New airgun import laws?

in our recent experience with our local cops who know us both very well personallyand have done for years,nz polices attitude towards airguns has changed a great deal recently,not only are they calling all airguns firearms but treating them as firearms as well,bear in mind these local country cops all have know us personally for many years,and have never had any issuses with either of us over firearms or airguns,the police position regarding importing airguns privately seems be if you can buy one here from a dealer you dont need to import one and wont issuse an import permit,this seems to apply with all airguns from softair thru to pcps,they dont like pcps and consider them to be just as dangerous as firearms these days,we have known all our local country cops personally for many years and until recently we allways got on very well with each other,but we have noticed their attitude towards us has changed significantly,they now allways go about in pairs and armed when visiting any property that has a firearms licence holder in residence around here,its allmost like they have become afraid of anyone holding a firearms licence now,why it should be this way is anyones guess,but seems be how its become now,this is the country out here there are airguns and firearms every where,but never used be a problem,but suddenly its become a problem for our local cops,most of whom we have all known personally for years and allways got on well with,there has definatly been a very significant change in attitude from our local cops and how they now interacte with us thats a little concerning to most of us locals thats certainly not winning hearts and minds or contributing to maintaining our once good relationship between us,our police are distancing themselves from the community and what had allways been a friendly cooperative relationship of mutual benifit is fast becoming one of them and us because to us it now appears as if the police no longer trust any of us and as they will soon find out thats not going to work out well for them as we are now begining to no longer trust the police,

I must admit I don't know the rules very well. What gun in particular are you interested in? There are a couple on the market that have the "AR" style grip.