Following the shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, the country initiated a ban on AR-15 rifles among other new gun control rules. The government is continuing to push for more gun regulations and will continue to do so until New Zealanders rally together to stand against such idiotic measures.

However, what has happened already is enough. It’s enough for American gun control advocates to ask why they can’t do the same thing. They look at countries like Australia and New Zealand and ask, “Why can’t we do what New Zealand did?”

For one thing, the New Zealand government is structured quite differently. It functions in such a way that it’s easy to get a majority and push through new legislation, something we don’t have here and damn well shouldn’t want.

For another, our societies are quite different. In fact, New Zealand is currently facing the fact that police officers may have to be armed all the time while on the job.

The president of the Police Association says it’s only a matter of time until police carry guns at all times.

His comment comes as police search for a man in the central North Island who allegedly pulled a gun on two officers and stole their car on Saturday night.

Chris Cahill says the incident highlights the risk that many officers face.

“It’s pretty scary and it’s just an add-on to so many others we’ve had,” he told the AM Show on Monday.

Cahill says that in the six months since March this year, there have been 179 incidents where criminals have pointed a gun at either an officer or a member of the public.

“It’s a bit more common than a lot of us realise,” he says.

“It continues to be a big concern in New Zealand – there’s just far too many firearms in the hands of criminals.”

Cahill says around 72 percent of frontline officers in his association support being armed at all times.

Now, let’s put a few things in perspective here. For one, the population of New Zealand is about 4.8 million. That’s a little more than half the population of New York City and only a million more than Los Angeles.

If I said there were 179 times in a six-month point when officers in either place were faced with armed individuals, you’d shrug and maybe ask if it’s a slow year. Same with Chicago, where there were 561 murders in 2018 with a population of 2.7 million.

The idea of 179 incidents of officers facing armed suspects is hardly a stretch, a drop in the bucket if you looked at it on a per capita basis.

Yet this is alarming for New Zealand.

What people need to come to understand is that while the United States is a western nation, we have a very different society than any of the other western nations you care to name. That includes New Zealand.

New Zealand can ban AR-15s without a hiccup because its citizens have never looked to firearms as a means of protection. Here in the United States, guns were a way of life because we settled a hostile land that has never been truly tamed. The difference is now the threats come from the cities, not the forests.

New Zealanders are willing to tolerate being disarmed because they don’t have any reason to feel their safety is tied to their firearms. In truth, the nation is ridiculously safe even with guns being plentiful.

They’re not Americans.

Please stop pretending like their proposed solutions are remotely useful for our discussions.