GunControlKills.com in LoUiSiAna

South African gun lobbyists set up a new organization Thursday to press the case that even more weapons are needed to curb crime in a country notorious for murders and armed robberies.
The new group, Gun Owners of South Africa, said people had the right to self-defense in a nation that has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

“We want the Firearms Control Act scrapped altogether, and we want a constitutional amendment to ensure we have the right to have firearms to protect our families,” group leader Charl van Wyk said.

The group, which held its inaugural meeting with about 100 people at an industrial park outside Cape Town, was supported by Gun Owners of America.

“The criminal in South Africa has too much freedom of action, too much job security,” said Larry Pratt, executive director of the U.S. group, which claims to have 300,000 members.

Pratt said he supported demands to scrap post-apartheid legislation restricting the ownership of firearms.

“The only way to tackle this Wild West scenario is to allow the good guys to have guns,” he said.

South Africa’s Safety and Security Ministry, which collected and destroyed nearly 100,000 unlicensed and 46,000 legally owned guns during a six-month amnesty last year, dismissed the claims.

“Gun control is here to stay across the world, including in the United States. Anything else would lead to chaos,” ministry spokesman Trevor Bloem said.

South Africa’s 45 million people own an estimated 3.7 million licensed guns and many more illegal ones. Gun ownership is deeply embedded in the national culture.

At the birth of all-race democracy in 1994, South Africa had the world’s highest homicide rate – 67 per 100,000 people – largely because of violence in the country’s impoverished and overcrowded townships. The rate fell to 40 per 100,000 in 2004, behind Colombia at 67 and Jamaica at 59.

Violence accounted for almost half the 25,000 fatal injuries in South Africa in 2003, according to a report by the Medical Research Council. More than 6,000 people died from gunshot wounds – as many as those killed in road accidents, it said.

A separate report by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa said 19 percent of people it surveyed had suffered an attack on themselves or a family member last year, and 57 percent feared crime in their own homes.

The Firearms Control Act, which came into force in 1994, introduced licensing requirements and background checks on gun owners. It also limited ownership to one gun for self-defense and up to four for occasional hunters.

Van Wyk said the bill was a “disgrace.”