gun-licence renewals in shambles  
11 April 2008

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.

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.

Wyndham Hartley, www.businessday.co.za