Parliament to hold gun control summit on 24 & 25 March 2015

GunSite SA | 18 March 2015 | 0 Comments

Back on the 7 November last year, the Portfolio Committee on Police announced that they will convene a summit on gun control in February this year. February just happened turn into March, but I digress.

The committee took this decision at its meeting in November. Committee Chairperson, Mr Francois Beukman, said the committee resolved to convene the summit in order to evaluate the state of gun control in the country by receiving inputs from relevant stakeholders.

“The committee will, after the summit, hold public hearings around the country to obtain public input into the Firearms Amendment Act, which is on the committee’s legislative programme for 2015. The Committee has also commissioned the Research unit of Parliament to make available a case study on the state of gun control in other jurisdictions, with special reference to Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.”

The Committee also resolved to evaluate on a quarterly basis the revised plan SAPS tabled on how it planned to address challenges that have been found in the Central Firearms Registry.

The date has now been set, and this is going to be happening in Parliament in Cape Town on 24th and 25th March.

How can you help? Well, if you are in Cape Town, you can show your support outside parliament next week Tuesday and Wednesday. There will be ‘responsible people’ there from GOSA, and the plan is to gather outside parliament on Tuesday around 13:30 for 14:00 and it would be great to repeat this on Wednesday. There is a poll on GunSite here, where you can indicate if you are attending so there is an idea of numbers.

Please note that this is NOT a protest action or march: it is a show of support only. No weapons allowed as per dangerous weapons act etc.