A popular children’s toy converted into a gun and 3D printed weapons are among the thousands of firearms seized by Canterbury police, with figures suggesting officers are confiscating several guns a day in the district.
1News was granted exclusive access to the police armoury and spoke to Canterbury District Commander Superintendent Tony Hill. In the past four years, more than 3000 guns have been seized by police in the district or an average more than two a day.
Fifty-one have taken off the streets in the first six weeks of the year.
The firearms in the armoury came from a number of sources, including search warrants, vehicle stops and investigations where they are kept for evidence.
Around 1500 firearms are present in the facility. Many will be destroyed, as ordered by the courts, while others will be returned to their rightful owners
Firearms were generally carried to protect people from other offenders, he said.
“They are not carried with the intent of being used against our staff, but still our staff find those events intimidating especially when they stop a car and find offenders with firearms.”
One case involved a Nerf gun allegedly altered to create an illegal firearm, with Hill describing the incident as “particularly scary”.
“That’s particularly scary when you see things like that – when they’ve managed to adapt something that does look like a kids gun, and I worry about the circumstances that would present – but by in large that is pretty rare.”
He said police were also seeing more 3D printed weapons on the streets, though overall numbers remained small relative to traditional guns.
Experts had also raised concerns about the role of the internet in producing weapons.
NetSafe chief safety officer Sean Lyons said online blueprints and instructions could sometimes encourage the creation of more dangerous firearms then initially intended.
“There are people on the internet that might say they know about to produce something, but actually what they are giving instructions on is how to produce something even more dangerous than they were planning to.
“For all sorts of reasons, it’s definitely a concern.”
Classification Office chief censor Caroline Flora said “instructions and blueprints that encourage and promote a user to commit a crime could potentially be classified as objectionable under the Classification Act”, meaning it is illegal to possess or distribute.
However, no instructions or blueprints for 3D printed weapons had been classified as such in New Zealand yet, she said.
“Nothing has been submitted to us at the Classification Office yet, but we’re aware of publications from overseas that have been dealt with as well.”
