South Africa Repeating US Gun Control Law Mistakes

Apparently South African lawmakers are as dumb as U.S. lawmakers when it comes to gun laws. Using the same illogic of gun control advocates here, South Africa has implemented a gun control law (in which 80% of permit applications are refused) to supposedly combat the country's violent crime rate.

Of course, taking guns away form the law abiding citizens will do nothing to stop the rate of violent crime, because criminals - get this - DON'T OBEY THE LAW! They use unregistered guns for their crimes. To wit:

"It's not really a matter of choice," Holmes said. "Licensed firearms are not used in crime at any great rate."

Estimates of the number of illegal firearms in South Africa vary between 1 and 4 million, he said, but the real problem is from some 30-40,000 hardcore criminals using a small number of illegal guns.

So, the lawful citizens have been forced to go old school, buying machetes, crossbows, swords, etc. to protect themselves from the violent criminals. That's just wonderful how the South African government has hamstrung its own citizenry and put the lawful at a distinct technological disadvantage against the unlawful.

Idiots.

Looks like they also are following the failed gun amnesty programs we have here too.

South Africa began a firearms amnesty on Jan. 1 that to date has netted some 13,000 weapons, officials told Reuters, but critics say most of the weapons handed in are old and would never have been used for crime.

"It's mostly been grannies and grandpas that are handing in weapons that are probably unusable anyhow," Willmers said.

I'm not sure how it works there, but here in the U.S. we have had gun buy-back amnesty programs where government actually pays out money - no questions asked - to people turning in guns, which are later destroyed. Of course, criminals are often turning in broken or old weapons and then taking the money and going out to buy brand new guns...illegally, of course. And then they can take those shiney new illegally bought guns and commit crimes against people who don't have guns because they made the mistake of actually obeying the laws.

Here's a thought: why don't we do something to stop the criminals from getting guns illegally rather than stopping non-criminals from legally purchasing guns to protect themselves from the criminals?