How to keep your wits in a trigger-happy world

GEOFF SIFRIN

Despite America’s shocking statistics on gun violence, Trump fiercely defended citizens’ right to own guns. America’s rate of gun violence exceeds all other developed countries – a 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that Americans are 25 times more likely to die from gun homicide than people in other wealthy countries.

But Trump, insanely, advocates even more guns. To make his point, he referred to the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, where Islamist gunmen murdered staff at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, shoppers at a Jewish supermarket and others. If civilians were armed, he said, “it would have been a whole different story”.

Can you just imagine the bloodbath?

Sadly, the rate of firearm-related killings in South Africa ranks just behind America, which has 10.2 deaths per 100 000 people – the highest in the world. South Africa has 9.4 per 100 000. Next on the list is Switzerland, way down at 3.84. These figures are from a study by American medical professionals based on data from 2010 to 2012.

Middle- and upper-class South Africans don’t experience this reality directly because they are shielded behind high walls and security guards in cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town, and lead a semblance of first-world lives. But if they read the papers, they may be aware of the effect on poorer people in townships and elsewhere.

In America, politics plays a huge role for Trump: the NRA, one of the country’s most politically powerful groups which can make or break politicians, zealously resists gun control. It is generally easier to be a legal gun owner “than it is to be a legal driver”, says David Hemenway, director of Harvard’s Injury Control Research Center.

South Africa’s new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, promises to fix the country after the nine-year Zuma debacle. But he has enemies, and violence in our society is deep-rooted and goes back decades.

The figures are shocking: According to a 2014 report by global thinktank the Institute for Economics and Peace, South Africa ranks as the 15th worst country worldwide for societal safety and security, and the eighth most violent, with a homicide rate – gun-related and others – of 31 per 100 000 people. Rates like this are generally found in countries at war or with serious ongoing crises.

Does a country with external threats risk higher internal violence because of stress? Not necessarily. Israel exists in a region of major violent conflicts along its borders, and with continuous threats to annihilate it, but its rate of gun-related deaths, at 2.16 per 100 000, is extremely low compared to the 9.4 quoted above for South Africa.

The daily experiences of the two nations’ inhabitants reflect these figures. Israelis have no hesitation going out in the streets late at night, including young people, men and women. But drive through many neighbourhoods in South Africa, and you’ll see the massive walls with barbed wire around the houses and the cars of private security companies patrolling the streets. Go to almost any shopping centre at 9pm, and you’ll find few people there and entertainment facilities mostly closed by then.

Can South Africans repair their society?

Trump has many followers in gun-happy America who want even more guns. Taking his cue and giving “innocent” people more guns in South Africa would be madness. Yet how to stop it? It causes many of the best South Africans who can still leave, to do so.

• Read Geoff Sifrin’s regular columns on his blog sifrintakingissue.wordpress.com