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FBI’s Patel sparks scandal in New Zealand with illegal gun gifts

The FBI director’s 3D-printed pistols were illegal in New Zealand and destroyed, sparking controversy and diplomatic tensions with China

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FBI Director Kash Patel attends a press conference announcing details on the suspect in the shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot earlier this month. Photo: Reuters
Associated Press
On a visit to New Zealand, FBI Director 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 said.
The plastic 3D-printed replica pistols formed part of display stands Patel 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 US Federal Bureau of Investigation’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 licence. 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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It wasn’t clear what permissions Patel had sought to bring the weapons into the country. A spokesperson for Patel said on Tuesday that the FBI would not comment.

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 said in a statement on Tuesday.

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Chambers didn’t specify how the weapons had been rendered inoperable before Patel gifted them. Usually this means the temporary disabling of the gun’s firing mechanism.

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