Customs wins the Battle

The WarGod's Armoury is very sad to announce that that we will no longer be stocking daggers from now on.

In September of 2009 New Zealand Customs reviewed the law regarding banned imports into the country. Now it is important to note that this review found the law to be fully acceptable and no changes or amendments were required, however New Zealand Customs felt that their own internal interpretation of the law could be improved upon.  Why this should be so has never been clarified and indeed many Customs agents claim no knowledge of any such change (the claim "we have always done it this way" just does not stand up when you have been in the business as long as we have).

Since 1993 we have been importing blunted daggers and being a licensed importer each and every item in each and every shipment was personally inspected and cleared by a Custom official before being released to us for resale. It is important to note that all these daggers were completely blunt and un-edged and thus were perfectly acceptable under the law which prevents sharpened knives that are double edged and/or designed for stabbing.

Please note: swords are exempt from this law due to the general inability of swords to be concealed about the person which is also why, for example, that you can legally import a Scottish basket hilted sword even though the basket could technically be considered a "knuckle duster" or "knuckle guard" (in fact they often are).

This re-interpretation of the law has led to previously allowed imports, like our blunt re-enactment daggers, to now be considered a banned import. We have challenged Custom on this issue for a year now with no success and frankly we are tired and worn out of fighting them (not to mention the expense involved!). We have over the last six months informed our customers that to be on the safe side they should obtain an Importation Permit just to insure they actually get their orders.

As a business that prides itself on customer service we find this state of affairs unacceptable and have had finally to admit defeat. As of today we will no longer stock daggers or double edged re-enactment knives on our WarGod website. It was a very difficult decision and we truly hope that one day soon we will be able to reverse this decision and once again supply the blades we all know and love.

This being the case we have merged the Knives and Daggers section with the Bowie's and Dirks section and renamed it Bowie's, Dirks and Other Knives.

Blackhawk Tatang

As a side note it has been interesting to see that Custom's new interpretation has not all been all one way. In some cases previously banned knives have been allowed in after inspection with no problems. In one case in particular we imported a Blackhawk Tatang knife for a customer who had obtained the necessary permit only to find Customs did not now regard the Tatang as a banned import despite it clearly being both double edged and designed for stabbing! It was actually taken out of the packaging when inspected and when we queried this we were told as the blade was not symmetrical it did not require a permit but the four completely blunt re-enactment daggers in the same order did!