Should South Africa have stricter gun legislation? Ebrahim Moolla and Rebekah Kendal go head-to-head on whether South Africans should have the right to bear arms...

Ebrahim Moolla reckons that guns are indicative of mankind's progress and that to impose stricter guns laws is both naïve and racist.

Canada has some of the most liberal firearm legislation on the planet. Your average laid-back Canuck would think nothing of getting together a sawed-off shotgun, limpit mines, assault rifles and the armoury of a West African country to scamper after Bambi. And yet, the US northern neighbour rarely makes headlines for violent crime. Remember that kid who was decapitated on the bus? Well he didn't have his head taken off with a gun...

And so to in the case of "every man a soldier" Switzerland, all able-bodied male Swiss citizens aged between 21 and 50 are issued assault rifles and ammunition in order to perform annual military obligations. Switzerland is one of the few nations in the world with a higher rate of firearm ownership than the US — but with a relatively low level of gun crime

South Africa is a country in revolution, where our next president's anthem is umshini wami and the symbol of the machine gun is inextricably bound with liberation. To attempt to place restrictions on firearm ownership is to regress into a Calvinist, Nationalist paradigm and dance on the graves of the legions of the MK cadres — were it not for their ultimate sacrifice, I would not be able to debate the issue today. It is not surprising that gun legislation has its origins in so-called 'Black Codes' in the US, designed to restrict blacks' right to keep and bear arms.

At the same time it is grossly naïve to believe tightening legislation will have the desired effect of lowering crime rates. Due to it sanguinary history, SA has a teeming cache of illegal weapons and some of the most ingenious home-made arms manufacturers around. It's not the gun that does the killing — there is always a factor behind the pulling of a trigger.

History bears out that gun control does little to rectify societal ills. In fact, repressing civil liberties may well do just the opposite. Totalitarian regimes like WWII-era Fascist Italy, that passed gun control legislation, later followed up the move with confiscation.

Should we be debating the link between violent crime and personal firearms at all? Perhaps the best known proponent of gun freedom, Jeff Snyder terms the main principle behind gun control "the instrumental theory of salvation" that, lacking the ability to change the violent intent in criminals, we often shift focus to the instrument in an attempt to "limit our ability to hurt ourselves, and one another".

About 10 000 murders are committed using firearms annually, while an estimated 2.5-million crimes may be thwarted through civilian use of firearms annually. In an extensive series of studies, criminologist Gary Kleck found that crime victims who defend themselves with guns are less likely to be injured or lose property than victims who either did not resist, or resisted without guns. This was so even though the victims using guns typically faced more dangerous circumstances than other victims.

Mankind has come a long way since the invention of gunpowder. The report of a gun is the sound of progress. The inexorable flow of the technological tide must continue unabated if we are to survive and thrive. Let freedom ring with a shotgun blast.

Rebekah Kendal, scoffing at the suggestion that self-destruction could be called 'progress', argues for a gun-free South Africa.

Here's a scenario most South Africans are pretty familiar with: one man shoots another man over a cell phone. Ah yes, criminals in South Africa have no value for human life.

And here's the twist: the man doing the shooting is the upstanding citizen and the man being shot at is the escaping robber. Throw in a toddler who is killed by a stray bullet and the tragedy of inadequate gun control in South Africa becomes glaringly apparent.

Guns have only one purpose. There is no way around this.

According to the organisation Gun Free South Africa, gun violence kills at least 25 people in South Africa every day. Guns kill more people than all forms of road traffic and pedestrian accidents combined. There are 302 gun-related murders in South Africa for every 100 000 guns in private hands (compared to four in the USA).

Dragging out the old dictum 'guns don't kill people, people do' is a pathetic attempt at obfuscation. Technically, the same could be said of knives, hammers, rope and pillows. And yet, all of these objects have other functions for which they are used far more frequently. Guns, by and large, are not used to butter bread.

The fact that 'people kill people' is entirely the point. People tend to be irrational, emotional, forgetful, unhinged, bigoted, vengeful and sadistic. Yip, even the upstanding citizens. Unfettered access to guns makes death so much more inevitable.

You can argue that people have the right to protect themselves, but a more important right to fight for, is the right not to have to protect yourself. The right to freedom from violence, freedom from fear. This right will never be actualised in a culture where violent people have easy access to guns. The right to protect yourself would, however, become far less imperative if guns were removed from civilian hands.

Entirely.

South Africa doesn't just need stricter gun laws; it needs to be a gun-free society. This is not an impossible goal — it is just one which scared, angry and violent people refuse to contemplate. Guns make criminals powerful; they make victims criminals; and, most importantly, guns make people dead.

Who do you agree with? Post a comment below...