The Christchurch mosque terrorist would have found it difficult to buy weapons from the criminals, the investigation says

Using this standard Category A license, the terrorist legally purchased semi-automatic centerfire rifles and then equipped these firearms with high-capacity magazines, essentially building his own military-style semi-automatic firearms, despite their seemingly more restrictive status.

In the 2019 mosque shootings, the terrorist used two of these weapons as his main weapons.

Dr. Jarrod Gilbert, a sociologist at the University of Canterbury, told the inquest that the terrorist would have faced numerous hurdles to obtaining a weapon from criminal gangs if police had not granted him a license.

“At one end of the spectrum, for example, a man who grew up in a gang family and later became a gang member has a significant number of contacts to draw on,” Gilbert told the coroner.

“At the other end of the spectrum, a middle-class accountant from a middle-class family may have little to no idea where to even begin to make contacts in the underworld.

“Criminals will also be suspicious of outsiders, especially those who cannot be easily verified by trusted colleagues. These barriers can impede access to trading or make it more difficult and dangerous.

“Our accountant, for example, is likely to encounter further difficulties because the language and behavior of the underworld is different and outsiders are viewed with suspicion. These pitfalls of entering the informal economy are not only annoying, but can also lead to violence, robbery or extortion.

“Criminals often identify those they perceive to be vulnerable and steal from them, for example by failing to deliver promised goods or taxing them, which is a form of extortion, using their criminal activity to demand goods or money.” Of course, these pitfalls also include the potential threat from the authorities and subsequent criminal prosecution.”

During his testimony, Gilbert mentioned an article that detailed how Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Oslo and Utoya in 2011, unsuccessfully tried to obtain firearms from criminals in Europe before legally obtaining a rifle procured by claiming it was intended for hunting.

The Christchurch terrorist would have had similar difficulties obtaining a firearm through criminal gangs in New Zealand, although his access to a large amount of cash may have been an advantage, Gilbert said.

Criminal gangs did not traffic firearms in the same way as they trafficked other illicit goods, such as drugs.

Firearms are far more scarce, he said.

“There is so much more money for drugs than there is for selling firearms, and because of this shortage there is also a lot of crooks. “When you get good guns, you tend to keep them around because they have more value to you than they do on the market,” Gilbert said.

“The value for which you can use them is greater than what you could sell them for.”

The terrorist’s white supremacist ideology is a possible obstacle

The terrorist’s white supremacist ideology may also have been a further barrier to cooperation with most New Zealand criminal gang networks, he said.

“These types of white power groups are pretty rare now, and even the size of the chapters means you may not have those options,” he said.

“Traditionally, the Southern Vikings have had a very strong influence over the years [in Dunedin] and they were part of what was called the Federation, sometimes the Biker Federation, sometimes the White Federation. But they are incredibly small now, in fact they could be close to death.”

The Road Knights in Invercargill also had links to white supremacists in the 1990s.

But even they may have disappeared when the terrorist was looking for firearms in 2017, Gilbert said.

“It wasn’t a boom for the gangs down there. What we have seen is that the other gangs have filled that gap, but they tend to be Polynesian gangs or predominantly Polynesian gangs.”

Gilbert accepted that it was possible for someone with white nationalist ideology to search for a firearm through white ethnic gangs, but it was a “fairly limited” possibility.

“It would be a long game, especially if you don’t have anyone to vouch for you… Without that it will be difficult, because if you get offside, and it doesn’t take much, and you get violence in your own direction, there is there is no turning back.

“They don’t tend to give people second chances.”

Subscribe to The Daily Ha free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.