In the attempt to delegitimize Canada's long gun registry, a concerted disinformation campaign has been mounted by those ideologically opposed to it.
Myth 1: gun death is an urban, gang-related problem. The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians points out nearly 75 per cent of gun deaths are suicides. Here’s the perspective of a small-town doctor and coroner in rural Ontario:
"My own personal experience with gun-related death has mirrored the national statistics. Most are suicides, the great majority have involved long guns and, of course, they live in rural environments. I have never seen a death with a handgun and have never seen a death committed as a criminal act, with one notable exception of a murder as a result of domestic violence. Typically, I am called to a rural property or farm, where some headless corpse lies with blood and brains bathing the hunting rifle or shotgun that lies by the motionless body. As if this image wasn't soul-wrenching enough, I then have to deal with the anguished cries and the shattered lives of the loved ones of the deceased huddled in the family kitchen…Those who have voted to repeal the long gun registry clearly have a sterilized view of gun-related deaths. How else to explain their callous disregard for the health and safety of rural Canadians?"
--Alan Drummond, Perth ON, The Ottawa Citizen, November 9, 2009.
Myth 2: the gun registry does nothing to prevent gun deaths. In the words of a rural psychiatrist in an area of B.C. where guns are prevalent:
"I have invoked the gun registry…to either get someone’s guns removed or prevent them from getting guns because of mental illness. I am sure this has prevented tragedies but, unfortunately, none of those events make headlines…Before the gun registry was available…it was difficult…to have guns removed. There have been some 22,000 licences denied to date, and a recent Ottawa Citizen article reported that the number of firearms surrendered and confiscated…is 8,281 — 74 per cent of which were nonrestricted shotguns and rifles…the reason for these confiscations is usually that the individual has threatened or used violence. So, are we really comfortable with allowing these people to arm themselves by removing the mechanism which allows authorities to locate and remove firearms…?"
--Dr. Barbara Kane, the Guelph Mercury, July 3, 2009.
The long-time psychiatrist also notes gun deaths and injuries are at their lowest levels in over 30 years, that the rate of homicide with rifles and shotguns is half what it was in 1995 (when the long gun registry was introduced), and that gun-related murders of women have fallen by two-thirds. The gun registry may be an inconvenience for hunters, farmers and other gun owners, she says, “but it helps people like me and the police prevent tragedies.”
Myth 3: the long gun registry has cost $2 billion. Two-thirds of the costs opponents attribute to “the Registry” are related to screening and licensing all gun owners, not to the registering of long guns. These costs will remain even if the registry is shot down. Between 1995 and April 2005, net costs for the Canadian Firearms Program were $946.4 million, or about $95 million per year. In 2006, the auditor general found eliminating the long gun portion of the registry would only save a projected $3 million annually. (http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2009/11/04/gun-registry-vote004.html).
To put this in perspective, not long ago, the federal Government invested $400 million to widen a stretch of highway in New Brunswick where 43 people had died over 5 years. In the same period, guns killed 5,000. In any case, the cost issue is easily solved: make the gun owners pay.
Myth 4: Long guns are not associated with criminal activity. The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians points out that last year, 34 per cent of Canadian gun-related homicides were committed with rifles or shotguns, as were 72 per cent of firearm-related spousal homicides. Between 1995 and 2004, the drop in the use of firearms in spousal homicides was 36 per cent.
We register our cars, boats, trailers, dogs and bikes: why is the registration of long guns such a unique hardship? And how does ignoring the opinions of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, the Quebec Public Health Association, the Canadian Paediatric Society, the civic administrations of Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg advance the Conservative government’s devotion to "law and order"? Not to mention their duty to protect Canadian women, children, and of course men, who make up the lion’s share of gun violence victims.
Showing posts with label bill c-391. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bill c-391. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Parliament, don't pass Bill C-391!
The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule.
P.J. O’Rourke, Holidays from Hell, 1989
Somewhere around 80 per cent of Canada's nine million guns are owned by men, so perhaps by definition, gun control can be seen as a "woman's issue." And repeated polling shows a substantial majority of women support the gun registry, perhaps because we know that guns are often used to harm or intimidate women in the throes of domestic violence. Women around the world are at greatest risk of harm from their intimate partners—“the usual suspects” in such cases. Fully 85 per cent of Canadian women who are murdered are killed by their spouse or partner, and most of those shot dead are killed with legally owned firearms.
Despite pro-gun lobby bluster, this gun violence is not just an urban phenomenon — the rate of women killed with guns is higher in rural areas because rural people own more guns. And murder is just the tip of the domestic violence iceberg—for every woman killed, many more are injured or threatened. And these “domestic violence” incidents appear in the papers almost daily. Several recent examples:
Smith AB, July 30th: Ian Jeffrey Paget kills estranged wife Joan Hanson, her daughter and granddaughter, and then turns the rifle on himself at her rural home in northern Alberta.
Kitchener ON, August 11th: Nadia Gehl is shot in early February at a bus stop close to her home. Waterloo police finally apprehend three suspects: her husband and two of his friends.
Orangeville ON, September 13th: Police investigate a murder-suicide that left a mother of two and her estranged husband dead. Witnesses say 39-year-old Heidi Ferguson, shot in the chest, sought help at a neighbour's. As she lay dying, Ferguson reportedly cried, "I've been shot by my husband ... please help me." An avid hunter and gun collector, Hugh Ferguson turned the gun on himself after a standoff with police.
Winnipeg MB, September 17th: Police are called after a 19-year-old woman is allegedly assaulted and threatened with a firearm. The woman flees the house and calls police from another area residence.
Fort St. John BC, September 30th: A northeastern B.C. man is shot and killed by the RCMP after a five-day standoff that began when the 41-year-old farm resident pursued a van carrying his wife, an unspecified number of children and a friend, and shot out the front tires.
Since the gun registry was created, close to 23,000 firearms licenses have been refused or revoked because of safety concerns. We register our cars and our dogs--not to register our guns would be criminal.
No matter what the gun lobby says, gun control works. Consider the following :
· Controls on rifles and shotguns were strengthened in 1991: that year 1441 Canadians were killed with guns. By 2005, the number of such deaths dropped by almost half, to 818.
· The number of women murdered with guns fell from 85 in 1991 to 32 in 2005. But the number of women murdered by weapons other than firearms declined only slightly during the same period of time. Again, the effectiveness of gun control is inescapable.
My son was at Dawson College on September 13, 2006 when Kimveer Gill went on his murderous rampage. I will never understand why Mr. Gill had such easy access to such enormous firepower--the fact that he managed to kill “only” a single young woman was due to the fortuitous coincidental presence of two brave and well-trained police officers. (I say “only” because, of course, for her parents, family and friends, the murder of 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa is no small loss.) Kimveer Gill didn't need those guns and he shouldn't have had them. Why should his right to feel "big and bad" have trumped Ms. De Sousa’s, my son's, or anyone else’s safety?
And so I support more gun control, not less. Please don’t let our Parliament send Bill C-391, the bill to dismantle the long-gun registry, to committee, the next step in the legislative process.
Though our Prime Minister may refuse to face it, rifles and shotguns are the firearms used most often to threaten women and children, and the weapons of choice in the murder of police officers. Look, for example, at the 4 Mounties killed in Mayerthorpe, AB. And the only charges levied in that case were against the gun providers, who were traceable only because of the gun registry!
When Mr. Harper talks about law and order one day, and laxer gun control the next, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Contact your MP on this issue. Don't let Mr. Harper play fast and loose with our children's lives.
P.J. O’Rourke, Holidays from Hell, 1989
Somewhere around 80 per cent of Canada's nine million guns are owned by men, so perhaps by definition, gun control can be seen as a "woman's issue." And repeated polling shows a substantial majority of women support the gun registry, perhaps because we know that guns are often used to harm or intimidate women in the throes of domestic violence. Women around the world are at greatest risk of harm from their intimate partners—“the usual suspects” in such cases. Fully 85 per cent of Canadian women who are murdered are killed by their spouse or partner, and most of those shot dead are killed with legally owned firearms.
Despite pro-gun lobby bluster, this gun violence is not just an urban phenomenon — the rate of women killed with guns is higher in rural areas because rural people own more guns. And murder is just the tip of the domestic violence iceberg—for every woman killed, many more are injured or threatened. And these “domestic violence” incidents appear in the papers almost daily. Several recent examples:
Smith AB, July 30th: Ian Jeffrey Paget kills estranged wife Joan Hanson, her daughter and granddaughter, and then turns the rifle on himself at her rural home in northern Alberta.
Kitchener ON, August 11th: Nadia Gehl is shot in early February at a bus stop close to her home. Waterloo police finally apprehend three suspects: her husband and two of his friends.
Orangeville ON, September 13th: Police investigate a murder-suicide that left a mother of two and her estranged husband dead. Witnesses say 39-year-old Heidi Ferguson, shot in the chest, sought help at a neighbour's. As she lay dying, Ferguson reportedly cried, "I've been shot by my husband ... please help me." An avid hunter and gun collector, Hugh Ferguson turned the gun on himself after a standoff with police.
Winnipeg MB, September 17th: Police are called after a 19-year-old woman is allegedly assaulted and threatened with a firearm. The woman flees the house and calls police from another area residence.
Fort St. John BC, September 30th: A northeastern B.C. man is shot and killed by the RCMP after a five-day standoff that began when the 41-year-old farm resident pursued a van carrying his wife, an unspecified number of children and a friend, and shot out the front tires.
Since the gun registry was created, close to 23,000 firearms licenses have been refused or revoked because of safety concerns. We register our cars and our dogs--not to register our guns would be criminal.
No matter what the gun lobby says, gun control works. Consider the following :
· Controls on rifles and shotguns were strengthened in 1991: that year 1441 Canadians were killed with guns. By 2005, the number of such deaths dropped by almost half, to 818.
· The number of women murdered with guns fell from 85 in 1991 to 32 in 2005. But the number of women murdered by weapons other than firearms declined only slightly during the same period of time. Again, the effectiveness of gun control is inescapable.
My son was at Dawson College on September 13, 2006 when Kimveer Gill went on his murderous rampage. I will never understand why Mr. Gill had such easy access to such enormous firepower--the fact that he managed to kill “only” a single young woman was due to the fortuitous coincidental presence of two brave and well-trained police officers. (I say “only” because, of course, for her parents, family and friends, the murder of 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa is no small loss.) Kimveer Gill didn't need those guns and he shouldn't have had them. Why should his right to feel "big and bad" have trumped Ms. De Sousa’s, my son's, or anyone else’s safety?
And so I support more gun control, not less. Please don’t let our Parliament send Bill C-391, the bill to dismantle the long-gun registry, to committee, the next step in the legislative process.
Though our Prime Minister may refuse to face it, rifles and shotguns are the firearms used most often to threaten women and children, and the weapons of choice in the murder of police officers. Look, for example, at the 4 Mounties killed in Mayerthorpe, AB. And the only charges levied in that case were against the gun providers, who were traceable only because of the gun registry!
When Mr. Harper talks about law and order one day, and laxer gun control the next, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Contact your MP on this issue. Don't let Mr. Harper play fast and loose with our children's lives.
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