21/02/2026
Lawfully armed citizens are not the ones that should be disarmed in a country where 71 people are murdered every day.
Between 1 October and 31 December 2025, 6 351 South Africans were murdered. That is 71 murders per day, nearly three every hour.
In the same three-month period, 11 430 rapes were recorded. That is more than five rapes every hour. There were also 6 730 attempted murders and 38 442 serious assaults.
This is the reality in which the debate about firearm ownership is taking place.
The crisis in South Africa is not lawfully armed citizens. The crisis is illegal fi****ms, illicit trafficking, diversion, organised criminal networks and corruption.
In many serious crime categories, our detection rate sits at roughly 12%. That means nearly nine out of ten serious crimes do not result in a detected suspect.
Before anyone proposes tighter controls on compliant, licensed firearm owners, they must explain how citizens are expected to protect themselves in a system where the likelihood of detection and conviction remains so low.
Lawfully armed citizens comply with licensing requirements, background checks and strict regulatory controls. They are not the drivers of organised crime. Criminal syndicates are armed through illegal supply chains that the state has failed to dismantle.
When response times are stretched, when forensic backlogs delay justice, and when conviction rates lag behind arrest statistics, responsible citizens inevitably become their own first and last line of defence.
Disarming law-abiding people while illegal fi****ms continue to flood communities is neither rational nor defensible.
If government is serious about reducing the 71 murders per day, it must focus on:
• Dismantling illegal firearm networks
• Strengthening border controls
• Rooting out corruption within SAPS
• Restoring forensic capacity
• Measuring success by convictions, not arrests
Until detection rates improve and organised criminal networks are decisively disrupted, lawfully armed citizens remain a necessary safeguard in a country still struggling to protect its own.
To top that, law-abiding armed citizens are the only true safeguard against state tyranny. It’s not me saying so, but history itself.
Ian C