GFSA on Daily Maverick

[thereaper]

Their mandate is guns, they don't give two hoots about anything else. Bigger picture, more harm than good.. none of that.

And that needs to be highlighted at every opportunity we get. Their slogan is "Making South Africa a Safer country by reducing gun violence". Again, GUN violence. The aim should be to reduce VIOLENCE, and because they are only concerned about the GUN part of it, they need to be called out on it.

Every time AK is on radio or TV, at some point drones on about the Firearm Control Act reducing GUN violence magically since 2000. The response to that needs to be "But what did it do to reduce VIOLENCE?" If the GUN violence just migrated to KNIVE voilence (for instance), what is the point?

[Sean KZN]

In the good old RSA owing to a transparent government and questionable statistics, it is possible to draw any conclusion that may suit your agenda.
Gun deaths = murder just to confound the issue.
Missing is who was shot, by whom, while doing what, with what firearm.
BG shot by homeowner during home invasion-murder.
Bg shot by police-murder.
Civilian defends them self with legal firearm against BG with illegal firearm-murder.
POlice person shoots partner with service pistol-murder.

We could go on and on, delve into CIT crimes committed with state owned firearms-murder etc etc.
The gist is that with all this data lumped together, no accurate conclusion can be drawn as to how many people successfully save life and limb with legal firearms, so thus become targets for the reduction of firearm related deaths. (of course legal use does not normally result in prosecution, but still gets lumped in with the stats.

The USA, being somewhat more forthcoming with information release their stats every year.
As an example I'll use a dated one on police killed with firearms in the line of duty. 78 is the number I remember.
Of those, about 70 % were committed by white Americans, most of the balance by African Americans.
Not to invite race based debate, just to highlight how stats can be meaningless we can draw a number of hypothetical conclusions.
1) In America whites shoot better than black American.
2) In America whites are more prone to violence than black Americans.
3) White Americans hate law enforcement officers.
4) White Americans like guns so much they will kill anyone, even law enforcement officers.
And we can go on and on.
The reality is that white Americans make up a higher percentage of the population, are no more prone to violence than any other group and gun crime is spread fairly evenly amongst all population groups.
However if you have an agenda it is possible to draw a conclusion which suits that agenda.

Just saying.