Firearms Control Latest: Citizens stripped of right to own guns

“Sheer madness. Shocking and disturbing, but not unexpected from a brain-dead police ministry,” is how Gun Owners South Africa has described the state’s move to disarm citizens via the proposed 2021 Firearms Control Amendment Bill released for public comment on Friday. 

“Like a rotting corpse floating to the surface of a cesspool, the 2018 ‘draft’ amendment bill has reappeared, bringing with it the stench of long-dead thinking and outmoded paternalism. Magical thinking also…the straight out of Hollywood Ballistic Fingerprinting fraud scheme is getting another chance to absorb whatever is left of the SAPS budget,” ” GOSA chairman, Paul Oxley said in a statement.

The proposed bill does not allow citizens to possess firearms for the purpose of self-defence.

“It is sheer madness. Shocking and disturbing, but not unexpected from a brain-dead police ministry,” he said.

“At the same time as the Police Minister announces a R3 billion cut in the SAPS budget for protecting you and I, and a R1.7 billion increase in the VIP Protection Services budget, for protecting our political masters, the police ministry would remove the only practical means of self defence from the beleaguered South African citizenry,” Oxley said.

“GOSA is astounded at the cynicism and tone-deafness of this latest clumsy attempt to relegate all citizens to chattels of the state. Slaves who are bled of taxes to the benefit of the ridiculously corrupt privileged class who rule us.”

“Just so we’re clear: The Constitution recognises our right to life, which is hollow and meaningless without access to the most effective means to protect that life, which is privately held firearms, otherwise why do SAPS carry them?”

Oxley added that more than 60% of firearm owners in SA are “described as ‘black’ in terms of the old concept of nationality which still pertains in government-think”.

“Many of them, disproportionately so, do not have the means at their disposal to have armed security on call, so this proposed disarming of civil society will fall most heavily on them and on women, and the elderly. And this from a government who would claim to be people-centered, and concerned with gender based violence,” Oxley said.