Leadership, New Zealand Style

Three months ago a crazed gunman opened fire in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the aftermath the international leftist press drooled all over New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Not only was she the mother of a newborn-- which child she was obviously neglecting-- but she showed solidarity with oppressed peoples by donning a hijab, an instrument of female oppression. You recall that Iranian feminists were horrified at her pathetic attempt at virtue signalling.

Better yet, Ardern fulfilled the wet dreams of all left thinking Westerners by sponsoring a law designed to remove certain firearms from the hands of New Zealand citizens. Nothing quite like an empty gesture to gin up international support.

Anyway, gun confiscation was the order of the day in New Zealand. Legislators quickly turned the policy into law. They mandated that gun owners should hand in their weapons, in exchange for monetary compensation.

The result: nothing happened. Most New Zealanders simply ignored the law.

Now, there’s real leadership for you. An empty gesture that no one follows. Someone ought to explain that a great leader inspires people to follow. If others do not, then the leader is in it for the drama.

Zero Hedge has the story:

New Zealand politicians who rushed to enact nationwide gun confiscation following the Christchurch mosque massacres are befuddled by the lack of enthusiasm from citizens who have yet to comply with the new law. The so-called “gun reform” was expected to rid the vast New Zealand countryside of most semi-automatic firearms, magazines over a specified limit, and shotguns.

Two months ago, Reuters breathlessly reported, “New Zealand police expect tens of thousands of firearms to be surrendered by a guns buy-back scheme.” Law enforcement authorities averred that “it could be more.” Pregnant with the expectation that gun owners would trade their firearms for cash, the political class is nonplussed by the results.

Only 530 guns have thus far been turned in to the authorities.

Apparently, New Zealand has massive numbers of farmers, and even more massive numbers of sheep. As you know, the nation has more sheep than people… which probably explains it all.

These people are likely the NZ version of “deplorables,” who strike quite a contrast to left-leaning urban dwellers. New Zealand’s political chatelaine, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, had an almost unanimous parliamentary vote to institute the gun buy-back, though as Liberty Nation Legal Affairs Editor Scott Cosenza asserts, “Buy-back is really a misnomer because the government never owned those guns in the first place.”