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August 2007 Latest News

August 12, 2007

Kenyan concern about illegal arms

A small arms exhibition entitled Crush the Illicit Trade in Small Arms has been held at the UN complex in Kenya. The Director of Police Operations in Nairobi has called for harsher laws in a bid to suppress illegal trafficking.

Stating that there are now fewer arms circulating because there are fewer conflicts in nearby countries, the authorities have admitted that they do not know how many illegal arms there are, nor where to find them.

The exhibition took place under the aegis of the Nairobi Protocol for the Prevention, Control and Reduction of Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. Its member states, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, are obliged to act against illegal arms. Kenya has produced changes for its own legislation.

“Both national and international laws are inadequate and do not target the manufacturers,” the Assistant Minister for Internal Affairs, Peter Munya, said in a statement.

Recent attempts in the USA have failed to hold legitimate arms manufacturers responsible for the criminal misuse of their products.

www.allafrica.com



August 8, 2007

Apprentice Hunter program for Minnesota

Minnesota joins a number of other states in the USA with the introduction this year of a new program sponsored by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Called the Hunter Apprentice Program, it waives the usual requirements of firearms certification for first-season hunters who wish to go afield, as long as they are under the close supervision of a licence-holding adult hunter. This means the beginning hunter must stay in uninterrupted line of sight and within unaided hailing distance at all times.

The law in Minnesota already allowed children under twelve to hunt small game under adult supervision, and this new initiative opens up opportunities for older children and beginning adult hunters to have the first season’s experience of hunting and to defer the further training required by law until after it.

For full certification of hunters in firearm accreditation, Minnesota offers courses that can be taken at home by computer or handled in hard copy. Up to 25,000 accreditations per year are completed. According to the Enforcement Officer of the Minnesota DNR, Mike Hammer, there are many states now increasing flexibility in their regulations in a bid to attract more hunters. American wildlife conservation programs using hunters’ money have been so successful that many quarry species are in superabundance.

Further information about this program is available at www.mndnr.gov.


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