Re. M.J. Ackermann 's letter in Feb. 17 Ottawa Citizen "Efforts against guns misguided:"
M.J. Ackermann cites the
Sure, that's what a college of 10,000 -- half of them still teenagers -- needs more of: concealed weapons. Let's hand them out at Health Services, along with the condoms.
This is a guy who lectured the Canadian Medical Association in 2003 -- with a straight face, one presumes -- "Guns themselves hurt no one. It is their abuse by malicious, suicidal or ignorant people that leads to harm. Stating that people are ‘killed by... firearms’ leads people to erroneously fear guns rather than those who abuse them, and we tend to end up with laws that attack the object rather than the behaviour (http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/168/10/1239-a)."
Sure, Dr. Ackermann. You could say the same thing about heroin (I don't know, maybe you do).
And if the good doctor could tell us who among the millions of firearms owners is about to go nuts next, I'll be glad to limit the legislation to "the behaviour." (Let's just give murderers a 'time out,' shall we? That oughta take care of the problem!)
Until then, as the mother of a
4 comments:
His position seems logical, to treat the person that's ill for whatever reason. Frankly, I'm wondering why you're attacking him; he's making the first step forward by identifying our collective problem.
You on the other hand have irrationally targeted inanimate objects as the cause of our problems.
Talk about being disconnected from reality.
Interesting post. I have a few questions for you with respect to your proposed blanket gun ban, though.
What would your ideal gun law look like? How would you frame the ban? How would you go about removing the 7 million plus registered firearms in Canada from their owners? Would you compensate them for their lost property? How would business owners whose livelihoods would be destroyed be compensated?
What about Inuit and Native subsistence hunters?
How would you propose that dangerous bears and other problem wildlife be controlled?
What about tracking down all the unregistered firearms out there? How would you propose these be located?
What sort of sanctions would you put into place for non-compliance with the ban?
How effective, in percentage of removing all firearms from circulation in Canada, do you think your proposed ban would be?
How would you prevent further firearms from entering Canada illegally?
How would you prevent illegal manufacture of firearms in Canada?
How do you propose the police continue to provide current levels of protection while enforcing the ban?
Have you put any thought into the total cost of such an exercise? What do you think a total gun ban might cost Canadian taxpayers?
How many lives do you expect that disarming all licensed Canadian gun owners will save? Are there any other policy measures, such as increasing health care or law enforcement funding, that might save more lives?
Why do you think that a gun ban would be effective at all, given our experience with Prohibition, illegal drugs, and firearms registration, and the British, Australian, and Jamaican experiences with gun bans? What differentiates your proposal from these measures?
Given the fact that violent crime committed by licensed Canadian gun owners is a vanishingly small percentage of violent crime in Canada, what makes you think that your proposals will materially affect violent crime rates, and whether the infringement on the freedoms of millions of your fellow Canadians will be worth whatever hypothetical increase in the public safety that debateably might result therefrom?
Beverly Akerman has some interesting Ideas, but I’m not sure how the “punishment first, crime second” concept is supposed to work in a democratic country. Beverly suggests that we should confiscate firearms from people who have never committed a crime just in case they might commit a crime one day. Let’s transfer her logic to other sectors of our lives – just for fun. We could take away peoples cars just in case they might drive drunk or how about charging women for prostitution just in case they might become prostitutes. How about just charging all men with murder, you never know, they might just do it one day. I think there is a huge flaw in Beverly’s logic, and I hope our leaders decide to keep Canada a Democracy and ignore this frightening political ideology.
Why, when there is an incident with firearms, does someone always think it is a good idea to take the guns away from those who were not involved in the incident?
That makes as much sense as banning stamps the next time there is a letter bomb. Or banning cars when a drunk driver kills someone, or ....
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