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3003, 2022

BRIEFING 1 of 2022: Femicide in South Africa over 18 years

30 March 2022|Gun Policy Briefs|

Femicide – the murder of women and girls – is the most extreme form of violence, and shows a country’s magnitude of violence against women.

South Africa’s third national femicide study looks at how femicide has changed over an 18 year period, comparing data from 1999, 2009 and 2017.

The findings of the Medical Research Council’s 2017 femicide study include that:

  • While SA’s […]
812, 2021

BRIEFING 4 of 2021: A snapshot of injury-related death in SA in 2017

8 December 2021|Gun Policy Briefs|

Briefing 4 summarises South Africa’s 2nd injury mortality survey which analyses 2017 mortuary data.  The survey gives a snapshot of who, how, where and when people died including detailed information on the weapon used in murder or suicide.

The main findings of the 2017 injury mortality survey include that:

‒             More people were murdered than died […]

1411, 2021

BRIEFING 3 of 2021: The illegal firearms trade in South Africa

14 November 2021|Gun Policy Briefs|

In May 2021 the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service published a draft Firearms Control Amendment Bill. With almost 100 proposed amendments, a key focus of the Bill is to control legal firearms and ammunition more effectively. This Briefing explores whether that approach will have an impact on the illegal firearms trade in South Africa, and is based on a recently […]

1105, 2021

BRIEFING 2 of 2021: SA’s Central Firearms Register – The collapsing cornerstone of gun control

11 May 2021|Gun Policy Briefs|

On 14 and 15 May the Portfolio Committee on Police is conducting an oversight visit in Gauteng, where members will visit the Central Firearms Registry (CFR) in Pretoria. Briefing 2 has been developed in preparation for this oversight visit to highlight that problems in the functioning of the CFR identified in 2010 have still not been dealt with eleven years […]

1402, 2021

BRIEFING 1 of 2021: The firearms amnesty has ended, does SAPS know where the guns are?

14 February 2021|Gun Policy Briefs|

Three days before the 2020-21 national firearms amnesty ended, the SAPS reported that just 40,729 firearms had been handed in, either for destruction or by gun owners with expired licences applying for new licences. Assuming that all the firearms handed in had expired licences, this is only 9% of the 450,000+ firearms which the Supreme Court of Appeal estimated were […]

2511, 2020

BRIEFING 3 of 2020: QUICK FACTS – Guns and violence in SA

25 November 2020|Gun Policy Briefs|

The Covid 19 pandemic has made 2020 a year of numbers as we track the number of new infections, hospitalisations, deaths, recoveries.

As such, it seems apt that our third and final Briefing of 2020 is also filled with numbers – quick facts and stats on guns and violence in South Africa.

To reduce gun violence, we need to reduce the easy […]