Children trapped in the crossfire of gun violence

Every single week there are reports of children who are caught in the crossfire of gun violence. Just last weekend in Wesbank, Cape Town, a nine-year-old boy, whose mother was killed, was wounded in a shooting that police believed was gang-related. In just five and a half months in 2024, 333 children in the Western Cape alone were treated for gun-related injuries in public health facilities… and 58 of them died from their wounds.

For every story that makes the news, there are children treated in trauma units, families planning funerals, and survivors carrying invisible scars that may never make it into official statistics. Nationally, guns remain the weapon of choice in murder. When guns are so present in society, children do not sit on the sidelines of this crisis, they stand directly in its path.

South Africa rightly tracks its murder rate, but what we are less honest about is how those numbers translate into the daily lives of children. Gun violenceis a public health crisis and a child rights violation. We do have a law meant to control guns.

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The Firearms Control Act 60 of 2000 helped push firearm deaths down from an estimated 34 per day in 1998, to about 18 per day by 2009. However, those gains have been steadily eroded by corruption, weak oversight and loopholes that allow guns to leak to the illegal markets. When firearms meant to be in private hands end up arming gangs or abusive partners, it is children who often pay the highest price. South Africa’s Firearms Control Act makes it a crime for a gun owner to leave a firearm lying around.

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