan for list of stolen antique arms

Press, 22 October 1984, Page 2

Plan for list of stolen antique arms

The New Zealand Antique Arms Association will seek the co-operation of the police in having detailed descriptions of stolen firearms — particularly antique firearms — circulated frequently to all firearms-re-lated sports bodies, organisations, and dealers.

This move was prompted by a report to the association’s annual conference on Saturday from its Auckland branch about stolen firearms which recently found their way into the hands of legitimate buyers in North Auckland. A member of the association had seen the firearms and recognised them as those described in a list of stolen weapons in a recent issue of the association’s magazine.

The problem, said an Auckland delegate, was that antique firearms often had no registration or serial numbers, and thus could not be put on the police computer list. This meant that it could be impossible for a buyer to check whether a particular firearm was stolen.

In the North Auckland case, the stolen items had passed through several hands before going to the two legitimate buyers, who were members of a shooting organisation but not of the Antique Arms Association, he said. Had they seen a copy of the association’s description they might have been able to recognise the weapons as stolen.

A Mid-Canterbury member urged the association to go further, and ask for the help of the police to compile a complete list of all antique firearms reported stolen within the last 20 years. “We know that these weapons are coming back into circulation, often after a gap of 10 years or more,” he said.

The cost of innocently buying a stolen item which subsequently had to be returned to its original owner could be high, he said, and it was very difficult for the buyer to recover his money.

At the same time, it was often impossible to determine whether an item was stolen. He had had the experience of having been “80 per cent certain” that an antique weapon he had acquired was one which had been reported stolen some years earlier, but was unable to prove it. The police “didn’t want to know about it,” he said.