10 November 2009
Johannesburg — POLICE Minister Nathi Mthethwa wants another firearms amnesty. Spokesmen for the police told Parliament those who had illegal firearms could hand them in without any consequences or could apply for their licences to be renewed.
MPs rejected the police's idea that this could be done anonymously, which negates the whole point of an amnesty. Not that this is relevant, because the criminals, the people we really want to disarm, are not going to be queuing up to hand in their guns. It is naive to assume that this will happen.
Those who will take advantage of this "amnesty" are going to like-minded to those in the 2006 amnesty, people afraid of becoming criminals as a result of administrative action.
Another "amnesty" appears to fly in the face of two court orders. The Pretoria high court has ruled that all licences issued under the old act remain valid until a decision has been made on the constitutionality of some provisions of the Firearms Control Act.
Surely Mthethwa should wait for the legal challenges to the act to be resolved before having another amnesty?
The second order, from the Cape high court, was that Mthethwa should provide guidelines on how police would deal with the issue of compensation for those gun owners who were compelled to hand in their weapons when they failed to get their licences renewed. Potentially this could cost the state millions.
Is Mthethwa in conflict with this ruling by going for another amnesty without having sorted out the compensation issue?
The act has been a mess from day one. The police were warned. Now hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens could be criminalised as a result of the bungled implementation of a deeply flawed piece of legislation.
As was suggested all those years ago, a simple audit should be done of all legal guns; the rest are then by definition illegal. Then the relicensing provisions should be scrapped to avoid throwing more good money after bad in trying to implement this absurd law.
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