Home PodcastJulie Alli Gun Free SA Calls for Action After Mass Shootings

Gun Free SA Calls for Action After Mass Shootings

by Thaabit Kamaar

Photo by [BBC]


Gun Free South Africa is calling on the Government to act on gun ownership as the scourge of gun violence becomes more apparent in the country.

This year, mass shootings have claimed the lives of 22 people in the Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal. In a statement released by the GFSA, “The latest gun massacres in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal will not be the last if the Government makes again empty promises of action.”

The Daily Maverick reported that 21 people were killed in a tavern in the Eastern Cape last year. A few weeks later, 15 people were killed in a tavern in Gauteng, and 12 were killed in Kwazulu-Natal. They were all killed through the use of firearms.


Gun Control

Adele Kirsten of GFSA said she has experienced working in crime prevention and has learned that crime is preventable so long as interventions are set in place.

“Gun Free South Africa is calling on the Minister to set up a Specialised Firearms Unit. We’ve been successful in the past in reducing our gun deaths, and we can do that again. But the worrying thing is this change in the nature of gun violence in South Africa. It’s moving more from a kind of interpersonal or gang related to something like these mass shootings. Where over five people, five to eight people are being killed in a single instant.”

According to Kirsten, the most effective way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the availability of guns in circulation.

She advocates for stricter gun laws to apply to legal and illegal firearms. Most guns which are used in various criminal activities are unlawful. However, they were once legally owned by licensed individuals.

Kirsten adds guns come from multiple sources in the legal market. Still, for whatever reason, whether loss or theft, they are bought and sold in the illicit market. The primary source, she said, is from licensed individuals who misplace their firearms.

“Once a weapon moves into the illegal market, you have no way of controlling it. You don’t have control over who owns and uses it, and you don’t have control over the number of weapons that are in circulation. What you do have control over is being able to recover the weapons, and that is a key task for SAPS.”

A short-term intervention would be for authorities to set up specialised firearms units which would recover lost or stolen guns, trace their ownership and ultimately destroy them.

SMread| Turkey Struck by Two Devastating Earthquakes

Collective Response Needed

Last year’s tavern shootings in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal shocked the nation. The Government’s response was to establish and deploy various units to track down and persecute the shooters.

However, Kirsten describes such a response as panicky as it has proven ineffective in tackling gun violence in the country. She adds the Government needs to adopt a multidimensional strategy which involves all the departments to address the issues related to violent crime.

“In July last year, when we had all these tavern killings, the response of the police was we’re going to put in place some kind of strategy to prevent this. The fact that it’s happening again and again means that either the strategy is not working or there’s no strategy. And we would guess the latter. There’s been no concerted effort to say this is a new phenomenon … Let’s tackle it, and let’s make sure that we deal with it.”

Combating gun violence will take a collective effort to remove guns from society. Kirsten said SAPS has the primary task to keep society safe, and they should be responsible for carrying forward the initiatives. However, it is not only up to them. Communities should work alongside authorities in implementing various interventions which reduce gun violence in society.

Even though it is crucial to track down perpetrators, Kirsten believes the recovery and destruction of guns should be prioritised as they are prone to circulate continuously in criminal activities.

Watch the full discussion here.

Related Videos