Gun licence laws in need of an upgrade
WITH regard to expired gun licences in South Africa, the total could be in excess of 500 000.
In effect, this means that close to half a million honest, law-abiding gun owners neglected, for whatever reasons, to renew their licences on time.
On the balance of probabilities, most simply forgot. Existing legislation allows no avenue for renewing expired licences without handing these weapons in for ballistic testing and destruction or ballistic testing and reapplication for a new licence from scratch in order to reclaim that firearm back. This from within a system which the SAPS themselves have conceded is in a shambles.
What are the odds of getting your gun back at all, as the authorities have the power to announce yay or nay at their whim without recourse?
What of an ageing farmer living in fear of his life without any protection? Is he expected to hand in his firearm and wait for up to a year or more for it to be ballistic tested and have his reapplication approved? Who protects him during this time? The same applies to thousands of lawabiding, honest citizens who either live alone in the city or in a remote area. Who protects them while this reapplication and ballistic testing goes on? The answer is: no one. They stand alone.
The authorities claim that 45 000 guns were handed in for destruction during the last amnesty. It’s to be assumed that they were ballistic tested for crimes committed prior to destruction.
The question is, how many of these handed-in guns were involved in a crime?
The answer is none! The authorities are very quiet on this point … not a peep out of them on a single positive test.
The reason is that criminals don’t hand guns in, they simply recycle them. The point is that guns involving crime have never, ever been handed in during an amnesty, which renders the entire exercise a farce.
Adele Kirsten of Gun Free SA, who leads the charge against honest gun owners, spouts figures pulled from statistics and uses these figures to influence authorities.
She is, however, barking up the wrong tree and is in fact exacerbating the situation as only honest guns from honest gun owners are handed in.
No criminal hands a gun in. Another side-effect is that poor people who bought guns many years ago and cannot put food on the table will rather sell their gun to a gang member for R10 000 as opposed to handing it in for destruction.
The end result is that down at the bottom of the food chain, yes, guns are without doubt being recycled and not handed in. How do amnesties solve that ?
In today’s South Africa, with more than 20 000 murders a year and counting, with the country being the crime capital of the world, how is it constructive to disarm half a million law abiding gun owners with expired gun licences while gangsters and their fellow travellers continue to recycle illegally purchased guns via surrogate buyers?
The answer is to change existing legislation to accommodate expired gun licences as it’s an ongoing issue and will never go away, and at the same time simplify renewal procedures. No one is challenging the SAPS on the issue as they are simply implementing the law.
The problem is not with the SAPS, but with existing legislation governing gun ownership. First, legislation needs to be upgraded in terms of reality and, second, recognition needs to be given to the fact that the wrong people are being targeted with these amnesties and they never ever attract criminal guns which remain on the streets.
COLIN BOSMAN | Newlands