{"id":151609,"date":"2017-01-19T15:40:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T13:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=151609"},"modified":"2017-01-19T15:58:53","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T13:58:53","slug":"sa-criminals-are-hiring-ak47s-because-its-too-expensive-to-buy-them-this-is-how-much-they-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/151609\/sa-criminals-are-hiring-ak47s-because-its-too-expensive-to-buy-them-this-is-how-much-they-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"SA criminals are hiring AK47s because it&#8217;s too expensive to buy them &#8211; this is how much it costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Police insiders have confirmed that\u00a0criminal syndicates are significantly outgunning them with high-powered assault rifles by hiring them for the\u00a0day, week or month.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/news\/crime-courts\/gangs-hire-ak-47s-for-pretoria-robbery-spree-7451653\" target=\"_blank\">Pretoria News<\/a>, <\/strong>the insiders said that there had been\u00a0an increase in attacks in and around the city over the past year, with criminals using\u00a0AK-47, R5 and R1 assault rifles.<\/p>\n<p>Further\u00a0investigation into the use of the automatic weapons revealed a growing trend where smaller criminal gangs hired assault rifles from larger syndicates for a day, week or month.<\/p>\n<p>While purchasing an AK-47 on the black market could cost anything between R1,000 and R1,800,\u00a0smaller criminal gangs that cannot afford large sums of money hire the rifles for between R100 and R250 each.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Johan Burger, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) believes that this was part of a culture shift towards heavier arming among criminals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One of the main reasons criminals preferred the AK-47 was that it was intimidating to its victims and the most feared, especially during cash-in transit heists.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He confirmed that the\u00a0weapons were still regularly available through smuggling routes used during apartheid, and that\u00a0the border between South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique was a particular problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/139519\/this-is-how-many-crimes-take-place-every-day-and-every-hour-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\">This is how many crimes take place every day in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Police insiders have confirmed that criminal syndicates are significantly outgunning them with high-powered assault rifles by hiring them for the day, week or month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":151619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-151609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151609"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151625,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151609\/revisions\/151625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}