Litany of problems affecting firearm registry

JOHANNESBURG: Power surges, database problems, a deluge of applications and unreliable tracking of former homeland firearms – these are just some of the problems facing the police who run the Central Firearms Registry.

The problems are outlined in a report by the portfolio committee on police following oversight visits late last year. The report was tabled in Parliament last week.

The committee found a “major problem with insufficient staff” as the SA Police Service used the same officers to deal with firearm, liquor and second-hand goods issues, and then sometimes gave them additional work to do.

The registry offices had a power surge “which damaged all the computers” and this resulted in technological challenges, said the report. The CSIR is helping to sort this out.

In the North West and Northern Cape, the firearms officers didn’t have enough cars to conduct inspections.

Gauteng South officers pointed out that the registry system takes multiple applications for the same firearm.

In Gauteng North, the area the office is located in is unsafe and the officers don’t have enough vehicles. There were also reports that people here owned more than 120 firearms each.

“Others owned 10 semiautomatic weapons and their view was there should be limitations placed on the ownership of such weapons,” said the report.

“There are cases where people legitimately disposed of firearms in 1991, but the sys- tem continues to show that they still own them. The SAPS is also unable to locate people who bought firearms,” the report states.

The Eastern Cape reported receiving more than 10 000 firearm applications every month, which caused major problems. And the tracking of weapons from the former “homelands” is still a problem.

“The committee noted that the firearms of the former Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei (TBVC states) are also not on the database and that this was problematic. The state of affairs is unacceptable and the country requires a corruption-free database. There was an immediate need to set timelines for the integration of the databases and the upgrading of technology,” said the report.

The committee heard that the contract which was supposed to dot peen firearms (a method of marking firearms) “did not deliver”.

The Firearms Appeal Board (FAB) told the committee that many of the police refusals for a firearm licence ended up as appeals to the board.

“According to the FAB, there appears to be a lack of knowledge of the rules governing the refusal of licences,” the report stated.

And when police couldn’t back up their licence refusals with paperwork, the FAB “usually took a decision in favour of the applicant”, the report noted. The committee also heard that up to 39 000 police officers don’t have firearms.

The SAPS told the committee that this was permitted in terms of the law.