Our 7News' investigation into the issuance of fraudulent gun licenses has triggered change in the form of the country's first Gun License Control Board.
Minister of Home Affairs Kareem Musa is spearheading the creation of this unit which he discussed this morning on Sun up, when he revealed who will serve on the three member commission.
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs and New Growth Industries
"As you know the commissioner of police is a very busy man. He has the entire country weighing on his shoulders, and so the last thing that the commissioner needs to be doing is to be reviewing thousands and thousands, upon thousands of gun applications each day and each week. And so we felt it necessary as part of our comprehensive review of this system to create a board. I know a lot of people have been inquiring about this board, who's going to be on the board? And so let me firstly say that we will have on the board a magistrate. So coming from the judiciary, we are going to have a magistrate sitting on the board and that will be on a rotational basis."
"We are going to also have the head of dangerous goods, so it's a police officer who is in charge of dangerous goods. It's not the commissioner of police but another officer. That officer can change at any time as well, so it's not going to be the same officer, like I said that is going to be ingrained in the particular board. And finally, it's a three-member panel, finally we are going to have the CEO of our ministry, whoever that may be at any time to be sitting on that board. So that is going to be the composition of the board. They will have the powers of course, to receive applications and to review applications. The head of dangerous goods that sits on the board, will have to liaise with the Special branch because as you know, one of the issues that were under the microscope by Channel 7, which did excellent Investigative Journalism, is that there were instances of fraudulent vetting that might have been coming out of the Special branch. And so the head of dangerous goods is going to be that middle person that liaises between the board and Special branch, to ensure that what we are getting out of Special branch is proper vetting."
The legislation for the Gun License Control Board is currently at the Attorney General's ministry where amendments are being made to the firearms legislation. The paper will then make its way to the National Assembly in August for consideration.
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