South African Female Gun Owners Question Limiting Handguns for Self-Defense

JOHANNESBURG - A proposed law aims to prevent South Africans from obtaining firearm licenses for self-defense. While gun critics say limiting access to guns has proven successful in reducing deaths, some proponents argue that taking guns out of some hands — specifically, women’s hands — will deepen what the president has called a “second pandemic,” of gender-based violence.

South Africa’s rate of intimate femicide — the killing of women by their partners — is five times the global average, according to the World Health Organization.  And the big driver of that, they argue, is the nation’s high rate of gun ownership. That’s the argument from South African legislators pushing this bill, that fewer guns in public hands has statistically led to fewer gun deaths. Gun owners and advocates disagree, and say it matters who is holding the gun. One particularly vocal group consists of women, who say the constant threat of violence calls for self-defense. The nation’s unacceptably high rate of sexual violence once led Interpol to name the country the “rape capital of the world.” President Cyril Ramaphosa recently described gender-based violence as the nation’s “second epidemic.”