Tag: gun owners

Zuma calls for gun control

President Jacob Zuma thinks disarming whites may be a long-term solution to the country’s cop killing spree eventhough police officers are killed by blacks.

He was visiting the family of a Johannesburg black traffic officer gunned down last week.

Zuma called on South Africans to suggest alternative ways to stem the country’s violence.

“I just thought I should raise this matter because it is unprecedented that within months you can have (the number of) police killed (at) more than 50. I think a few days ago they were saying about 53. I think by December it could be 100. Is that what you want to see? I don’t think so. And that’s the issue that’s concerning us.”

Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega said recently that more than 14,000 weapons had been destroyed, and there was more still to be done.

Fifty-four police officers have been murdered this year.

According to materials released by the South African Police Service (SAPS) to the South African History Archive (SAHA) under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, the problem of lost and stolen firearms is rampant amongst police detachments across the country.

The statistics that were released suggest that 18,196 police firearms have been lost or stolen during the 5 year period beginning 1 April 2005 and ending on 31 March 2011.

The sheer volume of the missing weapons, shocking as it may be, is perhaps not the most worrisome trend revealed by the statistics. The concentration of missing weapons in particular regions and police stations show that systemic checks and balances designed to prevent the loss or theft of police firearms have not reached all corners of South Africa.

The Northern Cape had 232 firearms lost or stolen over the course of the five years, making it the province with the fewest missing weapons. Comparatively, Gauteng Province saw 6,163 firearms go missing over the same period. Certainly, the difference in population between these provinces accounts for a portion of the large discrepancy.

However, the fact that over 2,700 weapons went missing in Gauteng in a single year (2006/2007) is hair-raising.

Zuma nevertheless plans to target legal gun owners, mostly whites.

Nearly 20 stations in black areas have lost in excess of 100 weapons in a single year. For example, one police station in Umtata in the Eastern Cape had 638 firearms go missing in 2008/2009. The same station lost a total of 2 firearms during the other four years of the five year period.

The financial consequences for SAPS are monumental. In materials that were released to SAHA under a separate request for information, the average cost of replacing a pistol exceeded R 5,000 between the 2006/2007 year and 2010/2011.

No exact figure was provided on the total value of pistols lost or stolen. However, when these documents are read together, it appears that the cost of replacing every missing weapon would exceed R 90 million.

‘Blacks should buy guns’

Leave it to Ann Coulter and the like to conquer the ever-vexing issue of race relations, unequivocally internalize the volcanic plight of blacks and other minorities everywhere, rather than simplistically merge theories relative to both to the point of irrefutable resolution— all in a matter of a less than a minute TV sound bite.

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting tragedy, the incorrigibly bombastic, right-wing activist took to the Fox News airwaves and the “Bill O’Reilly Show” recently to expound upon and defiantly reaffirm her dangerously hot-headed and shortsighted views regarding the one singular instrument that has truly proven to be a weapon of mass destruction in minority communities everywhere.

“We don’t know all the facts yet,” Coulter later wrote in a blog post chronicling the deadly encounter that left the 17-year-old Martin mortally wounded at the hands of volunteer neighborhood watchmen George Zimmerman. “But let’s assume the conclusion MNSBC is leaping to is accurate: George Zimmerman stalked a small, black child and murdered him in cold blood, just because he was black.

“If that we’re true,” she continued, “every black person in America should get a gun and join the National Rifle Association, America’s oldest and most august civil rights organization.”

Alas, with allies like Ann Coulter and her Republican counterparts, who can afford to have enemies? Indeed, it’s funny how those who know the least sometimes reveal the most. Coulter’s words are a clear illustration to one and all of an approach and road best less traveled. They harken to a society and atmosphere that only further propagates a war among races in which no group can truly win.

What Coulter seems to remain blind about and oblivious to— conveniently so I might add— is the fact that an eye-for-eye way of being ultimately only comes to leave us all blind. And statistics speak to that darkness, with the free-flow of more handguns almost automatically leading to more deaths and shootings in each and every instance.

Beyond the mere numbers, one need look no further than my childhood hometown of Chicago— the South Side’s Englewood neighborhood for an even more exact locale— to painfully bring those words to heart.

During the St. Patrick’s Day weekend preceding the Martin shooting and only days before Coulter was making her rather reckless proclamation, 49 people were shot, at least 11 of them fatally, across the city. Overall, murders were up by more than 60 percent over the first three months of 2012 compared to the year before, with Englewood’s 15 homicides nearly doubling those committed in any of the city’s other enclaves.

In Englewood, since 1960 the community population has dipped from a high of 100,000 to just 30,000 and falling, with more and more families still desperately seeking to get out. More than 4,100 abandoned buildings now riddle the neighborhood, as the gang-laden, arms-packing residents grow more brazen and deadly in their dealings.

Harsh realities such as those are why Coulter’s words aren’t so easily dismissive. When has violence, or setting the course for it, ever led to anything other than more violence? Given all that, is there anyone among us, Ann Coulter included, that can truly advocate for such a society and rest in good conscious?

Count the Rev. Al Sharpton, the NAACP and the parents of Trayvon Martin among those who have come to an equally raised level of understanding. On the 20th anniversary of the deadly race riots that saw much of Los Angeles go up in flames following the Rodney King acquittal, it’s why they all convened in the city Thursday night to plead for greater tolerance and an end to all the violence.

“There are Trayvons all over the country,” boomed Sharpton. “What kind of world are we living in that we can put a black man in the White House, but a black can’t walk through a gated community?”

Thing is, in the kind of world Ann Coulter is calling for, neither may truly have the chance to reach their destination. – blackamericaweb.com

Gun sales soar

Owners of guns have been stocking up because they are concerned about a potential tightening of regulations on assault weapons in the president’s second term.

In October the number of background checks on people applying to buy guns, an indicator of future sales, increased by 18.4 per cent.

There was a similar jump when President Obama was first elected in 2008. A total of 12.7 million background checks were carried out that year, up from 11.2 million the year before, and the number has been rising since then.

Shares in weapons manufacturers like Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger also surged after Mr Obama’s re-election.

During the election campaign Mr Obama mostly steered clear of discussing gun control, but in a presidential debate on Oct 16 he gave his clearest statement yet on the issue.

He said: “What I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced.”

President Bill Clinton introduced had restrictions limiting the use of semi-automatic weapons in 1994, but the ban expired in 2004. Under the Clinton-era ban magazines with more than 10 rounds, and weapons with threaded barrels, pistol grips and bayonets were prohibited.

Mr Obama would still have to get any new restrictions past Republicans in Congress, but gun owners say they fear a limiting of their right to bear arms which is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Mel Bernstein, owner of Dragonman Arms in Colorado Springs, told KOAA-TV that sales of semi-automatic weapons had boomed in recent days.

He said: “We’re going from normally six to eight guns a day, to 25. I stocked up, I got a stockpile of these AK-47s, we’re selling these like hot cakes. Luckily I had an idea of what was going on because it happened with Clinton.”

Mr Bernstein said he normally orders up to 7,000 rounds a week from distributors but could now only get hold of 3,000 because of demand.

John Kielbasa, owner of Fernwood Firearms in Hankins, New York, told CNN: “Sales are up. I had a guy waiting here first thing in the morning (the day after the election.) He came in, bought two AK-47s. It’s going to be good for me for business.” – The Telegraph