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Irish-Qhobosheane, Jenni. 2021 ‘Diversion of Firearms from other Government Agencies.’ How to Silence the Guns? Southern Africa's Illegal Firearms Markets, pp. 29-32. Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Geneva. 19 October

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Diversion of firearms from other government agencies

In all three countries, the police and army are not the only government agencies that possess state-issue firearms. Government agencies and institutions, such as the prisons/correctional services, prosecuting authorities, national intelligence services and agricultural departments also have them. It was not possible to get details of exactly how many such firearms exist outside the police and army in each of the three countries. There is no information on either the number of firearms held by different government agencies nor the number of firearms they have lost.

[…] What makes the situation more concerning is the number of weapons held by the state. In a SAPS briefing during a parliamentary national firearms summit in 2015, the National Commissioner said there were 425 official government institutions that owned just under 1.3 million firearms. Currently, the SAPS and the SANDF jointly hold just over 608,000 firearms, which means more than 660,000 guns are held by other government institutions in South Africa..

ID: Q14661

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