Is Banning Fake Guns South Africa’s Next Step?

What’s a gun-hating government to do if they pretty much ban guns but violent criminals continue plying their trade of robbery, rape and assault? In South Africa, banning replica guns—many of them nothing more than kids’ toys—just might be the next move.

According to a report at iol.co.za, that’s what Cape Town Provincial Thembisile Patekile wants to see the legislature do after a spate of thugs using fake guns to commit real crimes has made his job harder.

“Replica guns are a problem because house robberies, hijacking and even rape incidents, and other heinous crimes, criminals are using fake guns that people think are real guns,” Patekile told the news outlet. “We call them blank guns, they are used in the film industry and elsewhere. They look like real guns and they sound the same, when a person fires you would think it is a real gun.”

Patekile said that the fact that such guns are for sale to anyone is the problem. Never mind those who have legitimate reasons for using such devices, which are used as starter pistols, for dog training and a number of other purposes.

“This is problematic for us, but remember you don’t need a license to own that gun, you can buy it over the counter,” he said. “What we would like to see now is legislation that talks to banning these guns, because lives are at stake. These guns are used for many criminal activities and we are confiscating a number of them. If we arrest someone with them, we take the guns to our forensic lab and test if it is a real gun or not.”

First, any law enforcement officer anywhere should be able to look at a gun’s action and other features and tell if it is real or a replica. If it holds live rounds, has a firing pin and a barrel for the bullet to travel down, it’s a pretty sure bet it’s a real gun. If the barrel is plugged and it doesn’t hold real cartridges, it’s probably not a real gun.

Note that just like real guns, replica guns don’t shoot, rob or rape anyone without the help of a violent criminal on the other end. Still, Patekile hopes the government will regulate them under the country’s Firearms Control Act.

“We could even look into the Firearms Control Act to ban these things,” he said. “In the Western Cape they are prevalent, when we do a stop and search in hotspot areas, you will find a lot of these guns but sometimes it is difficult to prosecute anyone for possessing a replica unless a crime has been committed.”

In the end, violent criminals will be violent criminals—in South Africa or anywhere else—and they’re going to find a way to rape, rob, assault and murder innocent citizens until they are caught and jailed, no matter what kind of guns are banned. It seems that some South African officials have as hard of a time understanding that as Democrats in the United States do.