The Supreme Court of Appeal said in 2020 that unlicensed firearms pose a real risk of being stolen or lost and ending up in criminal hands.
Gun Free South Africa says firearm licence renewals have dropped sharply, raising concerns about illegal gun possession and public safety. Picture: iStock
Many gun owners in South Africa are no longer renewing their licences, endangering the public as the weapons are now being used illegally, according to Gun Free South Africa (GFSA).
Recent research conducted by GFSA using information from South African Police Service (Saps) annual reports showed that SA’s firearm relicensing system was collapsing, with applications dropping 74% since 2021-22 – from 213 631 to just 55 936 last year.
Relicensing system under pressure
GFSA researcher Claire Taylor said they have been tracking the issue since the information was made available from 2006.
The recently released report was in line with the commemoration of the International Gun Destruction Day a few days ago, Taylor said.
As much as the world progressed in terms of the permanent removal of firearms from circulation, the picture looks very different in South Africa, she added.
“A growing number of gun owners have stopped renewing their licences. Under the Firearms Control Act, every one of those firearms is now illegally possessed,” she said.
“Once a firearm licence expires, it’s dead. It can’t be renewed – not even if the owner applies the next day. Instead, the owner has to apply for a new licence. The only way to renew a licence is to apply before it expires.”
The Supreme Court of Appeal said in 2020 that unlicensed firearms pose a real risk of being stolen or lost and ending up in criminal hands, and that without an effective relicensing system, firearms endanger lives.
However, Taylor added: “The legal status of a gun does not, on its own, decide whether it gets lost, stolen or used in a crime.
“Any gun can be lost, stolen or misused, whether licensed or not. What licensing does is reduce that risk, by keeping the gun on record, requiring regular checks on the owner and creating a paper trail if something goes wrong.”
Statistics showed that civilians reported an average of 8 000 firearms lost or stolen each year over the past three years.
“Guns are the leading weapon used to commit murder. An average of up to 30 people are shot dead every day, more than die on our roads,” Taylor said.
Gun owners dispute the findings
South African Gunowners’ Association chair Damian Enslin said: “To whatever extent relicensing applications have declined, that decline is not evidence of lawlessness among licensed firearm owners.
“It is the predictable result of a legal framework parliament has failed to fix and a Central Firearms Registry that has been dysfunctional for years.”
Enslin said in May 2022, the Constitutional Court, in Minister of Police v Fidelity Security Services, confirmed that ownership of a firearm does not terminate when a licence expires and that owners of firearms with lapsed licences may apply for new licences through the ordinary process.
“Since then, gun owners have faced uncertainty about what the law requires of them, while the Central Firearms Registry has continued to sit on applications for months and, in many cases, years,” he said.
“When the state makes compliance slow, uncertain and unrewarding, application numbers fall. That is a failure of administration, not of gun owners.
“The danger lies not with licensed owners whose paperwork has lapsed. These are people who have passed competency testing, background checks and safe storage inspections, and whose firearms remain recorded against their names in the registry.”
Debate over legal compliance
Enslin said the real danger is the state’s loss of administrative control.
“Conflating a vetted owner with an expired licence with an armed criminal does nothing to make South Africans safer,” said Taylor.
She said what led to the collapse in relicensing was the combination of factors that include:
- Legal uncertainty following a 2022 Constitutional Court ruling that was widely misread to mean gun owners no longer needed a valid licence;
- Misinformation and disinformation from the gun lobby group; and
- Failure by Saps to enforce the renewal and termination provisions of the Firearms Control Act.
“These failures contrast sharply with a 2016 Saps directive on licence renewals which saw relicensing applications more than double in its wake,” she said.
“The lesson is straightforward: when gun owners receive clear messaging backed by meaningful consequences, they respond.”
She added South Africa already has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the world and the country was letting the crisis grow, “while we have the tools to address it”.
“The law hasn’t changed. A gun owner without a valid licence is breaking the law. What’s missing is the political will to say so clearly and to act on it.”
