Get guns off streets and destroy them

THOUSANDS of South Africans die every year because of gun violence. A South African Medical Journal report revealed that as many as 20 people are killed in gun-related incidents every single day.

No one is immune to gun violence; neither the 3-year-old playing in the street with her friends nor the popular South African actor. To stop gun violence, we need to get them off our streets and destroyed.

International Gun Destruction Day is marked globally on July 9 –yesterday. Initiated by the United Nations in 2001, this day serves to remind us about the threat that excess, poorly secured and illegal weapons pose to our everyday safety and security.

Destroying gun stocks stops surplus guns leaking into the illegal market, and because guns don’t expire, they can be used many times to commit crimes.

South African Police Service interventions have seized thousands of illegal guns, and many South Africans have handed their firearms in to the police. According to the SAPS, over 1.2 million guns have been destroyed since 2000, an average of 70 600 guns a year.

The importance of an effective destruction process was highlighted in 2016 when an ex-SAPS colonel, Christiaan Prinsloo, was sentenced to 18 years for selling to Western Cape gangsters 2 400 guns that had been confiscated by, or surrendered to, the SAPS and marked for destruction.

Ballistic testing has linked 888 of Prinsloo’s guns to 1 066 murders in the Western Cape. Of these victims, 261 were children (between the ages of one and 18). Of the 2 400 guns that Prinsloo admitted to stealing as part of his plea bargain, more than 1 100 have not been recovered.

Gun violence in South Africa is spiralling out of control. In the Western Cape, guns have overtaken knives as the leading murder weapon.

Gun Free South Africa urges the government and SAPS to build safer communities by destroying surplus guns and to put in place an auditing process to build public trust.

Gun violence is preventable. The thousands of lives lost this year cannot be brought back, but millions of lives can be saved when guns are taken off our streets and out of our homes. Nurahn Ryklief Communications and community stakeholder officer at Gun Free South Africa