• Gun violence steadily declined in South Africa between 2000 and 2011. 
  • The drop followed a 2000 law that made it harder for ordinary citizens to get a gun permit. Researchers suspect that policies targeting guns specifically drove some of this drop in homicide because gun-related murders decreased more sharply than other kinds of homicide. 
  • In the Colombian cities of Bogotá and Medellín, a law which made it illegal for gun owners to carry their firearms in public saved 30 lives each month. Here’s what it could mean for South Africa. 
In Colombia, researchers found that when two large cities made it illegal to carry a gun in public, the murder rate in those places dropped when compared to cities in that country that didn’t implement the ban.
  • Read the full script here
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Yolanda Mdzeke is a multimedia reporter at Bhekisisa.

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Jesse Copelyn is a health journalist at Bhekisisa.

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