>>To a farmer a "pest' is a threat to one's livelihood.
>>Here in the US farmers use automatic weapons to kill pests that threaten cops.
>>Can they do it without automatic weapons?
>>Of course they can.
>>George Washington raised tobacco armed with a musket.
While there's certainly agricultural damage by pests in NZ, after millions of years of isolation, NZ native flora and fauna is highly vulnerable to imported pests = very different from experience in Asia, Europe or the Americas. Many of these imported species have no predators apart from human hunters. A spectrum:
https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pests/possums/https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pests/feral-goats/https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pests/deer/
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
