New Zealand‘s gun regulators have destroyed several plastic, 3D-printed guns that FBI Director Kash Patel gave the country’s top law enforcement officials as part of a gift in July.
Patel visited Wellington to open a standalone FBI field office in the New Zealand capital city in July as the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit the country this term. As he met with the country’s top law enforcement officials, he gave each official “a challenge coin display stand” that included a “replica gun,” New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told the Washington Examiner.
New Zealand has strict gun laws and limits non-functional guns that could theoretically be made functional. The laws have been interpreted to arrest people who have possessed “ornamental parts that, while non-operational and not intended to be functional, could theoretically be rendered operable,” the Law Association of New Zealand explained in a consultation report in response to the nation’s gun reform process.
New Zealand’s gun regulators deemed that the pistols in Patel’s gifts could be rendered operable, Chambers said. He said the officials contacted gun regulators about the pistols.
“To ensure compliance with firearms laws, I instructed Police to retain and destroy them,” Chambers said.
The FBI declined the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
Chambers, the Director-General of NZSIS, Andrew Hampton, and the Director-General of GCSB, Andrew Clark, each received the gifts, according to the Associated Press.
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The FBI said that Director Patel met with Chambers, Hampton, and Clark during his Wellington visit, along with Space Minister Judith Collins, Minister of Police Mark Mitchell, and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters.
“New Zealand and America – countering the CCP in the Indo PACOM theatre, crushing the narcotics trade, working together against cyber intrusions and ransomware operations, and most importantly protecting our respective country’s citizens,” Patel wrote on X during the visit. “Thank you to America’s great partners in New Zealand for your commitment to security and national defense.”
