South Africa: Gun-Licence Renewals in Shambles
Date: Apr 12, 2008 9:41 AM
South Africa: Gun-Licence Renewals in Shambles
Business Day (Johannesburg)10 April 2008
By Wyndham Hartley Cape Town
http://allafrica.com/stories/200804100117.html

The government is facing huge noncompliance and backlogs as legal gun owners fail
to apply for their licences to be renewed and the Central Firearms Registry struggles
to cope with the numbers that are lodged.

While the Firearms Control Act was being processed by Parliament and again when
an amendment went through both houses, the police were advised that re-licensing
all legal firearms in four years was impractical. The police were urged to allow
a simple audit of legal firearms rather than the extended process of relicensing.

At present, licences are granted for two, five or 10 years depending on their category,
and must be reapplied for on expiry.

The government and the legal gun owning community are faced with the possibility
that the second round of re- applications will arrive before the first round has
been completed.

In Canada, the law on which the Firearms Control Act is modelled is virtually being
ignored after noncompliance and huge cost overruns.

Yesterday, in response to a parliamentary question from Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter
Groenewald, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said that in 2005 when
the renewals process began, 126404 applications were received from those gun owners
whose birthdays fell in January, February or March.

In 2006 this increased to 215931 when those with birthdays in April, May and June
had to apply and to 259393 last year when those born in July, August and September
had to apply. This year is the last for renewals, and owners born in October, November
and December must apply.

There are an estimated 4,5-million legal guns in the country. While this number
could have been reduced to about 4-million through weapons being surrendered and
destroyed, the fact remains that only 601728 applications have been received out
of a possible 3-million.

Even if the estimate of legal guns was too high, as the police suggest, it still
means that substantial numbers of people will be criminalised at the end of the
process in June next year.

The backlog of uncompleted applications increases all the time. Nqakula said that
of the 126404 applications lodged in 2005, only 6954 had been completed.

Performance was a little better in 2006, with 53828 completed. Performance improved
greatly last year when 136506 of the 259393 applications were completed. But 404440
applications for renewal are still outstanding from the first three years of operation.

Nqakula, however, insisted that all renewal applications received for the period
2004 to 2007 had been fully processed on the Enhanced Firearms Register System.

“Contributory factors such as outstanding documentation from applicants, availability
of applicants for safe inspections and the finalisation of competency certificate
applications result in a situation where a final decision could not be made on the
outstanding applications during the same year. As the outstanding information is
received, the applications are considered and finalised.”

The renewal period closes at the end of March 2009. This departure from the calendar
year was because of initial confusion in 2005 over the lodging of renewal applications,
so an extension was granted.

If a gun owner has not applied for a renewal by that date, the weapons must be surrendered
or otherwise disposed of by June 30, 2009.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !