by Colin Bosman
Why are the main political parties, ANC aside, so silent and non-committed to the subject of private gun ownership?
Why are the DA, Freedom Front Plus, IFP and so on sitting on the fence while the ANC is attempting to push through legislative changes to the Firearms Control Act by attempting to prohibit self-defence as a reason for owning a firearm? Is this legislation simply an attempt to disarm the public?
Why is it that not a single political party is standing up for the constitutional right of honest, law-abiding citizens to defend their lives?
Why are honest law-abiding gun owners and potential gun owners being demonised and blamed for the killing fields on the Cape Flats, with the help of selective statistics being presented to the authorities by anti-gun-ear whisperers ?
Why the silence? Or do all non-ANC political parties see the subject of gun ownership as a hot potato? If so, why ?
Once again too many questions and absolutely no answers.
* Colin Bosman, Newlands.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
DA continues to fight against draconian Firearms Control Amendment Bill
by Andrew Whitfield
In response to Colin Bosman’s letter, ‘Why deafening silence on gun ownership’: Dear Colin Bosman, I cannot answer for any other political party, but the DA is certainly continuing our fight against the Firearms Control Amendment Bill.
Like you, we believe that this draconian bill will fundamentally damage South Africans’ means to protect themselves in a country where the police are increasingly unable to do so against overwhelming violent crimes.
That is why the DA is not only opposing the Firearms Control Amendment Bill, but has also opposed the Private Security Industry Regulation Amendment Bill since 2012.
In terms of what we have done to stop the Firearms Control Amendment Bill specifically:
We have called on the minister to abandon this bill which will only hamper people’s ability to protect themselves against dangerous criminals;
We called for the Civilian Secretariat to appear before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee of Police to give a detailed presentation on the Firearms Control Amendment Bill to allow Parliament to fully interrogate the contents and rationale of this unreasonable bill;
We have launched and handed in a petition with more than 113 000 signatures opposing this bill;
We have called for a national firearms audit of all police stations across the country as more than 700 SAPS guns are lost or stolen every year and find their way to criminals. Instead of disarming law-abiding South Africans, the SAPS must stop arming criminals;
We submitted our objections to the Firearms Control Amendment Bill to the Civilian Secretariat for Police and continuously urged all South Africans to do the same;
We successfully hosted a virtual South African Firearms Summit with many different sectors of society. We even invited Police Minister Bheki Cele to the debate, although he declined – likely because he would be unable to defend this bill against the overwhelming evidence of the danger it would hold for ordinary people; and
We have highlighted all our various concerns with the bill on an episode of Inside Track and we have released at least a dozen statements on the issue, wrote letters and opinion pieces on it and have done numerous interviews on various media platforms to highlight how incredibly problematic this bill is.
The DA appreciates your passion in opposing the Firearms Control Amendment Bill, Mr Bosman, and trust that you channelled this into submitting your objections to it to the Civilian Secretariat for Police, or at the very least signing our petition. We need South Africans to be as outraged about this disenfranchising bill as we are if we want to stop it.
* Andrew Whitfield, MP and DA Shadow Minister for Police.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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