The Associated Press
Years of anti-apartheid struggle, and resistance to laws limiting gun ownership, has created a culture of gun violence in South Africa.
SOWETO, South Africa (AP) - A bank robber flees from a suburban mall into the parking lot. Within seconds, a shopper and some taxi drivers pull their guns, take chase and shoot him dead.
The wild melee at the East Rand Mall outside Johannesburg offered a glimpse into the weapons culture that saturates South Africa, fueling the world's second-highest firearm murder rate.
(NOTE: The first example given above by the Associated Mess isn't murder, it may be a simple case of an LJH [Legally Justified Homicide]. -- Phil Murphy, Brassroots, Inc.)
Now, South African officials want to make it tougher to acquire gun licenses in hopes that will reduce the sea of illegal guns, which is fed by the thefts of tens of thousands of legal weapons every year.
The proposal has angered both black and white gun owner groups, which charge that the African National Congress-led government will prevent poor blacks from owning weapons and defending themselves from the country's crime wave.
Underlying the debate are bitter passions over hard-won democratic rights for blacks, Asians and mixed-race people, who were largely prevented from legally owning guns until apartheid ended in 1994.
"Gun ownership creates stability,'' said Ash Boodhoo, an Asian who owns the Highgate Arms and Ammunition shop near Soweto, a black township south of Johannesburg. "You will have your democratic rights and no one will take them away from you.''
About 4 million weapons, mostly handguns, are legally held by civilians, with an additional 200,000 permits issued every year, government officials say.
There are an equal number of illegal weapons held among the country's 43 million people, by the estimates of anti-gun groups such as Gun Free South Africa. Many of those were smuggled in toward the end of apartheid by anti-apartheid fighters, while others came from the white minority's apartheid government to fuel black-against-black conflict.
Legal or illegal, guns are everywhere.
People shoot each other over parking spaces. Guns are fired at private funerals and political marches. Family members waiting in a hospital for a man clinging to life from a gunshot wound are robbed by armed thieves.
A sardonic swipe at gun attitudes came in one of themost successful South African film comedies of recent years, "Panic Mechanic.'' In one scene, a waiter uncorks a bottle of champagne with a loud pop. The restaurant patrons draw weapons and shoot him dead - then quietly return to their meals.
Under the current licensing system, gun permits take from six to 12 weeks to process and cost 50 rand, about $8. Police interview neighbors and employers for character references and examine the applicant's gun safe. Applicants must prove they can shoot and know safety rules.
Under pressure from anti-gun groups, the government is considering higher hurdles. According to draft proposals the government sent to gun groups, it wanted to increase fees tenfold and introduce expensive psychological testing - two measures that would put legal weapons out of reach of poor nonwhites, who account for more than 80 percent of the population.
The idea drew strong criticism, however, and the government retreated, saying it would study the issue further.
There were 11,044 firearm homicides in South Africa in 1995, or 26.63 per 100,000 population. That was 41 percent of all murders in South Africa, and second only to Colombia's firearm homicide rate of 53.99 per 100,000, according to a United Nations survey of firearms regulation.
The firearm homicide rate was 6.24 per 100,000 in the United States and less than 1 per 100,000 in Australia, Canada and Britain,
Combined with an unemployment rate of 41 percent among blacks, weapons contribute to a fatal cocktail of crime and social pressure.
(Yep... No editorializing by the Associated Mess in the above sentence! -- Phil)
"There is a despairingly nihilistic attitude toward violence that has a lot to do with lack of dreams of sense of the future,'' said Lauren Segal of the Center for Study of Violence and Reconciliation.