Aya Al-Umari remembers March 15, 2019 like it was yesterday. Frantic phone calls from friends and family. The desperate rush to find her brother Hussein. An anxious wait for answers. Hussein was among the 51 people killed when a terrorist attacked worshippers at Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch. It took six days before his family was asked to identify his body — the confirmation finally ending their dreadful state of limbo.
“The idea that someone was able to come in and legally obtain such weapons that were so obviously designed to cause a mass loss of life, to me, was all the evidence that we needed to change our laws,” she said at a Harvard University event in November, 2023. And so, they did. Just like Australia did after the Port Arthur massacre, New Zealand introduced sweeping gun reform with stricter laws and a buyback of most semi-automatic and military-style firearms.