Law regarding lost firearms seems unequal

MUCH has been said about the SAPS and their April 1 firearm amnesty, which was, then wasn’t!

We need to remember some earlier issues concerning firearms and our organs of state:

On August 31, 2009, the Western Cape High Court declared that the failure by the state to establish guidelines for the compensation of those who handed in their firearms “unlawful and inconsistent with the constitution”. Strangely enough, Judge Azhar Cachalia sat in the appeal of this compensation case, despite having commissioned the Firearms Control Act (FCA).

In 2010, Dianne Kohler Barnard of the DA stated that 4 000 new pistols ordered by the police were intended “mostly to replace lost and stolen firearms”. In 2011, the media stated that according to a “report by the auditor-general, an estimated 82 000 weapons belonging to the South African National Defence Force and the navy were unaccounted for?”

In 2012, the SAPS threatened legal gun owners with incarceration if they did not comply with the new FCA.

Tens of thousands of law-abiding firearm owners handed in their guns with the hope of being compensated for doing so as stipulated in the Act.

Now, expired licence holders are being intimidated. The police are treating an administrative issue (expired licences) as a criminal offence.

Yet, three firearms-related court cases are on the cards, which should give help clarify policies regarding firearm owners and this issue.

From parliamentary answers in 2014 it was shown that there was 0.007% negligence on the part of private legal firearm owners with regard to lost firearms.

The citizens are enslaved by the FCA, yet the SANDF and SAPS are exempt. How can this be?