20 500 guns destroyed
2004-12-17 12:52
Johannesburg - The police destroyed more than 20 500 firearms in Kempton Park on Friday in a bid to fight the proliferation of guns in the country.
"The police are winning the war on the proliferation of illegal firearms," Gauteng police's acting spokesperson Senior Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said.
She said the weapons included sub-machine guns, shotguns, rifles, handguns and gas pistols.
Most of them had been used in crimes such as cash-in-transit heists, murder and robberies, Martins-Engelbrecht said in a statement.
She said the rest of the firearms belonged to persons declared unfit to own a gun, and legal owners who no longer deemed it necessary to own one.
"All firearms forfeited to the state as well as all firearms seized by the police have to be destroyed," she said.
- SAPA