Why we need to provide a motivation to possess a firearm.

In South Africa, we license firearms for three primary reasons. These reasons include hunting, sport shooting and self-defence. The purpose of a motivation is to convince the Central Firearms Registrar that you need your selected firearm for a specific purpose – this purpose needs to be stipulated in your motivation. Apart from clearly stating the intended use of your selected firearm, you must include factual information to back up your statement. Ultimately, you need to convince the Registrar that your intentions are true and just.

Our team here at Gunlicence.co.za has over a decade of experience drafting and compiling motivations for the public. Often, when we explain to potential clients that we offer to complete all their SAPS paperwork, draft a motivation of forty to seventy pages long, ensure all attachments are correct and sufficient, as well as adding a full money-back guarantee on top of this, we are asked why. “Why do I need a motivation of forty or seventy pages when twenty pages may do?” Our answer to this question is stating the fact that we trust our motivations and stick to what works! When drafting a motivation for a licence to possess a firearm, less is not more. We do our utmost to provide our clients with a comprehensive motivation which has been tailored to their needs, whether these needs are taking up hunting, looking to become a more proficient sport shooter, or if they intend to protect their lives and the lives of their family members as an absolute last resort. Often, we include more than what might be listed on the DFO’s minimum checklist for accepting and processing any firearm-related applications, however, we include everything possible to ensure that our client’s application will be a success – this is exactly why we are confident to offer a full money-back guarantee on our application packs and motivations.

Apart from perhaps adding more than what is listed on the DFO’s minimum checklist, we ensure that your motivation is covered on all the points on which the Registrar may refuse your application. Some of the most common reasons for refusing your application are failing to provide any adequate reasons or proof to possess a firearm, and failure to provide any relevant supplementary information to support your motivation. In short, this means that you have been refused due to a lack of motivation and for a lack of any additional information and proof of why you need your selected firearm, and why you need it for your stipulated purpose.
So, with this in mind, we ensure that we provide up-to-date and relevant information for each client’s motivation for whatever their intended use might be.

So, what counts as adequate supplementary documentation? To provide a good example of this we will look at a motivation structured for the renewal of a licence to possess a firearm for the purpose of occasional hunting. If you have, for example, stated that you go on hunting expeditions once a year to hunt Kudu with your .308 Winchester rifle, it would be a great help to your application should you include photos of prior hunting trips, invoices for any game you took down, as well as an invitational letter from the game farm where your hunting expedition took place. Often clients are unsure of what this letter means or why it is necessary. The invitational letter commonly refers to the hunter in question demonstrating safe handling and use of their firearm, demonstrating good hunting ethic, and this letter will also state that the hunter in question would be allowed to once again hunt on the farm in the future.

Now, if we take a look at the motivation for an application to possess a firearm for the purpose of sport shooting (whether dedicated sport-shooting or occasional sport shooting), sufficient supplementary documentation will include any photos of the applicant participating in an activity or running a course of fire, as well as any copies of targets the applicant has been scored on.

However, for new firearm licence applications for the primary purpose of sport shooting, applicants will often not have any targets or proof of sport shooting activity as they are only applying for their licence to possess the firearm at this point – firearms remain in possession of a dealer until the applicant can produce a valid licence to take possession of that firearm. For firearm licence renewal applications, it has essentially become mandatory for targets and proof of sport shooting activity to be submitted alongside any listed attachments and the actual motivation. Why has this become mandatory? Well, the answer is simple, and we’ll refer to the beginning of our article. You need to convince the register that you have a need, or at least a valid want-to-need, to possess your selected firearm – you need to convince them of what exactly your intentions are should you be applying for a new licence, and renewals, you need to prove that you have been using the firearm for the purpose you initially licensed it for.

For self-defence applications and motivations, supplementary documentation can include crime statistics relating to your area, related to any areas in which you work, roads you travel on daily etc. Our team here at Gunlicence.co.za will ensure that any statistics, articles and news stories make sense to your application. The harsh reality is that anywhere in South Africa today, you are faced with potential threats – we as a nation, have become so conditioned to always be vigilant, thus citizens often feel that the state of the country is motivation enough. We do not disagree with this, however, in order to provide the Registrar with an acceptable motivation, one has to provide examples and proof that you are faced with potential threats throughout your everyday life.
Fortunately, we offer a professional and comprehensive service to assist anybody who may feel that they need some help with motivating their need for a firearm. Applying for a licence to possess a firearm can be a daunting process, even once you have completed the first two steps. SAPS officials understand the process but often fail to provide applicants with this understanding – we are here to give you all the information you need and to provide you with an application that will exceed the Registrar’s expectations and be guaranteed success. We have done our best to make this process as simple as possible for new applicants, applicants whose renewals are due, those who failed to renew before the expiry of their firearm licence, and even those who have recently lost a dear relative who has left one or more firearms behind.
When approached by a potential client, we strive to deliver the best service as humanly possible while keeping the process as simple as possible. The most work from the client’s side is to complete our questionnaire, detailing any intended use, safe-keeping measures and facilities, detailing any prior experience with firearms, as well as to provide us with any listed attachments. We refer to this questionnaire as our mandate form – we have set up our mandate forms to best suit the client’s needs. We have mandates specifically set up for firearm licence renewals, new firearm licence applications, deceased estate firearm licence applications, expired firearm licence applications, as well as new competency applications, further competency applications and competency renewal applications. With all the information provided by the client, requested in our mandate, we can draft a motivation specific to this client’s situation and tailor it around his or her intended use.

Ultimately, we have to provide the registrar with a substantial piece of information which not only lists the need for a firearm in South Africa, but also why you as an individual require this tool – firearms are useful tools in the hands of law-abiding citizens, but they can still take life at the end of the day. It is expected that laws surrounding firearm ownership are strict, but still have the privilege follow the processes involved for legally obtaining a firearm licence.

Personally, our team here at Gunlicence.co.za is quite satisfied with the Firearms Control Act and the way our laws have been set. We simply follow the laws, provide SAPS and the Registrar with what they need, and wait for successful feedback. Nothing beats the feeling of receiving your approval message! The process after approval is quite simple; first, you will be notified via SMS that your application has been successful, this message will tell you to await a message from your DFO which will inform you that your licence card is ready for collection, once your card is ready for collection you simply need to visit your DFO and sign for the receipt of your licence card, from here you will visit the dealer where your firearm is stored and follow the necessary procedure to book out your firearm.

Fortunately, SAPS has mandated the issue of temporary licence permits for applicants whose applications have been successful. This means that once you receive your approval, you may collect this permit from your DFO and thereafter visit the dealer to follow the standard procedure of booking out your firearm. You are now a licensed firearm owner! As the process from starting at Step 1, completing Step 2, and now completing Step 3 can take a bit of time, we highly recommend practising as often as possible, taking part in any firearm-related courses, whether they are accredited or non-accredited courses, as this will allow you to continuously become more proficient with the safe handling and use of your firearm. Some courses are specific to defensive shooting and defensive techniques, while others are more designed and set up for those who intend to become master sports shooters. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or advanced firearm owner, you never reach a point where practice becomes unnecessary, and more importantly, you never reach a point in which safety rules may be broken or bent.

You can find out more about our firearm licensing services here – firearm licensing