The research sample consisted of 1155 police dockets relating to the loss of legally owned firearms to criminals in incidents of robbery (508) and theft (348). In addition, the sample included cases opened by the police against gun-owners for negligently losing their weapons (199). While most of these were linked to theft and robbery cases, 84 of the 199 cases were not linked to complainants’ statements alleging theft or robbery of the weapon. A further 16 cases were too poorly documented to assess whether they reflected robbery, theft, or negligent loss.

The dockets were drawn from 17 police stations across the country, with 406 coming from Cape Town, 114 from Durban, 498 from Johannesburg and 137 from Nelspruit. All the cases were from 1998 — a year in which 30220 firearms were reported lost or stolen to the Firearms Registry — suggesting that the sample related to about 4% of all the relevant cases. However, as reflected in the next article, police officers and gun-dealers alike believe that, historically at least, the loss of licensed weapons has been under-reported to the authorities.

How often are firearms lost?

The 30220 legally owned weapons lost in 1998 represented a rate of about 665 weapons lost per 100000 owned. By international comparison — a process that is notoriously difficult from a methodological perspective — this put South Africa near the top of the list of countries with the highest rates of firearm losses per firearms owned.

Another way of looking at the loss of firearms in South Africa is to think about their loss in relation to other types of crime experienced by South Africans. Indeed, the various lobby groups representing gun-owners actively encourage policy-makers to do this, by asserting that the number of firearms reported as lost every year is less than 1% of the total owned. However, a comparison with other crimes does not support the conclusion that gun-owners are particularly responsible in their handling of their weapons.

Consider: the per capita rate of vehicle theft is less than 4 times greater than the theft of firearms per capita, while recorded theft out of motor vehicles per person is only 5.5 times greater than the theft of firearms. These differences may suggest that firearm-owners are less likely to lose their firearms than they are their other goods. However, it is important to bear in mind that the theft of motor vehicles is generally regarded as over-reported since some portion of recorded crimes are actually attempts to defraud insurance companies. On the other hand professional opinion holds that the loss of guns is under-reported. Moreover, vehicles are much more frequently out of the direct control of their owners than guns should be, making them easier targets for criminals. Thus, the fact that only about 2.5 times as many cars are stolen per 100000 cars owned, compared to guns stolen per 100000 owned, suggests that guns are lost with a depressing frequency.

How do South Africans lose their licensed weapons?

The cases reviewed in each city were quite different, with complainants in Johannesburg much more likely to have lost their weapons in robberies than were complainants in other centres. Indeed, 70% of all robberies took place in Johannesburg. Moreover, in no other site did robberies exceed theft and negligent loss, with only complainants in Durban suffering a similar number of robberies as thefts. By contrast police in Cape Town and Nelspruit were much more likely to have initiated a charge of negligent loss of a firearm than were police in other centres.

Apart from the cases drawn from Johannesburg, therefore, it appears that gun-owners were more likely to lose their firearms in thefts than in robberies. This implies that the loss of weapons is more often associated with insecure firearm storage in these places than in Johannesburg. However, the sheer weight of the Johannesburg sample means that, overall, robberies of licensed gun-owners constituted the most common method of dispossessing owners, despite their access to a firearm at the time of the attack.

One caution in this regard, however: to the extent that owners of weapons lost to criminals seek to avoid being prosecuted with the negligent loss of the weapon, they are more likely to claim that they were robbed, potentially inflating these numbers.

Thirty-eight percent of crimes were committed in inner city areas, 37% in townships, 20% in suburbs and 5% in other areas — including farms and veld areas.

Of those whose weapons were lost in robberies over 84% claimed to have the weapon on their person at the time of the robbery, with the bulk of the remainder having stored it in a safe, in a cupboard or in their car. Of those who lost their weapons in theft, the majority claimed that it was in a safe (27%), on their person (17%), in a cupboard (16%) or in their vehicle (16%) at the time of the crime.

Who loses their weapons?

Less than 8% of all complainants were women, reflecting the fact that most gun-owners are male, with the bulk of victims being aged between 26 and 50.

872 cases contained data on the race of the complainant. Of these 66.2% were African, 22.5% were white, 8.4% were coloured and 3% were Indian.

If the victim were either African or Indian, he was far more likely to have been the victim of a robbery than were coloured and white victims. Only 25.8% of white victims had their firearms stolen from them in a robbery. Conversely, white and coloured victims were much more likely to have been accused of having lost their firearms negligently, with over 33% of white ‘victims’ being so accused.

Guns and self-defence

Given that the need to improve one’s safety is the basis for the decision of many to become gun-owners, the question arises as to whether gun ownership actually increases one’s safety.

This question is methodologically hard to answer. However, there are a number of indicators suggesting that the positive effects of gun ownership are not all that large.

In this regard, perhaps the most startling finding of the research was that in the bulk of cases in the sample, nothing else was reported to have been lost or stolen. In less than 40% of robberies, 31% of thefts and 30% of negligent loss cases nothing else was listed in the docket as stolen. This suggests that guns, to some extent at least, are targeted by criminals in these crimes, and are not an incidental reward.

In a similar vein, the fact that the robbery of a firearm outnumbers the theft of firearms by 1.5:1 while burglaries in general outnumber robberies in general by 2.4:1, shows that firearms are more likely to be taken forcibly than are other items of property.

But perhaps the greatest reason to doubt that guns do, in fact, improve one’s physical safety, is the fact that in by far the majority of cases, it is the criminal that chooses the time, place and circumstances of the crime, not the victim. Thus the criminal always has the advantage of surprise. Moreover, he usually has the advantage of numbers: the average number of victims during a robbery was exactly half that of the number of robbers.

As a social scientist might say: people can defend themselves, but they never do so in circumstances of their own choosing.

Antony Altbeker
Graduate School of Public and Development Management