Action Society supports the proposal of a dedicated destruction site for illegal firearms in the Western Cape. The site should not be solely managed by the South African Police Services (SAPS), but also Western Cape provincial government to ensure oversight.
The Western Cape legislature’s chairperson on community safety, Reagen Allen, posed a question to Deputy Police Minister Cassel Mathale on whether they would consider a dedicated site to be established for the destruction of firearms.
“At this stage it is very risky to transport weapons. Weapons aren’t weighed at the begging or end of the journey, thus there is no way ̶ except by use of a register ̶ to determine if there are weapons missing from the load that has been transported,” said Ian Cameron, director of community safety at Action Society.
According to the provincial government, the leakages of police firearms that fall into the hands of criminals pose a risk to communities.
Currently, all illegal firearms confiscated by the police are sent to Gauteng on a bi-annual basis to be destroyed.
“The Western Cape government’s call for a dedicated site to be established in the province where firearms can be destroyed, is a very practical and necessary step that needs to be taken to ensure that illegal firearms don’t end up back on the streets in the hands of criminals,” Cameron concludes.
Photo by Jay Rembert on Unsplash
