It's more or less a year since the horrific mass shooting in a Christchurch mosque that made headlines all around the world. The perpetrator, who I'm not going to dignify by naming since fame is what he wanted, came up in court last week and to everyone's surprise pled guilty on all charges. After everything the affected families have gone through, it is at least a relief that they won't have to be put through a court appearance.
When the shooting happened, a lot of people expressed surprise around the world that something like this could happen in New Zealand. I'm not going to pretend we're perfect down here - we have already had a mass shooting known as the Aramoana Massacre in 1990 where 13 people were killed. Nevertheless, for the sake of our tourist industry, when it comes to the mosque tragedy it's important to point out that the perpetrator was an Australian who came to New Zealand specifically to commit this crime. It's still a very safe country to visit. We're rated by the Global Peace Index as the world's second safest country for personal violence, and by Transparency International as the first equal least corrupt country in the world.
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