This association was formed over twenty five years ago to represent the interests of South African arms and ammunition dealers and gunsmiths.

There are currently some 600 firearm dealers’ licences in the hands of around 300 companies, almost 200 of whom are members of this association. All of the major importers and dealers in firearms are members.

Our industry directly employs an estimated 5000 people and has an annual turnover in the order of eight hundred million Rand.

In addition several thousand more people are employed in direct support industries.

It is estimated that South African arms and ammunition manufacturers employ a further 30 000 people.

The proposed firearm legislation is obviously of great interest and importance to our members. For this reason we must express our concern and regret that we have been excluded from any involvement in preparing this legislation. This is despite numerous requests for participation. None of these requests have even been acknowledged.

We are pleased to be able to make certain comments to this Committee and request the opportunity to make further comments during the hearing phase.

We have limited these comments to the main issues directly impacting dealers. This is due to the exremely short time period available to prepare comments.

The National Firearm Forum will be submitting more comprehensive comments. As members of the NFF we support and endorse their comments and submissions.

We must express our concern that the regulations are not available at this time. Much of the impact of this Bill will be governed by these regulations and very widespread powers are granted to create and amend the regulations.

It is difficult to provide comprehensive comments when so much of this Bill is to be contained in the regulations.

We do not support the suggested prohibition on private transactions.

This will place our members in the unenviable situation of being a third party in the middle of private transactions. Should any dispute arise between the seller and purchaser the dealer could be faced with serious problems and even civil liability.

There are also practical problems with such a system. In the event of the purchaser not obtaining a licence what would happen with the firearm? It cannot be returned to the seller as that licence will have been cancelled and the firearm transferred to the dealer’s name. Yet although the firearm may be registered to the dealer it is not legally the dealer’s property. Title to the firearm would be disputed between the seller and buyer with both parties laying claim against the dealer.

We support the concept of vetting and declaration of competency of all licensed dealers and gunsmiths. However this should only apply to those persons who actually physically handle the firearms.

In many companies there are partners and shareholders that hold these positions by virtue of their financial interest in the company. Such persons may not necessarily be actively involved in the physical management of the company and should be excluded from this requirement.

Similarly some dealers may be wholly or partly owned by overseas investors. It would be impractical, if not impossible, for these investors to obtain a certificate of competency.

A similar exclusion should also be made for the transporters and carriers used by dealers. For instance all of the major international airlines transport firearms. It would be unreasonable to expect every director of every airline to obtain a certificate of competency. Only those persons directly responsible for handling the firearms should be required to have such a certificate.

The latest draft of the Bill goes some way toward addressing this issue but in our opinion this is in need of greater clarity.

These "circumstances" must be fully defined to avoid inadvertent transgressions.

There should be an obligation placed on the Registrar to acknowledge receipt and processing of any notified changes. A dealer is open to severe penalties under this Bill. Without proper acknowledgement of information sent to the Registrar the dealer could be penalised, without access to the courts, for an internal administrative error on the part of the Registrar failing to record the information.

The majority of larger dealers would support such an online system and allowance is made for exemptions in certain cases.

It is important that there be participation and consultation with the industry in the design of such a system. The dealer will be held criminally responsible for the proper functioning of the workstations so must be given input.

It is also important that the dealer have access to the information attributable to the dealer within the database. Again the dealer will be held criminally liable for the accuracy of this information. The existing Central Firearm Register is notoriously unreliable. The dealer must have access to their own information in order to verify the accuracy of the data and to identify possible errors on the part of the Registrar.

Provision must also be made for dealers to continue to trade in the event of a failure of the system or the telephone lines connecting the dealer’s workstation to the system. It would be unreasonable to expect the dealer to cease all transactions while the central system, which is beyond his control, is offline.

We accept that the Registrar must have the power to temporarily suspend a dealer’s licence. To prevent abuse this power must vest with the Registrar and not be allowed to be delegated to junior officials.

We would hope that this power would only be exercised when absolutely necessary. The Registrar would obviously be assuming civil liability for losses incurred by the dealer should such measures be abused.

We cannot support the provisions for further suspensions beyond the first seven days. These provisions would allow the Registrar to suspend trading indefinitely without a substantiated reason.

Such a further suspension should only be possible after obtaining a court order, during which the Registrar must reasonably substantiate his motivation and the dealer be given the opportunity to contest the order before the courts.

The Registrar must also be compelled to provide the dealer with full reasons and motivations for his actions as required under the Administrative Justice Act.

The period of 14 days notice is far too short and must be extended. In the event of the Registrar believing that the dealer must cease trading immediately he can use his powers of temporary suspension for 7 days and thereafter obtain the necessary court order.

Such notice of suspension must provide the dealer with full and complete reasons and motivations for the termination.

The proposed definition of a firearm would also include any major part of a firearm, including spare magazines. The possession of such parts requires a licence, presumably in this case this would mean that all firearm parts would be registered in the dealer database.

This is hugely problematic and totally impractical.

Under current legislation there is a prohibition on providing any such part unless the purchaser produces a licence for a firearm in which that part may be used. This system should be retained.

As an example it is common practice to assemble a competition sporting pistol from match components. Under existing legislation this is controlled by virtue of the essential component, the barrel, requiring a licence.

In terms of this Bill such a person would have to obtain a licence for every part. This would result in a person having a large number of licences for a single firearm.

The Bill calls for the dealer to maintain a register of all such parts. This register would be purely a numerical control as articles such as spare magazines have no identifying marks. These cannot be individually registered as there is no numerical restriction on their possession. This would create a huge administrative workload for both the dealer and the Registrar with no perceivable benefit.

The Bill prohibits anyone other than a licensed gunsmith to "work" on a firearm. Work is not properly defined and is very broad.

Many dealers who are not licensed gunsmiths perform simple tasks such as servicing and cleaning firearms or replacing minor components and attaching accessories such as sights.

The definition of "work" must be carefully expanded and dealers excluded from this prohibition.

In particular the prohibition on "improving" a firearm is troublesome. Even the cleaning of a firearm could be deemed to be "improving" a firearm.

This entire section must be revisited to avoid confusion.

The entire system of administrative penalties is unacceptable in the proposed form.

We would however support the Registrar having the ability to issue a fine in the same manner as traffic offences are dealt with. This would allow the Registrar to punish minor offences without undertaking a criminal prosecution and still grant the accused dealer the option of refusing the fine, which would then be pursued in the courts.

Again the revised proposals are a considerable improvement but do not fully address the concerns.

As proposed the Bill would allow the Registrar to impose fines in excess of those allowed in a magistrate's court.

The process of service of the notice is unclear and must be very clearly defined.

Although the Bill now prohibits any further criminal prosecution if the fine is accepted it is not stated if this exclusion also applies to any further administrative action. This must be clearly defined otherwise a person may elect to pay the fine only to have the Registrar impose further administrative sanctions such as declaration of unfitness or cancellation of a licence.

The proposed Bill will declare certain firearms to be prohibited or restricted.

Any such firearms in a dealers stock will immediately become impossible if not illegal to sell.

A comprehensive system of compensation must be investigated and established prior to any such prohibitions becoming Law.

Such a compensation scheme should be modelled on the Australian or British systems used when those countries prohibited certain types of firearms. This compensation should also apply to all spare parts, components and accessories for prohibited firearms.

A joint panel representing the State and the Industry should be established to determine the proper value of items that will be forfeit to the State.

This Committee may wish to launch an investigation into the potential value of compensation claims, both from the Industry and individual licensed owners. Our best estimate would put this value at around R250 million but this should be established properly before any decisions are made to prohibit classes of firearms and a cost benefit study undertaken.

The proper and efficient administration of the firearm licensing system is a matter of great concern to this association.

Any delays in the processing and administration of information and licences will have a large financial impact on our industry.

We are concerned that no study has yet been concluded on the additional resources that will be required to administer this Bill. The SAPS will be given additional duties and obligations that will create a huge burden on an already under resourced service.

This could lead to the collapse of the licensing system.

Some funding has already been allocated to upgrade the CFR but this is simply to allow CFR to meet current requirements and not the huge workload to be created by this Bill.

A comprehensive study of the administrative cost of implementing this Bill should be conducted before this Bill is approved.

The Bill makes provision for the staggered introduction of various sections. It is vital to our industry that no measures be introduced until the SAPS has declared themselves fully able to administer these provisions in an efficient manner and accept the full responsibility and liability to do so.

We must also request that the Registrar establish guidelines for the processing of the various new obligations along the lines suggested in the Administrative Justice Act. The Registrar must accept that there is an obligation and duty to administer this Bill efficiently and fairly.

We strongly support this concept.

One of the problems with the enforcement and administration of the existing Act is a lack of specialised knowledge. We have in the past offered to assist the SAPS with information and training material. We believe we can greatly assist the SAPS in this.

To some degree this is already underway with this association having provided the illegal firearm units of the SAPS with reference and training material. We would gladly extend this to all designated firearm officers.

Earlier drafts of this Bill suggested the creation of a Firearm Advisory Committee. The purpose of this committee would be to advise the Registrar and the Minister on technical issues relating to firearms and their use.

We support this concept and believe such a committee would fulfil a very useful role.

This Bill would require all export permits to be approved by the NCACC. This is a ministerial level committee tasked with vetting and approving the exportation of armaments.

Currently there are certain exemptions to this requirement for the exportation of small numbers of sporting arms. We would suggest that this subject be carefully examined and expanded to include certain categories of firearms such as airguns.

Most African countries are turning toward South African dealers to supply their requirements for sporting and hunting firearms and ammunition. If every single export permit must be approved by the NCACC this process would take months. Such delays would cause our clients to look further afield for their purchases and cause substantial financial loss to those of our members who export.

In the case of exports to dealers in other countries we would suggest introducing a system such as that used by the USA and other countries. This system uses a two tier approach to export licensing. Firstly the overseas dealer must be vetted and approved, that dealer is then authorised to receive certain blanket quantities of specific types of firearms and or ammunition over a specific period of time, normally a calendar year.

Once this approval has been issued then an individual export permit is necessary for every shipment. Provided the types and quantities are within the limits of the annual permit this second permit is more of an administrative nature and is issued without further approval and delay.

This system works efficiently around the world and would greatly facilitate trade between dealers in different countries while still giving Government full control over exports.

In the past it has been suggested that this industry play a greater role in policing its’ members. It was suggested that this association be given certain powers to enable it to do so.

These suggestions have had a mixed response within our industry and we are uncertain whether such a system would comply with the Constitution.

We do accept that this association has a duty to eradicate any malpractice within the industry and would welcome the opportunity to assist the Registrar in this regard.

It is for this Committee to consider how best our association can assist. We would, for instance, suggest the appointment of a specific liaison officer within the Central Firearm Register. Such an appointment would facilitate the transfer of information and concerns from the industry.

Prepared by

Alex Holmes

Chairman SA Arms & Ammunition Dealers Association.