TEMPERATURES continued to rise around the proposed changes to gun control laws on Monday with the South African Gun Owners’ Association (Saga) warning that they could lead to substantial noncompliance and the criminalisation of legal gun owners.
This claims last week that the proposed amendments offend the constitution by ignoring a previous court order that all licences granted under the old Arms and Ammunition Act would remain legal.
Legal representative for the private security industry and some hunting associations Martin Hood said last week that the requirement that all legal firearms be marked with micro-dots was a second tax for legal gun owners. Concerns have been expressed that the security of legal firearms will be compromised by having to hand them in for marking.
On Monday John Welch said on behalf of Saga that the release of the draft bill for public comment 10 days ago had caused an uproar among many firearm owners. He said Saga promotes the lawful, safe and responsible possession and use of firearms by people who are competent to possess them.
While Saga supporting all reasonable measures to combat crime, it also believed that free people must have the choice to decide what hobbies or sports to partake in and generally how to run their lives, including the right to choose whether or not to lawfully possess firearms, he said.
"Unfortunately many of the proposals in the amendment bill will place a heavy burden on law-abiding firearm owners without really having an effect on crime. In fact, the opposite may be true — some firearm owners might find the new provisions impractical and financially too cumbersome and then decide to rather not comply, hence becoming criminal. This must not happen.
"Because of the impracticality and huge financial and security implications of the application of micro-dots and ballistic sampling, Saga is opposed to these proposals. We are currently in discussions with experts in this technology and, unless we are assured that these processes will achieve the intended objective, we shall oppose them.
"We are of the view that these additional security measures only need to apply to the police and other state departments since more firearms are probably lost or stolen from these officials than from private licence holders," Mr Welch said.
The Saga statement said a positive feature of the draft bill is that it creates a new regime of operation for designated firearm officers and obligations and responsibilities.
Saga believes designated firearm officers must be responsible for firearm-related matters only and not be involved in general policing. To ensure corruption does not creep in, internationally recognised checks and balances must be built into the system.
"It has come as somewhat of a surprise that the period of validity of a competency certificate that had been extended to 10 years in the 2006 amendment act, is once again to be reduced to five years.
"However, since Saga was the first to propose that the firearm owner must be licensed and that firearms ought to be registered only, we shall not oppose this provision, provided the renewal of licences is scrapped.
"We are of the view that if firearm owners are confirmed to be competent every five years, licences do not have to be renewed, there must merely be verification that the licensed firearms are still in her or his possession," Mr Welch said.
The Civilian Secretariat for Police has given the public until the end of March to comment on the proposed changes.
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