South Africa Confiscates 300,000 Guns From White Farmers

South Africa has begun confiscating white farmers’ guns after a Constitutional Court ruled that 300,000 gun owners have to relinquish their weapons. 

In 2017, the North Gauteng High Court ruled that Section 24 and Section 28 of the Firearm’s Control Act were unconstitutional. This was a small victory for proponents of the right to bear arms, but it was just overturned.

Edge-canopy.com reports: According to The Citizen, Sections 24 and 28 are about this:

“Section 24 of the Act requires that any person who seeks to renew a license must do so 90 days before its expiry date Section 28 stipulates that if a firearm license has been canceled‚ the firearm must be disposed of or forfeited to the state. A 60-day time frame was placed on its disposal, which was to be done through a dealer.”

Now that the original ruling was overturned, all gun owners who did not renew their firearms licenses, because the law no longer required that of them, must immediately hand in their guns to the nearest police station: that’s the end result of a scheme.

Basically the court said “now you legally don’t have to register your guns at this moment,” and when people complied with the law and didn’t, now that the law has been changed, those people who still obeyed the law must immediately turn in the guns as if they broke the law, when the law was temporarily different before.

The importance of a population being armed is so great, this article can’t possibly encapsulate it. In an article titled “Why Isn’t the State Scared to Use Force Against Us? Self Defense and the Police”:

“Why is the state unafraid to use force against us?

Why do they think they will never be met with defensive force when they incarcerate people for victimless crimes, seize children from loving parents, or when the police kill an innocent person? Why do they think they can pass laws that infringe on our most basic rights, and trust that police will enforce them?

Because they think people won’t retaliate: because people usually don’t retaliate. This article is not suggesting anyone do anything, but the truth is, the government believes they are impervious to consequence for ordering police to use force against people for peaceful actions they have deemed “criminal.”

If an ordinary person threatened to lock you in a cage for possessing cannabis for example, what would you do? You’d probably flee the scene or defend yourself with force. If you were in a place like Texas, you might shoot them in self defense.”