I have interviewed three medical doctors who work emergency, minimum 12 years and maximum 26 years experience. Between all three, they have treated less than a hand count of firearms injuries. In the case of one doctor, the four he had treated were all gang or criminal related. Only one treated an accidental shooting in a combined 60 years of emergency medicine. They have treated many thousands of other sports injuries and self inflicted injuries by other means. Most suicides were pills, bridges, or rope. The facts are that the shooting sports are the safest in the world as attested to by the fact that liability insurance in the amount of FIVE MILLION DOLLARS can be had for a premium under TEN DOLLARS PER YEAR because accidents and misuse by traditional lawful owners are so extremely rare as to not register actuarially. No other sporting activity can make that safety claim.
Then let us look at the “usefulness” of the error riddled, horribly expensive, and grossly incomplete registry. By the Liberal’s own low-ball surveys, in 1976 they claimed a MINIMUM of 10.5 million firearms owned by 4 million Canadians. Anyone who has even a remote knowledge of firearms knows that Cooey Canada alone sold 6 million .22 rifles and an equal number of shotguns in Canada. Then consider that every owner of a .22 generally also owned one or two shotguns and two or more sporting rifles. In 1979, after the FAC (Firearms Acquisition Certificate) came into force, Ron Basford told the House (Hansard) that NEW gun sales were 420,000 per year on average, mostly acquired by NEW owners. Therefore there has to be at least 25 million (a low figure) firearms in Canada, and 7 million gun owners, indicating that the useless flawed registry has less than 1/3 of firearms and owners in the registry. Therefore it is useless and dangerous to police who CANNOT and do not rely on the severely flawed data. In other words, it is the greatest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. In order for a law to be constitutional, it must have the support of the people as emphasized by Stephen Harper in the House in 2002. Bad law deserves to be ignored. Making lawful firearms owners into instant “paper” criminals is the worst accomplishment of the current Firearms Act (C-68 gun registry.) The best accomplishment of this offensive law is that it has made REAL criminal’s chosen profession so much safer while doing absolutely nothing to protect the public, nor can it be shown to have saved one single life.
Consider the four RCMP rookies who were gunned down by James Rozsco at Mayerthorpe Alberta. He was PROHIBITED from owning firearms for a long history of violent crime, so he was by law NOT in the dangerous flawed registry. The hapless rookie Mounties were lulled into a sense of safety by the registry showing “no guns present” when they went to their tragic demise.
Don Klein
Secretary Valley Rifle Club
Bon Accord, AB
