 The Huddle with paperplusoffice.co.nz. Your local office supplies specialist now open for business. On the Huddle this evening, Jock Anderson from the NBR. Hello Jock, and I'm very well. Cameron Slater from Whale Oil and editor of The Truth will be joining us in just a moment. So Jock, first to you, off the back of the massacre in the United States in Connecticut. Calls for tougher gun controls. One Democrat has already drafted a bill. In fact, I think there's a couple of bills being drafted. One is to limit the clips of the magazines to a maximum of 10 bullets. Another one is allowing teachers to carry a gun inside school grounds. Anyway, essentially the target is semi-automatic weapons. How do you see this, Jock? Well, what you have to remember with this, and not taking anything away from the tragedy, of course, is that American gun law and gun ownership and gun control is completely different to what we have here. But they have it enshrined in their constitution. Largely they are entitled to hold firearms for one of the primary reasons. It's for self-defense. No, we don't have that, of course, in New Zealand. Now, it would seem to me that no amount of actual legislation or playing around with the size of magazines and whether you can fire 10 rounds in half a minute or whatever, none of that is going to change in any way a nutcase who is completely determined to get his hands on firearms and go and create lethal mayhem, as these people do from time to time in the States and elsewhere. It's interesting from what we've heard that his mother was either a shooter or was a survivalist or whatever on earth she was, but he obviously had easy access to firearms. So, I mean, this is one of those cases where you're never going to stop this, no matter what you do. I think you have to make a distinction between legally held firearms and illegally obtained firearms. Yeah, and I take your point about the right to bear arms, the second amendment. I think that's important. Clinton, he actually banned certain types of semi-automatic weapons, but that actually lapsed 10 years later, I think it was 2004. Anyway, Cameron Slater from Whale Oil and the editor of The Truth is with us. What is your take on the calls now coming for tougher gun controls? It doesn't affect us because we don't live in the United States, I suppose, Cameron, but what's your take on this? Obama is sitting there saying that he's going to do something. He promised to do that in 2008 when he was first elected. He didn't do anything. In fact, what Obama has done since he took over has solved more guns than anybody else. He's touted as the world's best gun salesman because of the result of what he's saying. But he's also impotent because the gun laws are controlled by the states, the federal government. And so he can't do anything. And I agree with what Jock said before. The issue is not that guns are causing these problems. The issue is much deeper than that. And I blogged on that earlier today. And what we're seeing is, in actual fact, is the gun culture that they talk about is actually a lower incidence now of guns than there has ever been in the United States. But we're seeing these mass murders and these killings. But what we do see across the United States is a massive increase in prescription medicines for depression and for mental illness. And I think that's where you've got to focus the issues, not on firearms. In actual fact, the teachers in this case, the firearms, and it's unlikely so many would have been involved. But see, I don't understand, Jock. Why do you need an assault weapon that can spray 34 bullets in a nanosecond? What's the point of that? I think this is a misnomer. People talk about assault weapons and black rifles. These are perfectly legitimate military firearms. The point is, the large numbers of people all over the world who are either ex-military or still in the military or in law enforcement or whatever, who know these firearms and actually enjoy shooting them in competitions. Here in New Zealand, we've got a service rifle association, which obviously started off in the old days with Bolt-Action 303s. But our service rifles have improved and become more sophisticated over the years to include self-loading rifles, semi-automatic rifles, etc. People enjoy shooting these in a safe, competitive way. No, they should not be stopped or prevented or stoned in the street for doing that because they are seen as assault rifles or that are somehow any worse or badder than a conventional Bolt-Action rifle. We'll come back in just a moment. Jock Anderson and Cameron Slater on the huddle. It's coming up 13 to 6. Back on the huddle with Jock Anderson and Cameron Slater. Just let's stay with this topic, Cameron, if we can. So Jock says effectively, if I take him correctly, says it's okay to have a machine gun because we're going to do some target shooting with. You know, a machine gun, for goodness sake. A machine gun, Larry. Well, hold on. Look, one of these children had as many as 11 shots fired into them and, you know, just a nanosecond, a few seconds. What is the point? The right to bear arms is fine. In fact, we have the right to bear arms. We can go get a license and buy a rifle if we want to. No correction, Larry. You don't have the right, not in New Zealand. I can go and buy a gun, Jock. It's a privilege in use and not a right. Yeah, but I can't, I understand that. Yeah, but I can. Only if you're deemed to be a fit and proper person. Oh, well, that might be a problem. Yeah, you did right. The other thing too is, in Connecticut, they have the fifth toughest gun laws in the United States. That's true. In fact, this kid, by having those two firearms, he's not a kid, he's 20, but having those two pistols was actually breaking the law because the permit regime in place in Connecticut says that you're not allowed to have a permit to carry a pistol at 21. Now, I heard Blayton this morning saying, oh, you know, well, what about locking these up? He shot his mother. You know, do you don't think he couldn't have found the keys to the gun safe, even if they were locked up? I mean, there's a lot, it's not guns that are the problem. It's failing in the mental health situation in the United States by plying people with drugs that have horrible side effects, unless you've actually been on those drugs and actually know what it's like. It's very hard to comment on it. Well, yeah, but I don't know whether this kid was on drugs, was he? He will have been. Will he? I'll tell you right now, he will have been. Isn't one thing a fact here though, Jock. These massacre type shootings in the United States and the rest of the world are becoming too regular. Yes, they are. And I mean, there's something in what Cam says. There are lots of disturbed people and there are probably a lot more disturbed people, not necessarily young people, but there are a lot of disturbed young people around. I mean, for argument's sake, that's not good off in a tangent, but look at the youth suicide rate in New Zealand, which is extremely high. A lot of these people are very disturbed. If you're a disturbed person and you've got a mum who's got guns and you know where the guns are and you can get into the cabinet, they might not be locked up. If you're going to go off your tree, you've got the stuff right there in front of you. But the thing is too, Jock, this does not mean that the millions and millions of legal firearms owners in the world are going to do the same. They're not going to do that. And the other thing too is if you're going to go on a rampage like this, you're going to want to do it in some place where you're not going to get shot at back. And the problem is that there is a federal law in place that says you're not allowed to have firearms in schools. Now, some states have overridden that and challenged it. And a good place example of that is Montana. And Montana, in each classroom, the teachers are actually given lockboxes, have handguns in the classrooms. They're in the libraries. They're drilled on if people come into those schools in those areas with them. But the problem is no one's actually going to do that because there's a really good chance you're going to get stopped really quickly. Thank you so much. That is Cameron Slater and Jock Anderson on the Haddle Murray Digger to follow. It's now eight to six.