But these are pointless arguments. It s the big picture that matters, which is that no gun control law has ever reduced crime and that the armed citizen is the best antidote to armed criminals. It is there in black and white for anyone to read, and the chief drafter, Louis Kock, has admitted that these provisions were included in the hope that public apathy would allow them to pass unchallenged. Government s attitude is therefore not to govern within the constitution but to test its limits at the expense of civil rights. The FCA is undoubtedly a test run in which firearm owners have been targeted because they are a politically weak minority, and because the mainstream media, in its enthusiasm for more gun control, could be relied upon not to publicise these constitutional violations.
Crime is the biggest problem in SA because the police and justice system are starved of resources.
Government nonetheless plans to waste more than R1 billion of the already inadequate Police Service s money in implementing the FCA, which has been freely admitted to be irrelevant to crime. And this is just the short-term cost. The consequences for public safety of such undermining of law enforcement should be obvious. Finally, for the record, there have been various successful defences against attempted cash in transit heists, all by force of arms.