New laws can prevent South Africans from protecting themselves against criminals
Ian Cameron, a DA MP and Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police, warned that the new Firearms Control Act Amendment Bill is a dangerous power grab that will cost lives.
The Firearms Control Act Amendment Bill (2025) will amend the Firearms Control Act, 2000 (Act No. 60 of 2000).
The new Firearms Control Act Amendment Bill has numerous objectives, including:
- Providing for the verification by accredited associations of applications to possess a firearm.
- Providing for the period of validity of all competency certificates to be five years.
- Providing for conditions under which a firearm license for occasional hunting or sports shooting may be issued.
- Providing for the limitation on the number of firearm licenses that an occasional hunter or sports shooter may hold.
Although these objectives may seem reasonable, Cameron warned that the bill’s ultimate aim is to disarm citizens and the private sector.
“This Bill represents one of the most dangerous assaults yet on South Africans’ right to safety and self-defence,” he said.
He said it hands the Minister of Police the power to decide arbitrarily who may live safely and who may not, by controlling who may be lawfully armed.
“That is unconstitutional, reckless, and incompatible with any democratic system that respects the rule of law,” he said.
Cameron argued that disarming law-abiding South Africans and the private sector will not stop violent crime.
“It will only make our communities more vulnerable while leaving the real culprits, corrupt officials and criminal syndicates, untouched,” he said.
He said the state, due to the collapsing police service, fails to protect its citizens from violent crime.
“Any attempt to disarm law-abiding South Africans is, in fact, taking away their lifeline in the wake of the crime epidemic that continues to plague our country,” he said.
“I want to see them (try) disarm lawfully armed and law abiding citizens in this country, because they are going to fail dismally. That is a fight they should not pick.”
The biggest problem linked to guns in South Africa
The 2015 Civilian Secretariat for Police Service and Wits School of Governance Firearms Review findings back up Cameron’s claims.
The study found that the problem lies with the South African Police Service and the total collapse of the Central Firearms Register (CFR).
That report described the CFR as “technically collapsed, institutionally incoherent, and incapable of maintaining accurate records.”
It warned that more bureaucracy before fixing SAPS capacity would “destabilise the entire regulatory regime.”
It concluded that violent crime trends correlate not with gun ownership, but with effective, intelligence-led policing.
Cameron cited the example of former SAPS Colonel Christiaan Prinsloo, who stole and sold 2,000 state-issued firearms to gangsters.
These police guns, stolen from state armouries, were linked to over 1,000 murders and 1,400 attempted murders in the Western Cape between 2010 and 2016.
South Africa’s Acting Minister of Police, Firoz Cachalia, revealed that 4,124 SAPS-owned firearms were reported as lost or stolen from 2020.
Last year, Groundup reported that an estimated 1,800 state-owned firearms are being lost or stolen every year.
These guns enter the illicit market and find their way into the hands of criminals, which is fueling the crime wave.
It highlighted that 502 state institutions own 2.2 million firearms. The SA Police and Defence Force own less than 30% of them.
The only state institution to partially report how many firearms they lose per year, is the South African Police Service.
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime researcher Jenni Irish-Qhobosheane said the situation was shocking.
The SANDF and other state entities were supposed to report their firearm losses and thefts to the Central Firearms Registry. However, they do not do so.
She stated that an analysis by the Civilian Secretariat for Police concluded that the total loss of firearms over ten years was 18,000.
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