Durban -AS KwaZulu-Natal continues to deal with the scourge of violent killings involving guns, crime experts and activists say they are not surprised that there are more illegal guns in circulation than before, being used to commit murder.
The comments come in the wake of the latest report from advocacy group Gun Free South Africa which indicated that as many as 30 people were killed by guns in the country each day, with KZN accounting for more than a third of this figure.
In recent days KZN has reported more gun-related killings, including the deadly shooting of six people in Clermont, west of Durban, and the killing of five people in Ndwedwe, north of Durban.
Adele Kirsten, researcher at Gun Free South Africa, expressed the lobby group’s concern over KZN.
“It is still early days to call it a pattern, but the two incidents of mass killings are worrying and should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the danger of guns in our society,” she said yesterday.
Kirsten said while the mass killings could appear as new, they harked back to KZN’s violent past, especially the period of political turmoil involving the ANC and IFP.
She cited killings in the taxi industry as one of the areas that should be a concern for society at large.
Kirsten said KZN, the Western Cape and Gauteng were leading when it came to gun violence.
One of the worrying trends for the lobby group was the use of stolen guns in the commission of violent crime.
“Robbers attack households where there is a likelihood of guns (being in the home) because they want to use them to commit other crimes,” she said. “Farms are attacked for one of these reasons owing to a history where white farmers had easier access to guns and could own a large number of them the criminals will target them.”
Kirsten said dealing with the proliferation of guns required a strategy similar to the one applied by the government to deal with the spread of Covid-19, where there was a tracing mechanism applied.
She warned that the effects of gun killings was costing the country immensely. “We are seeing a generation of young men mainly dying primarily through the use of guns,” Kirsten said.
The researcher also pointed out that their findings were based on reports from a number of organisations, including the SAPS and Statistics SA.
Gender activist Daniella Genrich from We Will Speak Out SA, said gun ownership was a toxic brew which merely reflected the country’s culture of violence.
She noted how in some instances of gender-based violence, females were killed by their male partners using guns.
“We have been raised in a culture of violence where gun ownership is seen as being necessary and the end result of this is a low respect of human life, especially the lives of women and children.”