News of a mass shooting on the other side of the globe last week hit home for Coloradans. A gunman had opened fire on construction workers in Auckland, New Zealand, killing two and wounding at least six.

Our state knows the pain of such seemingly random madness, so the incident was all too relatable. But it also offered a reminder of the limits of gun-control laws – repackaged nowadays in the U.S. as “gun safety” laws – in curbing such violence. New Zealand’s crackdown on gun ownership in recent years obviously didn’t prevent this tragedy.

The 24-year-old Auckland assailant didn’t have a gun license, which is required in New Zealand, so he was breaking the law.

Ironically, he used an ordinary shotgun, a traditional, bird-hunting firearm – which didn’t even make it onto New Zealand’s extensive list of arms prohibited for civilians.

Atop it all, shooter Matu Tangi Matua Reid, who was found dead after his rampage, had been serving a sentence of home detention for another crime and had a history of domestic violence.

Stay up to speed: Sign-up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

He also had an exemption from his home confinement to go to the construction site he attacked because he had worked there. In other words, he was in his country’s justice system but easily slipped through the cracks.

All of which adds up to an object lesson for Colorado’s elected policymakers: Better control over known lawbreakers is likelier to forestall the next such tragedy than is another attempt to control guns.

Ruling Democrats in Colorado’s Legislature were trading high-fives this year after passing their latest round of gun restrictions, which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law. Those included banning untraceable “ghost guns” made from components; requiring a three-day waiting period on firearms purchases; raising the age for firearms purchases to 21, and making it easier for gun-violence victims to sue gunmakers and dealers.

If only such measures could make a difference in heading off mass murder. If anything, they create a false hope.

Even New Zealand’s extensive gun-control laws – likely unconstitutional in the U.S. – cannot seem to stem diabolical impulses to carry out horrific acts. A 2019 mass shooting that killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in the city of Christchurch resulted in the enactment of a strict, nationwide ban on semiautomatic weapons in that country.

The government offered to buy back the many banned weapons and purchased about 50,000 – out of an estimated 1.5 million firearms in a land of only 4.6 million people. Not much of a compliance rate.

Estimates peg the number of civilian-owned guns in the U.S. at up to 430 million – 100 million more firearms than there are Americans. Never mind Colorado’s recent gun-control measures; even if the U.S. government could impose New Zealand’s semiauto-weapons ban without running afoul of the Constitution, it likely would meet with as little compliance.

Meanwhile, a man with a criminal record who was supposed to be serving time at home was able to wreak havoc with a workaday pump shotgun. He even was permitted to access to his former work site. Why was he allowed out? Should he in fact have been in jail?

Which suggests another lesson for Colorado’s policymakers – whose soft-on-crime policies have triggered an epic crime wave in our state. Notably, instead of criminalizing more weapons, which doesn’t work – how about simply jailing more criminals?

Denver Gazette Editorial Board