South Africans will not be allowed to own guns for self defence under a newly-revived legislative proposal.
The Civilian Secretariat for Police Service (CSP) on Friday published a call for public comment on a 2021 draft of the Firearms Control Amendment Bill in the Government Gazette. Despite a promise in that notice, it did not publish the actual contents of the draft law on its badly outdated website – but revealed in a summary that it contains an effort to restrict gun ownership that is likely to be controversial.
The draft law seeks to "provide for the applicant for a firearm [licence] to provide a valid reason for possessing a firearm", said the CSP in its description of the Bill.
It then provides "that no firearm licenses may be issued for self-defence purposes".