*This* is what leadership looks like: New Zealand is banning military-grade guns

It’s tru­ly refresh­ing to see a coun­try’s lead­er­ship take swift and deci­sive action to improve gun safe­ty laws in the after­math of a hor­rif­ic mass shoot­ing.

New Zealand has banned mil­i­tary-style semi­au­to­mat­ic weapons and assault rifles, Prime Min­is­ter Jacin­da Ardern announced Thurs­day, just six days after attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that left fifty peo­ple dead. A buy­back pro­gram will be launched to take exist­ing weapons out of cir­cu­la­tion, and those who do not com­ply will be sub­ject to fines, she said.

“On 15 March [2019], our his­to­ry changed for­ev­er. Now, our laws will, too,” Ardern said. [Watch the press con­fer­ence.] “We are announc­ing action today on behalf of all New Zealan­ders to strength­en our gun laws and make our coun­try a safer place.”

The gun­man who attacked the Al Noor and Lin­wood mosques here Fri­day used AR-15 rifles in the worst mass shoot­ing New Zealand has ever seen. In addi­tion to the fifty killed, forty peo­ple were injured.

Prime Min­is­ter Jacin­da Arden’s response to the atroc­i­ty in Christchurch will be held up for years as an exam­ple of what to do when tragedy strikes.

From ask­ing the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies how best to help them to griev­ing with them to tak­ing swift mea­sures to improve the safe­ty of her peo­ple, Prime Min­is­ter Arden is show­ing the world what real and effec­tive lead­er­ship is. Props to her government.

We fre­quent­ly refer to heads of state in the world com­mu­ni­ty as nation­al lead­ers, but many of them don’t actu­al­ly lead… they sim­ply occu­py posi­tions of power.

Jacin­da Ardern is dif­fer­ent. New Zealand is extreme­ly for­tu­nate to have her as its cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter. She is uni­fy­ing Kiwis around the uni­ver­sal pro­gres­sive val­ues of tol­er­ance, inclu­sion, mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, respect, and safety.

And her peo­ple are respond­ing.

New Zealan­ders have begun hand­ing in their firearms to police in the wake of Friday’s mass shoot­ing in Christchurch which result­ed in the deaths of at least fifty people.

New Zealand police said that, as of Tues­day night, at least 37 firearms had been hand­ed in to police offi­cers around the country.

“Until today I was one of the New Zealan­ders who owned a semi-auto­mat­ic rifle,” said John Hart, a farmer who was among those who gave up his weapon. “On the farm they are a use­ful tool in some cir­cum­stances, but my con­ve­nience doesn’t out­weigh the risk of mis­use. We don’t need these in our country.”

Bless you, John Hart. May your words and deeds inspire oth­ers to real­ize that we are safer by putting our trust in each oth­er instead of a regime that per­mits bad actors to buy weapons of war which they can use for mass slaughter.

New Zealand is choos­ing life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness over access to weapons of war. We hope that the day will soon come when the Con­gress of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca makes that same choice. Until then, we’ll con­tin­ue lay­ing the ground­work for a coun­try that insists on safe, respon­si­ble gun ownership.