American gun control activists looked at New Zealand’s response to the Christchurch massacre with a high degree of awe. They desperately want the United States to follow that lead after the next mass shooting. They would love for our government to swoop in after such an event and snatch away all our guns, but particularly those nasty so-called “assault weapons” that they don’t think we have any business owning.

They applauded Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her quick response, but what really happened was more of a knee-jerk reaction. She responded with liberal reflexes rather than taking the time to look at the situation rationally, and she’s been applauded by gun grabbers for it.

However, one thing we on the pro-gun side said would happen in response seems to have come to pass.

New figures obtained by RNZ show last year had the highest rates of gun crime and deaths involving firearms for nearly 10 years.

But despite that rise, there has not been a corresponding increase in officers taking out or using their guns.

The figures, obtained from police under the Official Information Act, show the rates of gun crime went up in both 2018 and 2019.

Last year, there were 3540 occasions where an offender was found with a gun.

And in both of the last two years, the rate of deadly incidents involving a firearm was the highest it had been since 2009.

The number of guns seized by police is also on the rise, up almost 50 percent on five years earlier at 1263 last year.

You mean banning guns doesn’t actually reduce gun crime?

I’m shocked.

I’m completely and totally shocked.

No, really.

What’s shocking, though, isn’t that this happened. It’s that this happened yet again and anti-gunners are still able to delude themselves into believing that gun control reduces gun crime. It doesn’t. While some of our gun controlled states have low crime, it has a low crime in spite of those laws, not because of them.

It seems like a universal truth that in the immediate aftermath of enacting tough gun control laws, gun crime goes up. That doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you realize that the very people not complying with the law include a large number of criminals who aren’t going to comply with any law. Now, though, they know that their potential targets are less likely to be able to defend themselves. For them, it’s time to step up and get busy because no one can stop them.

Note how the police aren’t using their guns any more than normal? That’s not surprising. After all, the police show up just in time to draw a chalk outline around the body. They don’t prevent crimes so much as respond to them and the criminals know this. They do what they’re going to do and leave before the police show up.

In fact, expect to see still more increases in so-called “gun crime” in New Zealand, at least until some degree of sanity returns and the government there goes back to respecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It’s only too bad that we’re pretty much the only nation with that right preserved in our Constitution. New Zealanders could probably use that right about now.