For those committed to the redressal of gender injustice the draft Bill represents a further means of humanizing our society, and more specifically, making our country a safer place for women. The draft represents an important, albeit limited, move away from a deeply atavistic and patriarchal worldview and towards a society that is compassionate and non-sexist.

We view this Bill as a significant step in the creation of society where the use of firearms will be confined to the formal institutions of the State specifically tasked with the defence of our country’s inhabitants and its borders. The examples of countries near (Botswana) and far (Japan) illustrate that the vision of a civil society totally liberated from firearms need not be a pipe dream. Given that we would have preferred legislation that totally prohibits the use of firearms by civilians and, notwithstanding, our awareness of the constraints under which our lawmakers framed the Bill, our support for the Bill is thus a qualified one.

Underpinning our more general reasons for supporting this Bill is the belief that simplistic solutions to deeply rooted socio-economic problems need to be avoided and that our attempts to create a more just and humane society themselves need to incorporate these ideals. In other words, our responses to crime and the inhumanity at the heart of these should not be characterized by inhuman strategies.

More specifically related to our gender concerns is the ideal of ending the culture where weapons are seen as an extension of a male’s manhood and the means whereby he protects his “property”, including women. We are convinced that for the mensch to emerge in men, they have to dispense with notions of the indispensability of weapons.  We seek to create a society that is the antithesis of one where men do “join the SA Police so that I could get a gun and feel like a proper man” (a young police officer in an interview). Nor is such a society where an elderly Zulu man says, “In my village a man has to carry a weapon even if he goes to the shop, so that everybody should see that it is a man walking” (cited in Cock, 1998, 1).

At the heart of our support for this Bill is a feminist/womanist challenge to the militarization of society and the notion that largely male generated problems can be resolved by male generated violence.  While both men and women are the victims of violence, the undisputed truth is that, in the main, the perpetrators of crime are men and the vast majority of victims are women. This also holds true for crimes perpetrated with firearms.

Studies in South Africa and elsewhere show that more women are shot home in domestic violence situations than out on the streets or at the hands of intruders. Rather than providing protection to women, guns increase the risk of homicide or suicide of women in the home. In a 1994 study conducted by Lisa Vetten of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, it was found that 94 out of 118 women were shot by male partners or ex-partners.

A Report by the Violence Policy Study Centre in the USA released in 1988 found that “homicides against women are surrounded by mythology and sensationalization that suggest women are typically murdered by depraved rapist or mugger who jumps from a dark alley or break into a home. The firearms industry and gun lobby are particularly enthusiastic in perpetuating these images as part of their advertising and rhetoric. These scenarios are the least common ones. Instead, homicide are most frequently the result of domestic violence, most often using a gun.

We are often told that guns are to homicide what motor vehicles are to accidents. In other words, it is not guns that kill but people. The likelihood of any potential victim escaping, however, is greatly diminished in the face of a gun. As one women victim put it, “you can run from physical abuse, but you cannot run away from a gun.”

There are of course a minority of women are responding to gender violence by arming themselves in the belief that they will be safer. Guns, however, provide people with an illusion of security because owning one, may make women more attractive targets rather than given them an opportunity of defending themselves. A study by Altbeker in 1997 in Alexandra and Bramley showed that 78 % of the victim’s guns were stolen during the crime perpetrated against them and that the victims were four times more likely to have their firearms stolen than to use them in self-defence .

The Domestic Violence Act of 1998 is of course a significant attempt to eliminate gender violence. However, in the words of another gender activist “securing an interdict against the abuser is a “not a complete guarantee of safety, and indeed, is often meaningless to someone who has gun and has threatened to kill a women. In fact, most women who are killed by their partners, are killed when they try to leave.”

International studies show that the levels of gun ownership commensurate with the levels of violence irrespective of the class basis of the owners. A casual perusal of relevant comparisons between Canada and the USA bears this out. Canada has approximately 1 million handguns in circulation while the USA has 77 million. While the murder rate without handguns is roughly 1,3 times that of Canada, the murder rate with handguns in the USA is roughly 15 times that of Canada.

The Bill is a very significant departure from the existing Arms and Ammunition Act that is inherently open to abuse despite several amendments. While the Bill places proper structures in place to achieve its objectives, a total prohibition of firearms to civilians would have dispensed with the need for such structures and would have saved the fiscus the costs of setting these up and maintaining them.  There may be some merit in the argument that the structures envisaged to administer the Bill is cumbersome and may prove to be very costly. In response, I would argue that nothing is too costly to save human life. If cost or cumbersome structures are really that problematic then total prohibition of civilian access to firearms is the better option.

We support the demand by Gun-Free South Africa for the establishment of an Independent Firearms Authority “as another protection against the manipulation of the licensing system by ‘insiders’ in collaboration with some of those in whose financial interest it is to sell as many guns as possible to as many people as possible”. Such an authority would also oversee the competency of investigations and the issuing of licenses. An equally, if not more significant task of such an authority though would be to explore and recommend ways of continuously tightening up relevant legislation with a view to the ever greater restriction of licensing until the ideal of a gun-free civil society is attained.