Gun licence renewals collapse as concerns over illegal firearms mount

Gun licence renewals in South Africa have plunged, prompting warnings from Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) that the fall is increasing the number of illegally possessed firearms and heightening public safety risks.

Sharp drop in relicensing applications

GFSA research using South African Police Service annual reports found that relicensing applications fell 74% since 2021-22, from 213 631 to 55 936 in the most recent year covered by the study.

What GFSA says

GFSA researcher Claire Taylor said the organisation has tracked relicensing since 2006 and that the recent report coincided with International Gun Destruction Day. She warned that many gun owners have stopped renewing licences and that under the Firearms Control Act, “every one of those firearms is now illegally possessed.”

“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.”

Taylor also noted that the legal status of a gun does not alone determine whether it will be lost, stolen or used in a crime, but that licensing reduces risk by keeping guns on record, requiring checks on owners and creating a paper trail.

Court rulings and statistics cited

The article cites a 2020 Supreme Court of Appeal observation 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.

Statistics in the report show civilians reported an average of 8 000 firearms lost or stolen each year over the past three years. GFSA said guns are the leading weapon used to commit murder and that an average of up to 30 people are shot dead every day.

Responses from gun-owner groups

South African Gunowners’ Association chair Damian Enslin disputed that the decline in relicensing equals lawlessness among licensed owners. He said the fall in applications is the result of a legal framework that parliament has failed to fix and a Central Firearms Registry that has been dysfunctional for years.

“When the state makes compliance slow, uncertain and unrewarding, application numbers fall. That is a failure of administration, not of gun owners.”

Enslin cited a May 2022 Constitutional Court ruling in Minister of Police v Fidelity Security Services, saying the court confirmed that ownership of a firearm does not terminate when a licence expires and that owners with lapsed licences may apply for new licences through the ordinary process.

Causes of the relicensing collapse

Taylor attributed the collapse in relicensing to several factors she listed: legal uncertainty following the 2022 Constitutional Court ruling that was widely misread; misinformation and disinformation from the gun lobby; and failure by SAPS to enforce renewal and termination provisions of the Firearms Control Act. She contrasted these failures with a 2016 SAPS directive that saw relicensing applications more than double at the time.

Taylor said the law has not changed and that a gun owner without a valid licence is breaking the law, adding that what is missing is political will to act clearly and enforce the rules.

Implications

The reporting presents a picture in which administrative failures, legal confusion and declining relicensing rates intersect with already high levels of gun loss and gun homicide, creating concern among campaigners and debate between safety advocates and gun-owner groups over the best way to reduce risks.