New Zealand will remove police from gun licensing but near-total semiautomatics ban to remain

New Zealand’s government will end the involvement of police officers in regulating gun ownership, an official said Tuesday as she announced sweeping firearms law reforms. The move is intended to ease tensions between the gun regulator and firearms owners, which have been fraught since the agency's creation following a shooting massacre at two New Zealand mosques. The changes unveiled in Wellington by Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee stopped short of what the police union and those bereaved in the Christchurch massacre feared: a reversal of the near-complete ban on semiautomatic firearms passed after the attacker killed 51 Muslims at prayer on March 15, 2019.