WFSA Current News - September, 2005

September 25, 2005

UN claims Scotland leads in violence
            The Times has printed an article saying a report from the crime research institute of the United Nations has pronounced Scotland to lead the developed world in violence, and its citizens are three times more likely to suffer assault than those in the USA.
            The study was based on interviews with people from 21 countries, and it is said to have found that the official police figures under-report. A Scottish police spokesman questioned the accuracy of the survey methods.
            Gun laws are very strict in Scotland and handguns are totally banned. The study, however, found no correlation between legal gun availability and assault rates in the country concerned. England and Wales, with their total handgun bans, also have very high assault rates, well above those of the more gun-liberal USA. Gun-banning Japan and gun-liberal Italy had very similar (and very low) rates of assault.
            http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1786945,00.html

September 21, 2005

Yemeni move towards gun restrictions
            According to an article in the Yemen Observer, restrictions on firearms are closer to being applied for the first time in Yemen.
            Four years ago, the Yemeni cabinet approved new legislation, but it has not yet been approved by the parliament. A demonstration a few hundred strong outside the parliament has called for gun bans.
            There is a long history of tribal fighting in the region, and a porous border. Longstanding familiarity with automatic military arms is widespread. The Interior Ministry has estimated there are sixty million firearms in the country. The article does not give any indication of how proposed new laws would be effective in stemming the illegal arms flow.
            http://www.yobserver.com/news_8173.php

September 7, 2005

Rising crime in the UK
            Despite the total ban on handguns in Britain in 1997, and the following ban on replicas in 2004, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) has reported a constant rise in illegal access to guns for criminal purposes.  
            With British sporting shooters heavily inconvenienced and already unable to practise their sport on home soil, the expensive and comprehensive program of handgun confiscations has had no noticeable effect on checking crime rates.
         Once again the developing picture of increasing crime against a backdrop of already very tight restrictions shows the ineffectiveness of legislating with ever increasing severity against lawful gun owners and expecting this to somehow bring criminal creativity to a halt. 
            http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article310182.ece

September 5, 2005

Gun law change in Santa Domingo
            The President of Santa Domingo has announced an increase in the severity of gun laws in a bid to fight rising crime.
            Details are not available about how the police are expected to disarm those who own arms illegally. However, it has been stated that this is the first half of a two-element approach. The second is to involve so-called genuine-need policies, which it is proposed will be implemented with regard to those who seek to have gun licences granted to them.

September 5, 2005

Brazil “gun deaths” claim
            A Reuters article has claimed there is a reduction of eight per cent in ‘gun deaths’ in Brazil following the disarmament campaign which began in 2004. Brazil is said to have the world’s highest figure of combined deaths by shooting.
            The current laws require people in Brazil who wish to own a gun legally to go through prescribed safe gun handling courses, have permanent addresses and jobs, have no criminal convictions and pass psychological tests. The illegal gun ownership rates are very high and so is criminal activity.
            As usual, the claims concerning a drop in ‘gun deaths’ are not accompanied by display of the total murder rates. The usual result from legislation against firearms is for method substitution to cause the established rates of both murder and suicide to stay the same. Any report which does not provide the overall rate as well as the rate of death by shooting should be regarded with suspicion.
            http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N0228890

September 5, 2005

Gun concerns continue in Papua New Guinea
           African and other undeveloped nations are often the focus of world attention in terms of tribal warfare. The UK Telegraph has run an article dealing with the use of illegal arms in Papua New Guinea. Tribal fights are now said to be more destructive of life because traditional weapons are being replaced by high-powered modern weaponry. Arms employed are said to include rocket-propelled grenades.
            The article, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/03/wpng03.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/09/03/ixworld.html , quotes New Zealand anti-gun activist Philip Alpers as saying that there is a “massive increase in lethality”.
            Mr Alpers was heavily criticized recently by PNG Defence Force Commander Peter Ilau, who took issue with him very strongly and in public over his use of figures on the number of arms alleged to have gone missing from the local government armouries. Ilau said these figures were misleading, and that an accurate inventory will be released shortly.
            The article does not give any actual figures about death rates either before or after the use of firearms became more common in tribal fighting.

September 1, 2005

Severe criticisms of South African gun law administration
            Two articles have been published within three days by www.news24.com dealing with increasing criticisms of the new South African gun legislation.
            The new laws have required the law-abiding firearm owner to fulfil many requirements, but the system has been shown to be too overloaded to allow it. The licensing process is bogging down in difficulties, including lack of rural outlets for training, high costs, backlogs of applications and appeals, and, according to Member of Parliament Roy Jankielsohn, bureaucratic obstruction. Licences, it is said, are being refused for insufficient reasons, and for their part, the police are complaining of lack of resources, poor internal communications, and insufficient personnel to carry out their duties.
           Roy Jankielsohn has also been quoted as saying the general public has formed the opinion the intent of the new laws is largely to disarm the law-abiding. “The government has a responsibility to ensure that all individuals, rich and poor, urban and rural, are able to comply with legislation. In this respect the Firearms Control Act is failing dismally,” he said.
            Accordingly, his party, the Democratic Alliance, has asked for a special parliamentary debate on the inadequacies of the Firearms Control Act.
            In addition, the expected cost of implementation of the legislation has already blown out by a factor of more than seven, from in the region of R270m to the current and rising R2b. Comparisons are being made to the Canadian gun registry.

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1763079,00.html
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,,2-7-12_1762269,00.html