Gun Control in Rhodesia

Contrary to what many might think, despite being literally awash in guns, Rhodesia had gun control. For instance, 120,000 privately registered firearms were in the hands of the white population. How did they know that? Well, they were registered.
 
Firearm licenses were required for possession and purchase. Authorities granted them only upon proof of a genuine need (farmers in high-risk areas or “sport”), although they were not as hard to get as compared with say the UK. Despite the regulations, Rhodesian gun owners report that the licenses were quite liberal and fairly easy to get.
 
The Firearms Act of 1957 made it Illegal to posses firearms or ammunition without a firearm certificate. Special permission required for fully-automatic weapons. Individual firearms had to be registered with a separate certificate.
 
Ammunition was rationed, sometimes as strictly as five rounds per year if you lived in a town or
200 rounds per year for farmers. Others had an unlimited ammo license and report no issues buying what they needed, so it was inconsistent.
 
The government was adamant that firearms for civilian use should be limited to semi-automatic. The legislation provided relatively harsh penalties for anyone caught converting weapons to fully automatic. As a result, many of the locally-made 9mm carbines were semi-auto. One family’s case the GM-15 Sub-machine gun (Sanna 77) became the mother’s weapon while the father carried his FN FAL as a reservist (FALs were almost always semi-auto only).
 
It was possible to possess machine guns if you lived in high-threat areas (or had connections). Plenty of family, including women, had full-auto submachine guns, like Uzis. Generally this was more of a rural farmer type situation, rather than an “I want one” situation. If you needed it, you could probably get permission for one. Often the government issued weapons.
 
Firearms certificates were issued for captured terrorist weapons, or not at all, but this often depended on the farmer’s relationship with the local police. Many farmers kept all sorts of ordinance that terrorists left behind. Many ended up getting into trouble after the transition to Zimbabwe when “weapons of war” were collected using the registration cards. Some literally buried guns.
 
After returning to Zimbabwe as a journalist critical of the regime, Peter Godwin’s parents house was raided and hunting rifles taken. This included his beloved Brno .22 rifle confiscated as the regime deemed him “a person unfit to be in possession of firearms.” Former Prime Minister Ian Smith had his firearms confiscated in 1982, some of which he needed on the farm, and weren’t military at all.
 
After Mugabe took power, the Emergency Powers Act authorized searches for “weapons of war” without a warrant. Chris Cocks was arrested after a two-hour search of his home turned up no firearms, but an AK bayonet, a box of .22 cartridges, and some left-over det cord. Even police detectives were not immune from Mugabe’s purge.
 
In jail, Cocks met another white farmer who had his dozen legal firearms confiscated. The firearms were all licensed, but the farmer did not have the licenses in his possession, for which he was arrest. The licenses had been sent into Central Firearms Registry in Harare for verification and renewal. Thankfully, a relative was able to retrieve them in time for the initial court hearing, but the men were held in custody until they were coerced into accepting a plea-bargain for a few hundred dollar fine.

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