South Africa, like Mexico, is one of those countries with incredibly restrictive gun laws and sky-high rates of violent crime. Now the South African government wants to make it even tougher to own a firearm by removing or severely limiting"self-defense" as a valid reason to obtain a gun license.
The Firearms Control Amendment Bill has been floating around in various forms since 2021, but according to Firearms License Pro SA, the Civilian Secretariat for Police is aiming to officially introduce the bill in Parliament before March 2027, and potentially before the end of 2026.
The group says that in its original form, the bill would have scrapped "self-defense" as a reason for obtaining a firearm license, but adds that people who've seen the latest draft say "it allows self defence licences only in exceptional circumstances, limits ammunition to 100 rounds per firearm and gives the Minister more power" to deny licenses.
No matter what the bill looks like when it's formally unveiled, South Africa's gun control lobby will be working to get rid of the self-defense rationale altogether.
Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) supports the proposed changes, arguing that firearms acquired for protection can also be used in domestic violence, suicides and accidental shootings, or stolen and diverted into criminal hands.
GFSA executive director Dr Stanley Maphosa told The Witness that public safety should remain central to the debate.
“We must consider the safety of everyone who may encounter it, not only the buyer,” said Maphosa.
The organisation also supports stricter controls on ammunition, competency requirements, licence renewals and firearm storage.
Controls which will impact legal gun owners far more than the country's violent criminals.
As things stand, someone seeking a firearm for self-defense in South Africa must establish that they need a firearm for self-defense, and that they cannot reasonably satisfy that need through other means.
Even under existing law, South Africans don't automatically qualify for a self-defense firearm simply because they're law-abiding adults who want to protect themselves. It's essentially a "may issue" system for gun ownership, and the approval process can stretch on for months.
If more gun control correlated to more safety, South Africa would be one of the most bucolic countries on earth. Instead, the murder rate is about 39 per 100,000 people. By comparison, it's estimated that the U.S. murder rate this year will be close to 3.5 per 100,000: more than ten times less than South Africa.
The problem isn't that South Africans have too many opportunities to protect themselves. It's that violent criminals have far too many opportunities to prey on innocent people, often with little fear of being caught or punished.
South Africa already has millions of illegally possessed firearms in circulation. Why would anyone think that making it harder to obtain a license will do anything to disarm the criminals who possess them? The proposed restrictions would leave ordinary citizens facing even bigger barriers to protecting themselves and their families.
Gun Free South Africa is right that public safety should be central to this debate. But the safety of a family facing a violent home invasion matters just as much as the hypothetical dangers posed by a legally owned handgun in the home.
South Africans already have to convince the government that they need a firearm for self-defense. Now, apparently, the government wants to convince them they don't need one at all.
In a country where murder is so commonplace, the government should be making it harder to be a violent criminal and not harder to survive an encounter with one.
Thankfully, our Second Amendment offers Americans protections that South Africans don't enjoy, but what's happening there should serve as a cautionary tale. The right to armed self-defense is something worth defending, because once the government gets to decide whether or not you really need to protect yourself, it's not really a right at all.