Studies show safety training fails as kids still pull triggers. Removing guns from homes is the only real protection.
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Every single week there are reports of children who are caught in the crossfire of gun violence. Just last weekend in Wesbank, Cape Town, a nine-year-old boy, whose mother was killed, was wounded in a shooting that police believed was gang-related.
In just five and a half months in 2024, 333 children in the Western Cape alone were treated for gun-related injuries in public health facilities… and 58 of them died from their wounds.
For every story that makes the news, there are children treated in trauma units, families planning funerals, and survivors carrying invisible scars that may never make it into official statistics.
Nationally, guns remain the weapon of choice in murder. When guns are so present in society, children do not sit on the sidelines of this crisis, they stand directly in its path.
South Africa rightly tracks its murder rate, but what we are less honest about is how those numbers translate into the daily lives of children.
Gun violence is a public health crisis and a child rights violation.
We do have a law meant to control guns. The Firearms Control Act 60 of 2000 helped push firearm deaths down from an estimated 34 per day in 1998, to about 18 per day by 2009.
However, those gains have been steadily eroded by corruption, weak oversight and loopholes that allow guns to leak to the illegal markets.
When firearms meant to be in private hands end up arming gangs or abusive partners, it is children who often pay the highest price.
Children and guns should never be allowed to mix.
South Africa’s Firearms Control Act makes it a crime for a gun owner to leave a firearm lying around.
By law, if the gun is not in direct control, it must be unloaded and locked in a safe. Breaking this rule can lead to up to five years in prison.
Children will find and play with guns, even when parents think they will not.
In one study, boys aged 8-12 were left in a room with two toy guns and one real gun.
Even among boys whose parents thought they had “low interest” in guns, 65% picked up the real gun and 35% pulled the trigger. Children are curious.
Teaching children safety messages like “stop, do not touch, leave the area or tell an adult” does not work.
While children can verbally repeat back the instructions they have been taught, which makes parents feel their child understands what they must do if they find a gun, these instructions consistently fail to change children’s behaviour when they encounter a real firearm.
In both controlled and reallife settings, children who received training were no less likely to pick up and play with a gun than untrained children.
Gun-proofing shifts responsibility onto children for an adult’s failure to follow the law.
No amount of instruction can override curiosity or guarantee safe choices. The most effective way to prevent gun injuries is to remove guns from homes.
We need to treat every child killed or injured by a gun as evidence of a system’s failure. That means:
- Tightening firearm licensing, vetting and conducting periodic audits. Decisively closing down corrupt channels that feed illegal markets;
- Aggressively tracing and removing illegal firearms, especially in hotspots like the Cape Flats;
- Enforcing safe storage laws in homes, because many accidental shootings start with a gun that was within a child’s reach or in abuser’s hand; and
- Investing in trauma-informed support in schools and clinics so that children who have witnessed or survived shootings are not left to be strong on their own.
We must also confront the culture that wraps guns in myths of power, masculinity and protection.
In communities saturated with firearms, children quickly learn that conflict is settled at the barrel of a gun. To break that cycle, we need visible disarmament campaigns, local peace structures and non-violent alternatives for children who are otherwise drawn into gangs or armed groups.
A child’s right to grow up without the constant threat of gunfire is non-negotiable.
In a country that has already done the hard work of transforming its laws and political system, finding the courage to disarm and protect our children should not be beyond our reach.
