While New Zealand is intent on ploughing ahead with new bans on firearms, Magic Talk host Sean Plunket thinks there's a better solution - ban gangs.
Multiple gangs have come under fire for refusing to hand over their guns despite the Government's crackdown, arguing they need them for hunting and protection.
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Plunket says gangs have always given the idea that they're about to turn the corner and stop "raping, burglarising, selling drugs and having guns". Unfortunately, he says they "never will".
"For all the initiatives and all the taxpayer funds that goes to outreach programs and everything else it seems to me the gangs don't change," he says on his Wednesday show.
"'We won't give our guns back. We are happy to ride the train of grief around the Christchurch shootings, and get on TV and be staunch with the Muslim brothers bro, but we're not going to give you our guns back.'"
Late last week a Mongrel Mob leader told Stuff members will not be complying with the law.
"Will gangs get rid of their weapons? No. Because of who we are, we can't guarantee our own safety," Sonny Fatu, president of the Waikato branch of the Mongrel Mob, said.
Plunket says its evidence we need to take action against gangs - including outlawing them.
"I just wonder if it isn't time after 30, 40, 50 years of trying to find a solution to gangs if we just don't say 'let's not have them'," he says.
"I know they're part of a community, they are in some ways a response to socio economic conditions, perhaps to our history, our so-called history of racism.
"But intrinsically underneath it all they're anti-social organisations and the fact they won't give the guns back indicates they're anti-social organisations so maybe it is gangs we need to ban not guns."
Newshub.
