Jacinda Ardern told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in unusually blunt language: “Australia experienced a massacre and changed its laws. New Zealand has had its experience and changed its laws. To be honest with you, I don’t understand the United States.”…

Talking to Amanpour, Ardern said that before the Christchurch mosque shootings on 15 March, in which 51 people died, New Zealand had “pretty permissive gun legislation”.

But despite New Zealand being a hunting and food-producing nation, that was not justification enough for access to high-powered military-style rifles, Ardern said, and the Labour coalition government passed legislation banning access within weeks of the massacre.