Update 7 Oct 2015

Police say a part of Victoria University in Wellington has been evacuated following a bomb scare: “Wellington Police is evacuating Victoria University campus after a note threatening the detonation of a bomb in the Murphy Building was discovered,” police said in a statement.” more here

6 Oct 2015

An anonymous user has made a veiled threat to copycat the recent campus massacres in the US at the Dunedin campus of Otago University.

A cached copy of the thread in which the threat was made is reproduced at the bottom of this page (link to cache).

The UK’s Daily Mail said the post is terrifyingly similar to the one before the Orgeon college massacre last week.

Gun control may be difficult in the US, but a similar problem is developing in New Zealand. A

Firearm offences are very much in the NZ news at present, with the NZ Police Association saying officers are dealing with a gun related incident almost every day. Obtaining guns is “ridiculously easy” in New Zealand.

To make matters worse, police have no idea how many firearms are in legal circulation in New Zealand, because (like the US) New Zealand doesn’t licence individual weapons, just the owners.

Obtaining guns ‘ridiculously easy’ for criminals (NZ Herald 5 Oct 2015)

Firearms have become “ridiculously easy” for offenders to get their hands on and police are being confronted almost daily by gun-wielding criminals, the Police Association says.

The union is calling for an official police inquiry into where the guns are coming from and says the issue has been badly neglected by the top brass.

The call comes days after police were shot at as they pursued a pair of alleged offenders in West Auckland, and follows a spate of incidents where other police were fired on.

There have also been numerous instances in which firearms were aimed at the public, including a Hamilton diary owner who wrestled a gun from a would-be-robber during a dramatic encounter in August, and an armed holdup of a Mangere service station in September in which the offender fired a shot.

“It has become ridiculously easy for… criminals to get firearms. The evidence is apparent as police are stumbling across firearms and becoming involved in armed incidents on a daily basis,” said association president Greg O’Connor.

“Contrary to police assurances that armed incidents are ‘rare’, hardly a week goes by that police are not coming into contact with illegal firearms in the hands of offenders…

Just this morning police arrested a man who had threatened staff at a Linwood Work and Income Office

32 year old Mitchell Moulton was charged with possession of a pistol, discharging a firearm in Aldwins Rd and possession of a cannabis plant. source

The incident was  one of many firearms incidents in recent years in New Zealand, including the shooting murder of two female WINZ staff in Ashburton last year and the man who discharged a high powered rifle in a McDonalds’ a few weeks ago. But perhaps the most notorious was the Napier armed siege in 2009

There are an estimated 1.1 million firearms in New Zealand, however the true figure is likely to be much higher.

Here’s a copy of the 4chan ‘threat thread’ (click to enlarge):