WFSA Current News - September, 2004
The
real effects of new South African gun laws
The
facts about the new South African gun legislation are now beginning to emerge.
The
lawful owner has been very severely harmed by the laws, and a long list of
complaints verging on absurdity has begun to surface. Having come into operation
on July 1st, the laws have had the usual effect of being obeyed by
the law-abiding, with deeply damaging results not only to industry but to common
sense.
An
article published on September 27 in news24.com may be seen at http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1595913,00.html
. It has laid out a list of problems including the following:
Proficiency
certificates are required under the new law, and since July 1st, a
total of eight have been issued throughout the nation.
12,000
appeals have been lodged by people who have had firearm licences refused. But
none of these have been processed because the Pretoria-based appeal board has
not been in operation since May 1st.
Where
previously sales of legal firearms for responsible use such as sport shooting
and pest management have totalled about 15,000 units a month, not a single legal
firearm has been sold in
It
is expected that roughly 100,000 people will lose their jobs. Overseas hunters,
usually numbering about 10,000 per year, are finding their passage with firearms
into the country is not being facilitated, as a result of the new laws, and the
hunting industry could well collapse, with the expected consequences for the
economy.
The
Black Gun Owners’ Association is mobilizing, claiming that 99% of its members
have had applications for gun licences rejected.
Yesterday,
in a remarkable statement, the Safety and Security Minister, Charles Nqakula,
described the legislation as “a good act in principle". He defended it on
the usual grounds: "We did not design the legislation to prevent
responsible people from selling, buying or using guns. We designed it to prevent
irresponsible gun owners from causing the unnecessary deaths of others.” He
further qualified his stance with: “Unfortunately, the processes that must
enforce the act are not working effectively".
The
world’s lawmakers have long had ample evidence that legislation against lawful
gun ownership does not reduce criminal activity. The Minister did not point to
any fall in crime rates as a result of this remarkable legislation, nor is he on
record as clarifying what is to be done for the very many people who find their
legal access to firearms for a wide variety of valid reasons is now blocked.
September 17, 2004
In order to buy a firearm legally, usually
for hunting, a Russian has to demonstrate good mental health and very basic
safety handling procedures. The permit, according to the article, is usually
forthcoming in a few weeks, or a few days if substantially more money is
provided. There is also a thriving black market.
The state parliament has previously denied a move to loosen gun laws, but
public feeling is now said to be rising in response to the more overt question
about self defence.
Yuri Dotsenko
is a well-respected Russian author, and in an open letter he recently said the
following:
"It
appears that the Russian people have nothing else to do but to act as mere
sacrificial lambs. Rebels do not take militia hostage; they prefer to torture
defenceless people. And the government is incapable of protecting us. I am not
saying that each of us needs a personal bodyguard. There is another issue at
stake here. There is simply the lack of a governmental system aimed at
protecting its people. In my opinion, there is only one way out of this mess:
the state has to make guns legal. Let people protect themselves and their kids.
Those rebels would not have seized the school had they known that every parent
had had a gun."
A
number of parliamentary delegates have now taken a stance in favour of the right
to self-protection.
The WFSA is expected to host a symposium some time in 2005, exploring the
human right to self defence.
Sept 10, 2004
Symposium on lead in ammunition
The WFSA
has sponsored a successful two-day symposium on the use of lead in ammunition,
which finished today. More than 140 representatives from twenty different
countries attended. The conference proceedings will be published in due course.
A report is
available at http://www.wfsa.net/Environment_Index.htm
.
September 4, 2004
More
than three hundred people in the
The
advertisement, for a Land Rover vehicle, was withdrawn from television.
]The
advertisement is said to display a woman taking a handgun from a bedside table
and chasing an intruder with it, before firing it into the air, at which point
the audience sees that it is a starter’s pistol. The television authority in
defending the ban issued the following statement:
“Given
regular coverage of high-profile shooting incidents and public concern about the
wider social impact of the so-called gun culture, the glamorisation and
normalisation of guns, even indirectly, is simply offensive to many people.
"In this advertisement, the starter pistol was used in both an
apparent casual manner and just for fun, to signal the start of the man's
journey. The domestic setting, together with the gun simply lying in a drawer,
normalised the ownership of guns.
"Taking all of the circumstances into account, including the very
strong feeling expressed by the complainants, we concluded that the commercial,
albeit unintentionally, made light of genuine public concern about gun
culture."
The Daily Telegraph story
may be viewed at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/01/nad01.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/01/ixhome.html
The
Times on English Home Office gun proposals
A
commentary piece by Patrick Stevens in the Times of London has brought attention
to the Home Office consultation paper on legislation surrounding firearms. The
government is reviewing the present legislation and the opportunity for
responses from the public was due to close yesterday.
The
article calls the present legislation a “mishmash”, and describes it as
being “overly complicated, difficult to administer and poorly understood by
all bar a handful of experts”.
The
questions are criticized on a number of bases, including that they show signs of
insufficient technical expertise among those framing them. An example is said to
be a question about whether the survey respondent thinks heavy armour-piercing
rifles which shoot depleted uranium projectiles should be banned. But of course,
such ammunition is not available to the public in any case, and a ban of the
sort contemplated will affect users of large-calibre hunting rifles that have
been legal for years. Other intended restrictions include increased controls on
shotguns, which would heavily affect young shooters, and impinge on both game
shooting and competitive clay target shooting.
Further
details are available from:
www.crimereduction.gov.uk/violentstreet4.htm
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/controls_on_firearms.pdf