By Catherine Ford, Columnist, Troy Media
Canada’s federal government is tough on crime but soft on guns. It’s a case of being hard-nosed, but softheaded. How this is being played out leads one to believe irony is not Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s strong suit.
Nobody has pointed out that a professed law-and-order government should be seeking to strengthen laws against gun ownership. Instead, the Conservatives are determined to eliminate the long-run registry and destroy the records. This is despite objections of police chiefs across the country and real statistics showing the registry contributes to an enhancement of public safety.
The rural rump of the Conservative Party is behind the move to eliminate the registry using the tired complaint that having to register shotguns and rifles discriminates against law-abiding citizens. Perhaps they believe the more they trot out this specious argument, the more they can lure others into believing them. It seems the Prime Minister believes this.
Voters who want the registry abolished need not speak another word: Harper's already on their side. Because of that, every Conservative MP, all of whom know that to vote against a government bill, regardless that it is a private member’s bill — from Candice Hoeppner, MP for Portage-Lisgar in Manitoba — is to incur the wrath of He Who Must Be Obeyed. There’s no hope from the government benches for reversing this inane idea.
Under the heading “Standing up for those who helped build Canada” was this nugget in the March 3 Throne Speech: “Our Government will continue to support legislation to repeal the wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry that targets law-abiding farmers and hunters, not criminals.”
That was preceded by: “Our Government will now focus on the further protection of children, women and victims of white-collar crime.”
Only a politician could make up this stuff
Further protection of women and children? How? Nobody but a politician could make up this stuff and spout it back with a straight face. The worst part is not the obfuscation, it’s the fact the electorate lets politicians get away with it. We never seem to call them on their habit of talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.
How are they wrong? In actual fact, every person without a criminal record in this country is a law-abiding citizen, a few speeding tickets notwithstanding. That label can be applied right up until the law-abiding citizen takes his rifle and shoots another law-abiding citizen, usually his wife and/or children and then turns the gun on himself.
Enough insulting doublespeak
So don’t try that so-called law-abiding argument on people who can think their way out of a paper bag. The long-run registry is certainly not perfect, but at the very least it lets police know when there is a gun in the house anytime they are called to a domestic dispute.
Meanwhile, the ordinary cop on the beat believes the gun registry doesn’t prevent spousal homicide. Of course it doesn’t. But that’s not the point. There’s another aspect to the registry that’s more to the point: “When individuals apply for a licence to acquire a firearm, their current or former spouse or common-law partner with whom they have lived within the past two years will be provided with an opportunity to voice any concerns they may have about their safety or the safety of others. A licence can be revoked if the licencee is involved in an act of domestic violence.” This, from the RCMP, means police can seize any weapons in cases of domestic violence. And common sense, along with statistics, shows that killing one’s spouse is rarely the first incident of violence in a home.
At the very least, the studies done by Statistics Canada have the virtue of being scientific. Not so the “straw poll” conducted among the rank and file police officers who self-selected themselves in opposition to the registry, leading to the specious conclusion that police chiefs may support the registry, but the men and women “on the beat” do not. Here is yet-another example of how “voluntary” surveys too easily skew statistics, which are then used to support a position.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, on behalf of the Association of Police Chiefs, said the registry was a “cost-effective way of ensuring safe communities.”
Yet against the overwhelming weight of statistics, our government will decide within weeks to dismantle an important tool in keeping Canada safe. Only the combined opposition can stop this.
Perhaps it would be instructive for all Members of Parliament, not just Conservatives, to review why the registry was initiated. Clearly, they have forgotten.
Heart-wrenching case supporting the registry
Pat and Berwick Slinger, the couple whose personal tragedy led to Canada’s gun laws being tightened in 1977, both died in 2008. Too bad the Conservative prime minister cannot face them. Too bad none of today’s MPs were there with them, as I was, that awful, heart-searing day in 1975 when a kid with two long guns in a duffle bag shot up Brampton Centennial Secondary School, killing 17-year-old John Slinger and teacher Margaret Wright, and seriously wounding nine students before killing himself.
The life-long Progressive Conservatives’ plea for tougher gun regulations in the wake of their son’s death led inexorably to the current law.
The small Ontario town was home to then-Ontario Premier Bill Davis, and with his help and thousands of names on a petition, they enlisted the Conservative government of Ontario to lobby Ottawa.
Too bad the prime minister can’t face the surviving Slinger children, Rob and Jayne, and make his argument for getting rid of the registry in front of them.
