The New Zealand Police Association questions the motives of the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners with respect to its blatantly incorrect claims that a police officer allegedly hid illegal firearm purchases using the Firearms Registry.

Amongst a list of incorrect assertions from COLFO is that the officer "allegedly hacked the firearm register" yet the Firearms Registry did not even exist at the time of the incident which was fully investigated by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA), and to quote the IPCA report, "for clarity the officer did not access the Firearms Registry database".

Police concluded the officer had not committed any offences and there were no grounds to proceed with a disciplinary process of any sort.

COLFO spokesperson Hugh Devereux-Mack first pedalled his allegations with The New Zealand Herald on Friday last week. The Herald immediately took down their story when they realised it was manifestly incorrect.

Undeterred by the facts, Mr Devereux-Mack then continued his campaign against the firearms registry by making a series of claims on The Platform, during which he admitted Police had told him he was wrong, and the Herald pulled their story, but went on to give his definition of hacking as "an individual accesses a database illegally that they don’t have the authorization to, so completely undeniably he did hack the register."

Association president Chris Cahill says repeating this incorrect claim does not make it factual, but Mr Devereux-Mack is not worried about letting the facts get in the way of his campaign.

"The truth is the officer did not hack the register, and Mr Devereux-Mack knows that as he has been told that by the IPCA and by Police."

"His motive is clearly his campaign to undermine the registry and sow distrust amongst the firearms community and the general public," Mr Cahill says.

The officer involved in the IPCA and Police investigation did not have his own TradeMe account and had friends purchase on his behalf. This happened in 2022, a year before the Firearms Registry was established in June 2023, so impossible to "hack" as it did not exist at the time.

"At most there was a technical breach of the Crimes Act, but not sufficient to meet the Solicitor General’s guidelines for a prosecution, and it is important to note that the officer concerned still has his firearms licence," Mr Cahill says.

"It is also vital to clarify that at the time the firearms were bought on behalf of the officer there was no requirement to register them as they were not a category that required registration.

"COLFO’s conflating this investigation with the security of the firearms registry is disingenuous and designed to continue its campaign to undermine the security of the registry - the very registry that yesterday proved instrumental in the arrest of a licenced firearms user suspected of diverting firearms to the Mongrel Mob", Mr Cahill says.

It is also important to note that in the registry’s first year of a five-year set-up process, 63,250 firearms licence holders have registered 305,202 firearms and 11,644 firearms parts.

"That trust from the firearms community is clearly worrying Mr Devereux-Mack."

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