Fewer guns around after cops clamp down

South Africa's efforts to clamp down on the use of illegal firearms has started to pay off as authorities record a drop in the number of reported violent crimes, a new study has found. With more than two million legal gun owners, the volume of registered firearms - close to four million - gave the country among the highest rankings for gun ownership per capita. Of concern, however, was that South Africa was also one of the world's leaders for the number of weapons lost or stolen - recognised as an important source of illegal firearms. Research conducted by the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) focused on Operation Sethunya ('firearm' in the Sotho language), the largest ever police effort to confiscate illegal firearms and check legal owners' compliance with gun laws. The operation ran from April to September 2003 in all nine of the country's provinces. It included roadblocks, inspection of premises and 'stop and search' actions, many of which were carried out at crime hotspots, such as taxi ranks. During the period more than 1.5 million rounds of ammunition and 13,800 illegal firearms were confiscated, with more than 3,000 arrests made for illegal possession of firearms or ammunition. Research findings also point out that during the 'normalisation phase' that followed Sethunya from October 2003 to March 2004, "fairly high levels of firearms confiscation and arrests were sustained". Sethunya was also used to assess the public's awareness of, and adherence to, the 2004 Firearms Control Act. Those known to have up to five firearms in their possession were specifically targeted as part of these efforts. A major spin-off from the Sethunya initiative was a decline in the number of violent crimes. An assistant police commissioner was quoted as saying, "the impact of Operation Sethunya on crime and violence has seen murder cases reported decrease by 8.3 percent, and attempted murder decrease by 12.6 percent". Senior ISS researcher Noel Stott told IRIN the exercise yielded impressive results and while the decrease in the murder rate may not be directly attributable to Operation Sethunya, "targeted campaigns do result in high levels of police visibility and increased community awareness". "The lessons learnt in South Africa can be applied to Angola, where the government is still struggling to find ways of lessening the number of small arms in the hands of civilians," Stott told IRIN. Researchers also noted police efforts to encourage South Africans to take greater responsibility for the safe storage of their firearms. Over the past two years 35,481 guns were recovered by the police nationally. A comparison with the number of lost or stolen firearms showed an improvement in the recovery rate over the past year. Although more guns were lost or stolen than were recovered in 2002/03, the report said this trend was reversed in the last financial year. For more details: www.smallarmsnet.org