Okay, we get it, let's focus on the economy. But Canadians still care about other important issues (gun control, anyone?)

[As published at OpenSalon.com: the Gun Control Yenta wants Prime Minister Harper and his government to know that, though we are deeply concerned about the economy (and, hey, didn't President Bush recently prove tax cuts won't stimulate the economy?), we are as concerned as ever about other social issues. To wit, gun control...]

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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 in Hell (1989)

While the chattering classes do their thing over Mr. Harper’s having prorogued parliament, the government would do well to remember that Canadians are concerned about more than just the economy. For most of us, with apologies to P.J. O'Rourke, gun control is no joke.

In September 2008, the Prime Minister said

I don’t think by registering every shotgun or long gun or having further restrictions on weapons you’re going to deal with gun crime. I think it’s gun crime we have to deal with, not some duck hunter with a shotgun.

While the Prime Minister raises the spectre of Keystone cops chasing Elmer Fudd from his duck blind, the truth is far darker. In case he doesn’t know 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. Many are stolen from legal owners, and they’re also frequently seized from gangs. Here are just a few “highlights”—lowlights, actually--proving Canada needs stricter, not laxer, control of rifles and shotguns:

- An 8-year-old, using his father’s .22 calibre rifle, wounded his 9-year-old friend while playing “guns” in the basement of a house on Manitoulin Island (ON).

- Cody Wellard, a 31-year-old hunter, turned himself in for allegedly shooting the Jack Russell terrier pup of Max Rose, a 12-year-old brain cancer survivor. The Quadra Island (BC) shooting—occurring 30 meters from the Rose family's driveway--may be related to a previous run-in Wellard had with the boy's father. Following the shooting, the RCMP confiscated 25 guns registered to Wellard's father.

- A teenager in Whitby (ON) contacted police as her distraught stepfather locked himself in a closet with a rifle, while threatening suicide. Police found 26 firearms in the house, all of them legally registered.

- Jesse Imeson, found guilty in November of a triple murder in Ontario, found a .22 calibre semi-automatic rifle, an ammunition clip and 200 rounds of ammunition in a shed and used this stolen rifle to kill Bill and Helene Regier at their Mount Carmel (ON) farmhouse in July 2007.

- In December 2006, a nurse was shot with a rifle by her estranged husband, previously convicted of uttering threats against her, in Brockville (ON).

- A man shot his wife before killing himself with a legal shotgun returned to him at the end of a 2-year weapons prohibition for domestic assault in 2006, in Hermitage (NL).

Those in the gun lobby who repeat the foolish mantra that we must target “criminals” and not “law-abiding gun owners” should wake up and smell the coffee: legal gun owners may well be entirely law-abiding--right up till the moment that they're not. After all, Marc Lepine, Valery Fabrikant, and Kimveer Gill were all “legal” gun owners.

Since the passage of controls on rifles and shotguns in ‘91 and ‘95, the rate of firearms deaths has fallen to ‘91 values, with 500 fewer such deaths annually. In 2007, the rifle and shotgun murder rate was almost 80 per cent lower than in ’91, and the rate of robberies with firearms fell by 68 per cent in the same period. There’s only one possible conclusion: gun control works.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association and major safety and health groups continue to support the firearms registry, which is consulted by police almost nine thousand times each day. Critics say the searches are triggered automatically whenever police run a license or address check. But the value of the registry was underlined following a botched 2007 drug raid at the Montreal-area home of Basil Parasiris that left Constable Daniel Tessier dead. When a police investigator checked the registry prior to the raid, he entered only the suspect’s address; it turned out one of Parasiris’ four guns was legally registered—but under an old address. Had the investigator searched under Parasiris’ name, the SWAT team would have been called to conduct the raid, and Const. Tessier might still be alive (procedures and training have been adapted as a result of a workplace health and safety commission inquiry).

Stephen Harper and the government of Canada probably have their hands full over the next couple of months, juggling the economy, national unity, and the new Senate appointments. It may be tempting to slip a little red meat to as-yet-unassuaged Conservative gun-loving supporters. But that would be a mistake. Because, with apologies to James Carville, for most of us Canadians, “it’s not just the economy, stupid!”

Legal or illegal, guns kill people

Yes, the Gun Control Yenta is still here!! Following is a letter from the Saint John New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, published Oct. 1/08. Yep, still here. And still convinced more guns mean more danger...
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On Sept. 21, Albert Legault , a 71-year-old retired cattle farmer, decided to investigate gunshots that seemed to be coming from his nearby fields. Simon Lanthier, 18, allegedly shot Mr. Legault dead. Lanthier was target-shooting; he's been charged in Gatineau court with reckless endangerment, two counts of careless use of a firearm and three other firearm-related counts.

On Sept. 19th, three hunters apparently wished to take a shortcut through a farmer's property. An "altercation" between the armed farmer and the hunters ended with the farmer sustaining
life-threatening gunshot wounds to the leg.

On Sept. 15th, Cody Welland, a 31-year-old hunter, turned himself in for allegedly shooting the Jack Russell terrier pup of Max Rose, 12, a brain cancer survivor. The shooting - which occurred 30 metres from the Rose family's driveway - may be related to a previous run-in Welland had with the boy's father. That's just the sport shooter/hunter incidents of the last few days. Guns are accidents (and worse) waiting to happen. Five thousand "legal" guns are reported stolen every year. Choking off every avenue of supply of these inherently dangerous machines is in the best interests of all Canadians, most especially those of us who are unarmed, law-abiding, and innocent.

Those in the gun lobby who repeat the foolish mantra that we must target 'criminals' and not
'law-abiding gun owners' should wake up and smell the coffee: you're all law-abiding - right up to the moment you're not.

No to blood money. Or, Kudos to Bill Tucker, Thames Valley District School Board

It's the Gun Control Yenta again. Late last September, Bill Tucker, director of the Thames Valley District school board, acted on his conscience and refused to accept the funds raised by the East Elgin Sportsmen's Association for the East Elgin secondary school drama club. I wrote the following letter, published by the London Free Press, commending him. Which reminds me, I still haven't sent them a cheque... time to put my money where my mouth is. Er, was.
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Kudos to Bill Tucker for teaching students that a public school board education director's principles are more valuable than money. Just the way we no longer allow cigarette companies to sponsor sporting events, we shouldn't permit gun clubs or manufacturers to sponsor school activities. Bill Tucker is one hundred percent right--guns and students do not mix.

Let's just look at the most recent newsworthy 'law-abiding gun owners:

On Sept. 21, Albert Legault , a 71-year-old retired cattle farmer, decided to investigate gunshots that seemed to be coming from his nearby fields. Simon Lanthier, 18, allegedly shot Mr. Legault dead. Lanthier was target-shooting; he's been charged in Gatineau court with reckless endangerment, two counts of careless use of a firearm, two counts of unauthorized possession of a firearm and one count of contravening weapons storage laws.

On Sept. 19th, Vernon RCMP were called to investigate a shooting. Three hunters apparently wished to take a shortcut near a farmer's property. An "altercation" between the armed farmer and the hunters ended with the farmer sustaining life-threatening gunshot wounds to the leg, as well as one of the hunters, a woman, being assaulted, according to an RCMP spokesman (Castanet.net).

On Sept. 15th, Cody Wellard, a 31-year-old hunter, turned himself in for allegedly shooting the Jack Russell terrier pup of Max Rose, 12, a brain cancer survivor. The Quadra Island shooting--which occurred 30 meters from the Rose family's driveway--may be related to a previous run-in Wellard had with the boy's father. The RCMP prudently decided to confiscate the 25 guns registered to Wellard's father.

That's just the 'legitimate' sport shooter/hunter news of the last few days. Let's jog the memory a little further back.

In January, John O'Keefe was allegedly accidentally shot by twenty-three-year-old Edward Parades during an altercation with a bouncer at 1 a.m. outside a Toronto strip club. This happened just blocks from where Jane Creba was murdered weeks earlier. Parades was the legal owner of the handgun used in the shooting and apparently a member of the Gormley gun club The Grange.

And a little further still: Kimveer Gill (Dawson College shootings, 2006), Valery Fabrikant (Concordia University shootings, 1992), Marc Lepine (Ecole Polytechnique shootings, 1989) all obtained their guns legally. Please note: these were all school shootings involving 'legal' gun owners.

Guns are accidents (and worse) waiting to happen. Five thousand 'legal' guns are reported stolen every year. Choking off every avenue of supply of these inherently dangerous machines is in the best interests of all Canadians, most especially those of us who are unarmed, law-abiding, and innocent.

Those in the gun lobby who repeat the foolish mantra that we must target 'criminals' and not 'law-abiding gun owners' should wake up and smell the coffee: you're all law-abiding--right up till the moment that you're not.

Please let those of us who would like to help make things right by the students know where to send out cheques.

Women and the Harper Conservatives (yes, this is the Gun Control Yenta!)

Seems my little friends at canfirearms.ca were wondering what I've been up to, since they hadn't heard much from me over several months. So I've decided to put some of my further gun control musings up here. Enjoy them,

love,

The Gun Control Yenta

From the London Free Press Web Site, Sept. 4/08 (not long before the Federal Election):

The Harper Conservatives routinely poll 10 percentage points lower among women than men. Since women outnumber men in Canada--and because women live longer, too--the logical conclusion is that the Conservatives majority prospects will only worsen with time (which may explain why they're so hot to call this election).

In fact, the Conservatives are the most woman-free party in Parliament, with women making up only 11 per cent of the Government caucus; where women made up one-quarter to one-third of candidates among the other parties for the 2006 election, women only accounted for 12 per cent of Conservative candidates. But despite the fact that they need more of us to achieve majority government status, they still haven't figured out that this means providing policies progressive Canadians, women among them, can support.

Instead of a national daycare policy, they throw us $100 a month in pin money. Instead of respecting the laws of the country--whether it be concerning the gun registry or the fixed election date which they made such a fetish-this Conservative government gives legislation it finds inconvenient a pass. Instead of statesmanship, we get mud-slinging and a Prime Minister too busy to attend when Canada hosts an international conference on AIDS. Instead of a health minister, we have a right-wing ignoramus who hectors doctors on the subject of safe injection sites, a man who would rather attend last week's Democratic National Convention than even give the impression he gives a crap about the listeriosis crisis. And speaking of listeriosis, instead of consumer protection, we get regulations that give industry greater responsibility for inspecting itself, not to mention that, with twelve people already dead from tainted meat and the number almost certain to climb, we get an agriculture minister whose position, basically, is "kwitcherbellyachin', the system works."

Instead of protecting and enhancing women's rights, we get the gutting of the Status of Women office. Instead of spearheading national standards on diagnostics for pathology labs (which might prevent the kinds of snafus that continue to endanger hundreds of women with breast cancer across the country), instead of laws that ensure equal access to abortion, we get a proposal to make it "an offence to injure, cause the death of or attempt to cause the death of a child before or during its birth while committing or attempting to commit an offence against the mother." So glad they're on top of this epidemic, at least.

Instead of the promised new openness and transparency in government, we get attempts to hide our soldiers' coffins when they arrive on planes from Afghanistan, and ministers who must clear all their remarks through the PMO. Instead of integrity, we get David Emerson's floor-crossing before the ink is even dry on the oath swearing him in. Instead of honesty in campaigning, we get the "in-and-out" elections scandal and a Prime Minister who insists (without any evidence) that the Liberals are forcing him to pull the plug on his own government. And let's not forget Karlheinz Schreiber, Brian "I only had a couple of coffees with the guy" Mulroney, and Maxime Bernier ("all Beauce, no brains").

Instead of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, or even Sarah Palin, we get Laureen Harper: under the 'Leader' menu, the Conservative website gives her thirteen photos to Stephen's one, and commentary that highlights her offering 24 Sussex Drive to the Ottawa SPCA as a foster home for kittens. Mrs. Harper may be a wonderful person but whoever okayed her profile needs reminding this is 2008, not 1948!

The modern gender gap in Canadian politics dates to 1993, when an eleven-point gap in support among women outside Quebec for the new Reform Party was observed, according to Elisabeth Gildengil and her colleagues in the study "Gender and Vote Choice in the 2006 Canadian Election." This gap persisted despite the Reform Party's "[reconstituting] itself as the Canadian Alliance in an effort to soften its image." And to what do the political scientists attribute the gap? To women's resistance to arguments "about the benefits of the market economy and the need for restraints on government activity," to women being "more open to non-traditional life styles and more supportive of social minorities." In short, women do not and will not support the key policies of social conservatives: the beliefs that "what's good for General Motors is good for the country," that abortion should be recriminalized, gay marriage outlawed, and the death penalty reinstated.

Women, as Gildengil and her fellow political scientists put it, have "different political priorities and concerns than men," which may be overstating things a tad. Still, it's perhaps clear to everyone except the Conservative brain trust that they need us to win a majority. Given how little progress they have made on the gender front, it truly boggles the mind that Mr. Harper is champing at the bit to drop the writs.

Just what college students need: concealed weapons

Re. M.J. Ackermann 's letter in Feb. 17 Ottawa Citizen "Efforts against guns misguided:"

M.J. Ackermann cites the Dawson College shootings as evidence the Firearms Act is "counterproductive." He muses that if more of us carried guns, we'd all be safer.

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 Dawson student mercifully uninjured in the last rampage, I'll work to get more guns out of more hands.

Stockwell Day: Minsiter of public gun ownership?

Mr. Day: you're minister of public SAFETY, not of public gun ownership

Apparently, federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has put his own guns on ice (Ottawa Citizen, Feb.14/07), at least for now. Hopefully they're locked safely away, along with his jet ski and all the other accoutrements of his illustrious career.

But Day keeps demonstrating an understanding of 'public safety’ as shaky as his notion of a successful photo op. One of his ‘new’ ideas on gun safety is a hotline to "enable people to notify authorities if a gun owner they know becomes unstable,” an old idea that obviously isn’t good enough. Such a hotline was set up in 1998, focused primarily on spousal notification. But in some provinces -- Quebec is one example -- citizens were encouraged to call if they had concerns about ANY gun owner.

Should average citizens take over Mr. Day's responsibility to keep us safe? Is this the Conservative government's idea of a plan, to have us psychoanalyze our neighbours?

Anyone with a true interest in public safety would know this: the risk of homicide is three times higher and the risk of death by suicide is five times higher in homes with firearms; the leading cause of gun death is suicide, usually committed with legally acquired hunting rifles; guns kill more children than cancer, drowning, falls, and fires combined; over 300 spousal violence incidents involving guns are reported annually in Canada.

The gun lobby perspective, that "guns are overregulated now and semi-automatics are unfairly vilified (Ottawa citizen, Feb.15/07)" is dumb as a bag of hammers. They say "firearms are significant, historical artefacts of Canadian culture and world history." So were torture and slavery; should we bring them back, too?

Some practices are bloodthirsty, archaic, and out of place in a modern, peaceful society.

Most Canadians don't think about guns that much; when they do, it certainly isn't as symbols of Canada’s “heritage.” What we think of is the threat to our children, to our communities, to ourselves. We don't care whether guns are automatic or semi-automatic: if they fire 20 rounds at our kid in 4.6 seconds rather than 2.4 seconds, our kid will still be dead. Most Canadians probably want civilian guns much more severely curtailed or better yet, outlawed completely. But we’re not organized the way the gun lobby is. Most Canadians would be appalled by the senseless, wanton death and destruction wreaked by guns and gun owners continuously in this country, if the media would only tell them about it. Here’s a small sampling from recent weeks:

· Edmonton Journal (Feb 10) A 10-year-old boy from a Hutterite colony near Donalda may never walk again after he was shot Thursday with a .22 rifle while playing a game of hide-and-seek.

· Toronto Sun (Feb 2) . . . seconds of confusion and fatal decision recalled by Toronto Police Staff-Sgt. Donald Cole, during the fourth day of a jury inquest into the May 7, 2002, death of Peter Francis, were so gripping jurors seemed to jump when the officer testified how he yelled out: "Police. Drop the gun!" . . .That gun was once a hunting weapon, stolen during a 2002 break-in at a Markham home.

· Montreal Gazette (Feb 02) A provincial coroner who investigated a murder-suicide in Verdun is calling for changes to gun-control legislation that would prevent a suicidal person from being allowed to own a firearm.

· CBC News (Jan 29) An ongoing feud between two groups of friends (!) was the catalyst for a weekend shooting in Pictou County. . . one man shot another with a rifle early Saturday after they got into a fight.

· Soleil de Valleyfield (QC; Jan 29) Nine rifles were stolen from a residence last week.

· Cochrane Times (AB; Jan 17) Blair Allan Elder, 27, was sentenced to nine months in jail on Dec. 19, following an incident . . . where a 17 year old was shot in the eye with a pellet gun, resulting in the loss of an eye.

· Globe and Mail (Jan 17) A New Brunswick man has been sentenced to house arrest for pulling a gun during an incident of road rage.

Maybe this one says it best: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American states where more people own guns have higher murder rates, including murders of children, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported (Jan 11; NY Times)."

Could the fight against gun control really be about money? In their 2006 book The Global Gun Epidemic, Professors Wendy Cukier and Victor W. Sidel point out the US dominates not just the military weapons market but also the commercial weapons market, producing over 3 million weapons annually (p.72). Is it a coincidence the US National Rifle Association is the richest, “most powerful lobby in the world,” according to their awestruck kid brother, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association?

The Conservatives are the party of big business; they’re also the pro-gun party. Coincidence? What proportion of the party’s funding comes from pro-gun sources? Inquiring minds want to know.

Last fall, Mr. Day, beholden to the special interests of the gun lobby, kicked the police chiefs off the firearms program advisory committee, presumably for the crime of saying the registry works. He kicked those concerned with violence against women and children, public policy, and gun control off the committee too, but kept the collectors and vendors of semi-automatic weapons. Yes, good thinking, Mr. Minister. You're sure to get unbiased advice now.