Hi folks.
So, in the workup for the Constitutional Court case on 8 February (which looks like it might have to be postponed a bit, by the way), the FDD (our legal team) and some of the really clever guys (that’s not me… I just know smart guys) have only now been able to examine in greater detail all of the papers that are before court. Some of the participants to the case only filed their full papers this week, two parties still have to do so.
On the face of it, and at first glance, we are worried.
In the first instance GFSA have been accepted as a friend of the court (although they have no local membership or proven support). Their credentials were accepted without question by all of the other participants in this case who have filed papers. This horrifies us!
In the second instance SAPS has filed extremely good papers and they are relying on points of argument which our legal folk tell us are not fully covered by the players on our side of the fight. Remember that the court will rule on what is in front of them. This disturbs us greatly.
Finally, everybody seems to be happily accepting of the ‘reality’ of re-licensing. We are not. We feel that not only is re-licensing unnecessary, but given SAPS’ continually delinquent admin and management of the CFR, it is both physically impossible to accomplish and contra the objects of the Act in that it actually works against the proper control of firearms.
This is probably not the news you all want to hear at the beginning of the year, and it breaks my heart to have to be the bearer of bad tidings, but this is the assessed situation based on the papers we have examined so far.
We have a plan, however (in fact more than one). Don’t panic. But prepare yourselves for a mighty effort.
Written by Paul Oxley
Paul is chairman of Gun Owners SA
