‘Aim for safety and hand in your guns’

GUN FREE SA welcomes the decision by the National Hunting and Shooting Association (NHSA) to withdraw an urgent legal challenge it lodged on December 11 2019 to force the minister of police to stop the 2020 national firearms amnesty.

The six month amnesty, the fourth in South Africa’s history, began on December 1 and ends on May 31 this year. Papers filed by the minister in response to the NHSA’s founding affidavit comprehensively debunk and correct a range of myths and untruths made by the NHSA, including two assertions:

The NHSA claims that the minister did not follow the correct process in declaring the 2020 firearms amnesty, which makes it illegal.

Describing the NHSA’s argument as “fatally flawed,” the minister shows in detail that the process followed was “valid and effective”, which means the 2020 National Firearms Amnesty is legal.

The NHSA claims that the 2020 amnesty impinges on the rights of gun owners, whose licences have expired, by requiring them to hand in their guns while they reapply for a firearm licence. Expired licences cannot be renewed. The Firearms Control Act (2000) is clear: when a firearm licence expires, it no longer exists, which means that it cannot be renewed. Indemnity follows surrender. The minister does not have the power to grant amnesty to a person whose firearm licence has expired and who is thus in illegal possession.

The only way indemnity can be given under the existing law is when the gun is surrendered to the police. Over 120 000 firearms and 1.8 million rounds of ammunition were recovered in SA’s past three amnesties in 1994, 2005 and 2010.

Over one third of the guns and ammunition recovered in the 2005 and 2010 amnesties were illegally-held – 45 133 and 738 028 respectively.

Gun Free South Africa calls on all gun owners to aim for safety and hand in their guns during amnesty. The biggest source of illegal guns in South Africa is civilians whose guns are lost or stolen.