Owners of illegal guns and police officers who rent their firearms to criminals could soon face the death penalty...Law enforcement agencies are pushing for tighter gun control and have proposed a raft of tough measures to be discussed by the Cabinet soon. These include an amendment to the Firearms Act, the
law governing the legal ownership of guns.According to the latest proposals contained in the National Policy on Small Arms and Light Weapons,
no one will be allowed to own an AK-47 rifle, a G3 or “any automatic or semi-automatic self-loading military assault rifle of any other calibre”...Anyone found guilty of having one will be hanged. The policy is a follow-up of a letter to the Attorney General dated February 12, 2007. The letter from the then
Police Commissioner, Maj-Gen Hussein Ali, had proposed that the death sentence be imposed on criminals with illegal firearms and civilians who misuse licensed guns.
The AG is yet to act on the recommendations. He instead proposed that the death sentence be reduced to life imprisonment.
Another memorandum from the Commissioner of Police to the Attorney General has now recommended that
imposing the maximum penalty for gun crime is the only way to curb the misuse of weapons, which have been blamed for the high crime rate and banditry in parts of the country.
It also proposes that
anyone who handles a gun while drunk be jailed for five years without the option of a fine. Under the
current laws, such offenders are jailed for a year or fined Sh20,000.
The proposals were prepared by the National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management in the Office of the President and a unit on the control of the proliferation of small and light weapons in the police force....Top on the minds of the authors of the memorandum was the
concern that illegal weapons could be used in election-related violence in 2012.In 2008,
1,133 people were killed in post-election chaos, sparking fears that the violence could be worse in 2012.
Both the memo and the National Policy on Small Arms and Light Weapons warn that Kenyans are increasingly exposed to the danger of weapons finding their way into the country illegally through its borders and also through Lake Victoria. Kenya’s border with war-ravaged Somalia is one of the major entry points of illegal firearms.
The idea behind the tough proposals is to enhance the punishment provided for in the
Firearms Act section 4(3), which prohibits the purchase, acquisition and possession of firearms or ammunition without a certificate. The
current sentence is a jail term of between seven and 15 years.If the proposal is accepted and becomes law, offences under that section will be punishable by death...
gun owners who fail to renew their licenses will be fined Sh1,000, up from the current Sh500, while
licensed gun owners who fail to produce their permit will be fined Sh50,000, up from Sh10,000...
Concealing the serial number of a weapon will attract 10 years in prison without the option of a fine, up from the current five years.
Unregistered gun dealers will be jailed for between 10 and 15 years, while those who
give false information when registering as gun dealers will be jailed for five years without the option of a fine.
Selling guns or bullets in a place which is not authorised under the law will attract a
jail term of not less than 15 years, according to the proposal.
Security personnel or top government officials who are found armed and drunk will be jailed for five years...
The national policy on small arms is intended to reduce the number of weapons in public hands, bring together all laws related to weapons, help cooperation with other countries and inform the public about the danger posed by guns.
The policy was drafted by the National Focal Point for Small Arms and Light Weapons, the department which deals with disarmament in the Office of the President.
----------
Full Story "Owning AK-47 soon to be a hanging offence"@:http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/669076/-/item/2/-/10uwj7k/-/index.html
----------
BUT:
What they don't tell you is that some Kenyans are more equal than others when it comes to firearms! Ethnic discrimination plays into this "Own a Gun, be Executed" proposal, just another cover for tyranny of the most bloody kind, and don't think if they could get away with these kind of laws in the USA and other ex-Crown countries without retaliation, they would not try it. This is the inevitable outcome of such U.N. designed schemes, when put in the hands of the untrustworthy...S9----------
It is feared villagers in Rift Valley province are moving from traditional weapons such as spears to machine guns.
Government officials insist they are tackling the influx of illegal arms.
But they have been widely criticised for failing to punish the ringleaders of violence after the 2007 election, in which 1,300 people died.
A power-sharing government was formed in early 2008 to quell the violence.
It has been under international pressure to investigate the killings ever since, but its failure to organise a local tribunal has forced the International Criminal Court to step in to prosecute suspects...
"
Right now we have AK47 rifles for sale but there are times when we also sell G3s [rifles]," he said.
"In a month we sell more than 100 rifles."
Members of the
Kalenjin community and their rivals, the
Kikuyu - the country's dominant ethnic group -
both said they were arming to protect themselves.
"
We bought the guns because we hear the Kikuyu have also bought guns," said a Kalenjin man who declined to be named.
"Before we were using bows and arrows to fight the enemy but changed to guns following the post-election experience because we realised, compared to guns, the arrows were child's play."
A member of the Kikuyu community said he was
not willing to "wait until 2012 to be killed".
"We have to arm ourselves. I did not acquire this gun to commit offences," he said...
----------
Full story @:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8293745.stm
----------
A UN investigator has called for the
removal of Kenya's police commissioner and attorney general over a wave of alleged extrajudicial killings. Philip Alston said: "
Kenyan police are a law unto themselves. They kill often, with impunity."
Mr Alston has been on a...visit to probe claims of arbitrary killings...said on Wednesday that
police commissioner Maj Gen Hussein Ali should be sacked and also urged Attorney General Amos Wako to quit...
----------
Full story@:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7909523.stm
----------
SO: You see, the situation is a lot more complicated than the mere presence of some black-market Kalashnikov and Orbendorfer firearms, but it remains convenient for the forces of evil to blame the guns and avoid the real issues...(This, from the people who gave us the "Mau-Mau" uprising back in the colonial past)...
S9
