Here’s how many guns South Africa’s police officers have
Weapons watchdog the Small Arms Survey has released its latest report on gun ownership around the world.
At the end of 2017 there were approximately 1.013 billion firearms in the 230 countries and autonomous territories of the world, 84.6% of which were held by civilians, 13.1% by state militaries, and 2.2% by law enforcement agencies, the report said.
The 2017 combined global total of 1.013 billion firearms is higher than the previously published Small Arms Survey global total of 875 million firearms in 2006 – an increase of 15.7% for all identified firearms. Much of this change is due to an increase of 32% in the estimated civilian-held firearms total.
Available sources indicate that as of 2017 there was a global total of at least 22.7 million known or estimated law enforcement firearms, 2.2% of all firearms identified by the Small Arms Survey around the world.
Worldwide, 4.8 million law enforcement firearms have been reported to the Small Arms Survey or documented from other sources. An additional 17.9 million or so firearms owned by law enforcement agencies can be estimated with reasonable confidence, it said.
Read: Private security vs police officer numbers in South Africa
Documenting law enforcement firearms, Small Arms Survey used data from 28 countries, including many of the largest in the world: India, Russia, China, and the United States. South Africa was also included in the report.
“As with other forms of firearms possession, law enforcement firearms appear to be heavily concentrated in the most populous countries. Almost 13 million firearms, or 58% of the reported and estimated global total, belong to law enforcement agencies in 12 countries. While large countries generally have large numbers of law enforcement weapons, the actual rate of arming varies greatly among them,” the report said.
For the remaining countries documented by the Small Arms Survey, South Africa’s police service is reported to have almost two firearms per officer, while it makes up 1.14% of the almost 23 million law enforcement firearms believed to be in use around the world.
The average ratio for the 28 countries and territories in the survey is 1.7 firearms per sworn officer.
Reports from official sources or disclosures by officials show that law enforcement firearms holdings range from a highest reported national total of 5.1 firearms per sworn officer in Estonia to the lowest reported total of 0.4 firearms per sworn officer in Tuvalu.
Recent media reports have painted a bleak picture of competence of SAPS officers when it comes to firearms. Citing Police Ministry statistics, investigate journalists at GroundUp reported in 2017 approximately 2,200 SAPS firearms had been stolen or had gone missing ‘in the past three financial years’.
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