Parliamentary replies show 99% of firearm murders used illegal guns, MPs say

Parliamentary replies tabled by the Freedom Front Plus show almost all firearm murders in recent years were carried out with illegal guns, party officials said.

Key figures from parliamentary replies

Wouter Wessels, Freedom Front Plus (FF+) MP, national chair and chief police spokesperson, said parliamentary replies to questions from the FF+ revealed that 41 297 murders were committed with illegal, unlicensed firearms in the past four financial years, from 2022-23 to 2025-26.

Wessels said that figure amounts to “more than 28 murders per day.” He added the statistics provided by the Acting Minister of Police, Firoz Cachalia, showed that 99% of murders were committed with illegal firearms and that only 393 people were killed with licensed firearms in the same period.

Numbers for the 2025-26 year

The article cites Cachalia as stating that 9 398 people were murdered with firearms during the 2025-26 financial year. It reports that only 75 of these murders – or 0.8% – were committed by the legal owner of a lawfully licensed firearm, whereas illegal firearms were used in 9 323 (or 99.2%) of all firearm-related murders during the same period.

The piece also states that firearms originally belonging to the South African Police Service, the South African National Defence Force and the metro police were used in 46 murders during the 2025-26 financial year.

Responses from civil society and policing bodies

AfriForums community safety spokesperson Jacques Broodryk said the figures confirmed the governments motives for stricter firearm control were ideologically driven and warned that proposed amendments to the Firearms Control Act were aimed at disarming legal firearm owners.

Broodryk said:

“Disarming responsible citizens will not disarm criminals. It will merely leave law-abiding citizens more vulnerable.”

Damian Enslin, chair of the South African Gun Association (Saga), said the four-year trend was difficult to ignore and urged licensed firearm owners to comply with the law. He said:

“Criminals, by definition, do not.”

Security operations and seizures

SANDF spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Mpho Mathebula said SANDF and Saps continued to achieve breakthroughs through Operation Prosper. The operations, Mathebula said, had resulted in the arrest of 717 suspects, the seizure of 24 illegal firearms and 1 928 rounds of ammunition.

Mathebula said the operations yielded multiple arrests, including one for murder, 15 for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, eight for illegal possession of ammunition, six for illegal possession of firearms and 265 for contravention of the Immigration Act.

What the figures show

The parliamentary replies cited in the reporting present a picture in which the vast majority of firearm-related murders recorded in recent financial years were carried out with illegal weapons, according to FF+ and the figures attributed to the Acting Minister of Police.

This article is based on figures and statements provided in parliamentary replies and cited by political and civil-society spokespeople.