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The new licensing system went into effect in 2004, applying immediately to new applicants. People who had licenses under the old system (the former Arms and Ammunition Act) were divided into groups based on date of birth, and required to apply for new licenses starting in 2005. The final set of applications was due on June 30, 2009.

To obtain a gun license in South Africa, one must pass a written "competency test." The South African constitution recognizes 11 official languages, but the test is only given in two of them, Afrikaans and English. Imagine if your gun ownership rights depended on passing a written test in a language you could not read!

Applicants are not issued licenses if they are deemed to be at risk of becoming violent. As enforced in South Africa, this could simply mean that a person was divorced, separated or fired within the past two years.

Processing of applications is very slow. For example, of the applications submitted in 2006, only about a quarter have been fully processed.

Licenses are valid for two, five or 10 years, depending on the legal category of the license, so keeping a gun can mean staying on a near-constant treadmill of paperwork, fees and uncertainty. Most of the 2005 applicants, who are supposed to renew in 2010, are still waiting for a decision on their 2005 applications.

Note that complying with all the laws is no guarantee law-abiding people will be able keep their guns. South Africa now has what Sarah Brady, head of the Brady Campaign, described as her long-term objective: "needs-based" licensing. (New York Times, Aug. 15, 1993.) You get to buy or keep a gun only if the government decides that you need it. In South African law, the formal term is "good motivation."

Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula wrote in a letter to the Gun Dealers' Association: "Licenses for firearms should not be granted to private individuals." Similarly, his spokesperson Lesley Xinwa announced, "We are determined to cut down on the number of guns in the country."

Many license applications are denied, particularly for blacks and others who wish to own self-defense firearms. The Central Firearms Registry (CFR) refuses to say what actually constitutes a good "motivation" for a self-defense firearm. Instead, applications are rejected with the terse verdicts "lack of motivation" or "insufficient need."

Married women who want guns for protection are told that their husbands will protect them—as if South African woman should behave like Taliban wives, and never leave the home except with their husbands. People who live in high crime areas are told that the police will protect them—except that the police obviously don't, as South Africa is one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world.

Adults who are less than 27 years old are told that they are too young—even though the FCA sets the gun ownership age at 21 (an increase from the old law, which was 16).

Ownership of a firearm without a license is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The results have been catastrophic. From 1999 to 2007, the number of legal gun owners fell by 44 percent, according to the South African Police Service (saps). Now, only 5 percent of South Africans legally own guns.

The ANC claimed that the FCA would not cause any job losses. Yet in 2004, just two years after the law went into effect, the number of gun stores plunged from 600 to 200.

The government originally claimed that administration of the new law would cost taxpayers 270 million Rand (about 34 million U.S. dollars). But by the time the act was implemented, the true cost had risen to about 263 million U.S. dollars. The millions wasted on the licensing bureaucracy could have been spent actually protecting citizens.

Blacks suffer most under the restrictive licensing program.

"The situation is running out of control," Abios Khoele, chairman of the Black Gun Owners Association of South Africa (www.bgoasa.co.za), told the Sunday Times. "We blacks only want arms for self-defense—after all, crime is worst of all in the townships [segregated slums created by the apartheid regime]. The trouble is that the government is clearly targeting white gun owners and they really aren't the problem anymore. The extremist white right is dead and buried. It's criminals—murderers and rapists—who we have to defend our families against.

"For most of the apartheid period, blacks weren't allowed to own guns, and now a black government is taking away our right to self-defense. ... The criminals are extremely well armed."





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