In a society that lives by the gun, innocents will die by it

Grief counsellors say many parents of children killed violently wonder how it is possible to survive extreme feelings of rage, grief and guilt. How much worse if you are the one who accidentally pulled the trigger on your own child. Such appears to be the anguish of a Johannesburg father, Sibusiso Emanuel Tshabalala, who shot dead his son, Luyanda, in Ennerdale this week. Tshabalala fell asleep in his car while waiting to fetch Luyanda after night classes, then was startled and allegedly fired when the boy knocked on his window. He has been charged with murder, although the account he gave police and his wife suggests an unimaginably horrible mistake.

The irony is that the gun was supposedly there to protect the family. In a similar case in Durban, Shailendra Sukhraj fired at a hijacked car in which his daughter, Sadia, was sitting. She was killed by a bullet, possibly from his gun. Accepting the facts at face value, and without wishing to pre-empt the findings of the courts that will examine these two tragic deaths, we can say this would not be the first time that children lost their lives to guns that were intended to foil attack.

Research by Gun Free South Africa suggests that death by gunshot is closely correlated with the number of firearms in circulation. They kill more people more quickly than other weapons. Illegally obtained guns cause the highest number of deaths and are the greatest cause for concern. Citizens besieged by criminals have every reason to want to protect their families. But a sober assessment suggests gun ownership may be counterproductive. It has been suggested that gun owners are four times more likely to have their gun used against them than they are to use it successfully in self-defence.

But gun control is only part of the solution. We live in a violent society riven by high levels of inequality, in which young people face a future with few job prospects, and many women and children live with domestic abuse.

We need a better society in which parents don’t feel so threatened that they buy weapons that claim the lives of their children.