Kash Patel allegedly gives New Zealand officials guns illegal to possess under local laws

Source: The Guardian

On a visit to New Zealand, Kash Patel gave the country’s police and spy bosses gifts of inoperable pistols that were illegal to possess under local gun laws and had to be destroyed, New Zealand law enforcement agencies told the Associated Press.

The plastic 3D-printed replica pistols formed part of display stands the FBI director presented to at least three senior New Zealand security officials in July. Patel, the most senior Trump administration official to visit the country so far, was in Wellington to open the FBI’s first standalone office in New Zealand.

Pistols are tightly restricted weapons under New Zealand law – and possessing one requires an additional permit beyond a regular gun license. Law enforcement agencies didn’t specify whether the officials who met with Patel held such permits, but they couldn’t have legally kept the gifts if they didn’t.

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Inoperable weapons are treated as though they’re operable in New Zealand if modifications could make them workable again. The pistols were judged by gun regulators to be potentially operable and were destroyed, New Zealand’s police commissioner, Richard Chambers, told AP in a statement Tuesday.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/kash-patel-new-zealand-guns