Firearm Related Death in South Africa is Negligible.

Shocking revelations and ground-breaking exposés don’t often make for pleasant reading. When grounded in fact they generally serve to shake the foundations of, and ultimately destroy in totality, previously held beliefs that are now shown to be in error. They elicit in the reasonable person an epiphany that everything they used to think of as true is in fact incorrect, and confront us with an entirely new set of circumstances that we are forced to accept, given the evidence.

In short, such striking realisations tend to make people rather uncomfortable.

If you are assaulted and killed in South Africa, you are roughly 50 times more likely to be killed by use of a sharp object than you are by use of a firearm.

It thus gives me great pleasure to confirm that every assertion we as gun owners have made over the years regarding the fact that firearms are not the problem in our violent society, is unequivocally and demonstrably true.

I can also confirm that everything disseminated by the opposition as (in their subjective opinion) fact, is entirely devoid of truth and amounts to little more than malicious fiction.

The latest figures released by Statistics South Africa, the official government statistics service, in “Mortality and Causes of Death in South Africa 2013: Findings from death notification” paints an interesting picture of our nation’s leading causes of death.

Stats SA has provided the original publication, as well as their presentation. I have sourced all my data from them.

Of particular interest to us are the Non-Natural causes of death by broad group, which makes up about 10%.

Of this 10% projected national figure, assault related deaths are 10,2%. This means that assault related death makes up about 1,02% of all deaths nationally.

Of even further interest is the composition of these assault related deaths:

The Top 3 causes are as follows:

1. Sharp Object related:                                     85,1%
2. Unspecified means:                                          9,7%
3. Other and unspecified firearm discharge:    1,7%

Firearms are present in only 1,7% of assault related deaths, which make up 10,2% of non-natural deaths, which in turn contribute 10% to all deaths nationally. Thus firearms are responsible for only about 0,1734% of non-natural deaths, and roughly 0,01734% of all deaths nationally.

I do not think I need to underline how significant this figure is.

Sharp objects on the other hand, remained the most prominent contributor to non-natural deaths since 1997:

If you are assaulted and killed in South Africa, you are roughly 50 times more likely to be killed by use of a sharp object than you are by use of a firearm.

Yet we have no comparable outcry when youngsters are stabbed to death at a party, or six men are tied up and stoned to death. Had these people been murdered by use of a firearm, we will have renewed calls for tougher gun laws despite logic dictating that such measures will not make a difference.

To add further significant clout to the argument that legal firearm owners and guns in general are not the security problem that they are perceived by some to be, revelations in Parliament by Police Minister Nati Nhleko brings into serious dispute any claims that private firearm owners can be held responsible for the levels of violent crime in South Africa.

According to Business Day, “Far fewer privately owned firearms were lost or stolen in the past four-and-a-half years than was previously reported, Police Minister Nathi Nhleko has revealed. This casts doubts on the gun loss figures in the South African Police Service’s annual reports.

Mr Nhleko’s latest figures have the potential to derail theories that lost or stolen privately owned firearms are responsible for most of the serious gun crime in SA.

The rationale behind the strict provisions of the Firearms Control Act was that lost or stolen firearms were boosting the pool of illegal guns available to criminals and that firearms should therefore be more strictly controlled.”

This brings in to question the validity of the very existence of the Firearms Control Act of 2000, seeing that it is becoming ever clearer that it was drafted to fix a problem that quite frankly never existed.

Mr Nhleko’s latest figures have the potential to derail theories that lost or stolen privately owned firearms are responsible for most of the serious gun crime in SA.

It is time to put serious and penetrating questions to the authorities as to how they justify saddling gun owners with unworkable and unfair legislation, when the entire system’s value is brought into dispute by the government’s own statistics.

Those who say that we need tougher gun laws in this country are no different to the Flat Earth Society, Anti-Vaccination activists, 9/11 Truthers, and other crackpots who refuse to acknowledge factual proof that their “theories” are completely wrong.

In a world of chaos, we need reason and logic to lead the way: not the equivalent of modern superstition. Be a part of the solution, and perhaps we can start fixing the problem.

PS. Please note the following on Page 3 of the statistical release: Data and methods

“A total of 458 933 deaths that occurred in 2013 were registered at DHA and reached Stats SA in time for the 2014 data processing phase, thus forming the basis for this release.“

Thus this indicates that the entire study pertains to a sample size of 458 933 deaths only, and not the total population of all deaths occurring in South Africa during the period. Thus the conclusions drawn from the release are as valid as accuracy allows.