CRIME STATS: THE GREAT GUN DEBATE

IDON’T envy Police Minister Fikile Mbalula. He has inherited the poison chalices of crime and firearm control and has to answer to the public about why we have high levels of firearm-related violent crime in our country.

It’s difficult for a minister to take the blame for a failure of a government ministry, particularly when it didn’t occur on their watch.

It was to be expected that Mbalula would try to blame anyone but his own government.

This government drafted, and has been responsible for, the implementation of the Firearms Control Act, which was touted as a valuable and necessary tool in combating crime.

By the government’s own admission the act has failed.

I have been in Parliament on numerous occasions where pro-and anti-firear m organisations have spoken with one voice about the failure of the act and its administration.

In 2015, the then-deputy minister Maggie Sotyu confirmed this failure publicly and it was apparent from the Firearm Summit that the administration of firearms is shambolic.

This does not mean, however, that there should be tighter firearm control, because legal firearms are not responsible for firearm-related violent crime.

We should properly implement the Firearms Control Act and have proper policing policies before we pass more laws that we cannot implement. This is because legal firearms do not create violent crime.

The act has been amended several times, with the last in 2010 creating so much confusion that the head of the Central Firearms Registry won’t commit publicly to how long a competency certificate is valid for.

If the administrators of the law don’t know what the law means, it cannot be effectively implemented.

The act is badly drafted and difficult to understand.

The best example of this is the recent declaration of unconstitutionality of Sections 24 and 28 of the act that mandated renewal of firear m licences which is a founding principle of this legislation.

As t here are many other flaws in the act, amendments to t he act will be published before the end of this year.

The ongoing amendment is an i ndicator of how badly f l awed t he original legislation was. Legal firearm owners cannot be blamed for the consequences of this.

Is there any truth to the allegation that civilian firearm owners allow their firearms to fall into the hands of criminals and that this increases violent crime?

Firstly, according to the police’s own annual report for 2015-2016, 116.13% of civilian firear ms reported as stolen were recovered during the period in question.

Therefore the leakage of legal firear ms into the illegal pool is decreasing.

The police want to amend the act to empower them to discipline a police member criminally if that member loses a firearm.

My final observation is about police Colonel Chris Prinsloo, who admitted selling to Cape Town gangs at least 2 400 handguns handed in to the police for destruction.

There has been a substantial increase in gang-related crime linked to these firearms.

How can legal gun owners be blamed for leakage of firearms into the illegal market if these firearms, and many others, come from the police?

The minister needs to get his own police force in order first, take responsibility for his own forces’ practical and administrative shortcomings and extend a hand of co-operation to civil society so that we can all work together in dealing with violent crime.

Hood is the spokesperson for the South African Arms and Ammunition dealers Association, the security industry and the Confederation of African Hunting Associations.

SDESPITE Fikile Mbalula being new in the post, he has no reason to be proud of the police’s performance in crime fighting.

In fact, in most democratic countries ministers faced with similar statistics would probably resign.

News24 reported this week that according to the chief whip of the ANC, their crime fighting was bearing fruit.

The South African Gunowners’ Association (Saga) sees nothing of this and is extremely perturbed about the criminality that appears to be out of control.

Even where there appears to be a slight reduction in certain crimes, it’s worth noting that many crimes are not reported to the police. The reasons often given are “the amount stolen was not much”, “it was only an attempt and I survived”, “insurance paid out”, or “I do not trust the police”.

Saga’s view is that despite serious commitment by many officers to lawfully make a difference, government has failed miserably in achieving outcome No 3 of the Delivery Agreement of 2010, that “all people in South Africa are and feel safe”.

A major factor causing most people to f eel unsafe is the average increase of 8.82% in all forms of robbery,

and t he TATISTICS paint a bleak picture of violent crime. It shows that murder, attempted murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances – crimes usually committed with a gun – increased. The minister glossed over the fact that these type of crimes went up for the fifth consecutive year. While murder doesn’t seem to have risen that much since last year, just by 1.8%, murders in South Africa have increased by an alarming 22%, from a low of 15 554 in 2011-12 to 19 016 in 2016-17. Similarly, attempted murder increased by 24% unacceptably high rate of rape and other sexual offences and housebreaking.

Violence in our society is further sadly reflected in the fact that murder, the final most crime, is up by 1.84% to a staggering 19 016.

The minister allegedly said “most violent crimes committed in SA

were done with a gun and that (from 14 730 to 18 205) and aggravated robbery by 40% (from 100 769 to 140 956) over the past five years.

Despite persistent requests from crime and violence prevention activists, the SAPS will not reveal detailed information on crime stats, including the weapon used in murders.

Fortunately, other sources – Statistics South Africa, the Department of Health, hospitals and mortuaries – fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.

What these show is that gun deaths closely track murder rates: As murder rates dropped by 40% from 21 758 murders a year in 2000-01 (60 a day) to 15 554 in poor enforcement of gun control laws was leaking guns from the legal to the illegal pool and driving a yearon-year increase in violent crime”.

It is noted that the number of reported cases of illegal possession of a firearm is up by 9.22% from 14 772 to 16 134.

Saga has previously asked for a 201112 (43 a day), the number of people shot and killed declined. Two independent, peer-reviewed studies undertaken by the Medical Research Council have statistically shown that the decline in South Africa’s overall murder rate between 2000 – 2011 was a direct result of introducing stronger gun laws. This saved thousands of lives and is the only reason that our femicide rate (the number of women murdered) has dropped nationally – from four a day in 1999 to three in 2009. In 2012, the trend began reversing. As the murder rate started climbing, so too did gun violence. Estimates are that between 35 to 40% of murders in 2016-17 were committed with a gun, amounting to 18 to 21 gun-related murders a day. The steady increase in violent crime dating from 2012 coincides with a breakdown in South Africa’s firearms control management system, involving three processes: Fraud and corruption when granting gun licences, which means that police officers fraudulently issue licences to people who are not fit to own a firearm. breakdown in stats.

A contributor to Paratus, a firearm-related e-magazine, calculates that the police (excluding other state departments) lose about eight times more firearms than civilians.

Traditionally, the government and others used to label the licensed firearm owner as the primary source from which guns are dumped into the illicit pool.

However, the theft of firearms from the SAPS storage in Silverton a few years ago and many earlier, including from military bases, largely negates that notion.

Add to this the untold number of official firearms that have been lost, and one soon realises the significant contribution made by the state to violent crime.

DefenceWeb reported on October 23 that the minister responded to a parliamentary question by the DA that: “No less than 3 500 policemen and women are uncertified to carry firearms”, and a “startling” 11 000 do not have competency certificates”.

Sources conveniently omitted include firearms smuggling, especially military weapons, from across our porous borders and arms caches that have still not been disclosed. Saga is particularly concerned about the apparent ease with which police and military weapons are obtained by criminals.

This is eminently clear

Loss and theft of legal guns which leak into the illegal pool. This is best demonstrated by the 18-year prison sentence Christiaan Prinsloo, a senior police officer, was handed down for selling 2 400 confiscated and surrendered guns to Western Cape gangsters. A total of 1 066 in the province have been forensically linked to these guns.

Target setting as a measure of effective policing, which leads to weak enforcement of the law. For instance, in 2010 the SAPS processed 1 048 341 firearm licences, renewals and competences in nine months following a public admission of a backlog in gun-related applications and a commitment to deal promptly with this, raising questions about whether due process was followed or if applications were fasttracked.

The consequences of the processes raises an important question about an achievement noted by the minister. Although the police must be commended for recovering an additional 1 362 illegal firearms and rounds of ammunition in 2016-17, is this 9% improvement on the previous year due to the greater availability of guns, rather than an improvement in policing?

The evidence in South Africa and globally is that strengthening national from the organised attacks on cash in transit vehicles, shopping malls, automatic teller machines, and airports.

Since civilians may generally not possess automatic weapons, and the possession of semi-automatic rifles is strictly regulated, the source could be only the state, arms caches or smuggling.

While efficient enforcement of the Firearms Control Act will significantly reduce the number of firearms in the illicit pool, this will address a symptom only.

And while social factors such as unemployment and drug and alcohol abuse may all be crime factors, the apparent general attitude of civil disobedience and a lack of discipline contribute significantly to the high crime rate.

Saga members remain committed to responsible and safe possession and use of firearms, thus contributing to a safer society. firearms control systems reduces gun violence. But laws are only as good as their enforcement, and while strong gun laws save lives, poor enforcement kills.

While the minister recognised the close relationship between alcohol and violent crime, his poor grasp of how gun availability drives violence is worrying.

Instead of presenting a coherent plan to recover illegal guns and strictly regulate legally held guns to close the tap leaking legal guns into the illegal pool, he repeated his populist and dangerous call for the SANDF to be deployed to deal with violent crime.

Minister Mbalula, if you really want to be tweeted about, replace grandstanding statements with meaningful action to stop the flood of gun violence.

First, mop up illegal guns through search, seizure and intelligence-driven police operations and incentivised gun hand-in campaigns such as an amnesty or gun buy-back.

Second, plug the holes through which legal guns are leaking into the illegal pool by strengthening and enforcing the Firearms Control Act (2000). Taylor is a Specialist Researcher at Gun Free South Africa