Zoom in Firearms

By Asser Ntinda

With so many deaths caused by the misuse of firearms, licenced or unlicenced, in the country, it has become increasingly urgent and important for Namibians to start debating this issue, from the point of buying a firearm to the last point when a licence is issued and the firearm finally acquired.

Daily police crime reports make tragic reading. If such trends continue, the future is just too ghastly to contemplate. You read horrific deaths of mainly innocent women and children, shot by their boyfriends and fathers. The reasons given are usually flimsy and ridiculous.

I know that the death penalty will never be introduced, largely because it is part of the chapter that is entrenched in our Constitution, hailed nationally and internationally as one of the best constitutions in the world. But it has also allowed thugs to ruin others’ rights to life because they know that the doctrine of an “eye for an eye” does not apply.

Article 6, which falls under Chapter 3 reads as follows: “The right to life shall be respected and protected. No law may prescribe death as a competent sentence. No Court or Tribunal shall have the power to impose a sentence of death upon any person. No executions shall take place in Namibia.”

Well and good, but here comes Chapter 19 which finally seals Chapter 3 by entrenching fundamental rights and freedoms. Article 131 reads as follows. “No repeal or amendment of any of the provisions of Chapter 3 hereof, in so far as such repeal or amendment diminishes or detracts from the fundamental rights and freedoms contained and defined in that Chapter Three, shall be permissible under this Constitution, and no such purported repeal or amendment shall be valid or have any force or effect.”

But how do you explain a person who shot an innocent person to death and tell the nation in a court of law that he mistook that person for a baboon? How do you explain a person who shoots his girlfriend and a baby to death and then shoots himself to death as well and leaves a note that he did not want his “baby to suffer” on earth and that they should all go?

Think about a man who shoots his girlfriend to death because their relationship has broken up? Or a man who shoots his wife to death and claims that the gun “went off” accidentally? Two weeks ago, a man shot his girlfriend to death and turned the gun on himself, killing himself and closing the case!

There have been several debates, with some people calling for the introduction of the death penalty to serve as a deterrent. Others have even called for a national referendum to overturn Chapter 19 altogether and have it removed from the Constitution, a move which will then allow the death penalty to be introduced and properly deal with some of those heinous crimes perpetrated on innocent people.

Legal gurus have argued for and against the death penalty, depending on which side of the legal divide they are on, with some pointing out that there is really no comprehensive study conclusively showing that the death penalty has ever acted as a deterrent. Others have argued that what do you do if you sentence a person to death by hanging for murder and execute him, only to learn later in years that he was not the one who committed the murder and the real murderer is alive and kicking?

Those are moral and legal questions that can go to the core of the debate, but to shoot a person to death for a love relationship that has gone sour is utter rubbish. It is for this reason that I suggest that maybe the Firearms Act must be revisited and new provisions added to help save innocent lives.

There are just too many guns, licenced or unlicenced, in the hands of people who have never been trained to use them. They only know how to use them from what they have seen in those violent cowboy movies where every quarrel is always solved with a bullet. We have created a generation that cannot take “NO” for an answer from a woman. That is dangerous.

While the death penalty may never come back, and with so many guns in loose hands, the Firearms Act must be amended to include a one-month basic training course on how to use firearms. A licence should only be issued upon completing such training where the rules of handling firearms and the danger of using them unnecessarily. Those who have already licenced firearms, too, must be compelled to undergo such training. Such training will certainly make the work of the Police a lot much easier as the doubts of a gun “going off” accidentally will be drastically reduced. That training should also teach licence holders that the firearm is really for self-defence and should never be used on the spur of emotions. People should be taught to reflect before they act, and not when they have acted.

People used to fear God, but today they fear fellow human beings.

Never before has the fate of innocent woman and children been at the whim of irresponsible few. Those innocent women and children have the same rights to life as enshrined in Chapter Three. Their lives should be respected and protected. Society must do something to help the vulnerable ones. No training, no licence. Period.