NOTE:
Linda Williamson's column also appeared in The Ottawa Sun today.
PUBLICATION:
The
Toronto Sun
DATE:
2004.01.09
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Editorial/Opinion
PAGE: 16
BYLINE:
LINDA WILLIAMSON
COLUMN:
Second Thoughts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GUN
CONTROL? OUT OF CONTROL! MARTIN
ADMITS THE REGISTRY NEEDS REVIEW, BUT HE WON'T SCRAP IT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That
grinding sound you hear is the Paul Martin juggernaut shifting and stalling on
the issue of guns and crime.
We
all know the Martin machine ... er, government ... is going to spend the next
few pre-election months combing through the books for waste - a feel-good
exercise designed to enhance the new PM's old reputation as a good fiscal
manager.
And
we all know, thanks to Auditor General Sheila Fraser and tireless Opposition
MPs like Garry Breitkreuz, the single biggest waste in government right now
is the gun registry, whose costs will soon hit $1 billion - nearly 500 times the
original estimate of $2 million.
Hence
Martin's acknowledgement Wednesday, in announcing his priorities for
Parliament's return on Feb. 2, that "there have been a number of problems
(with the registry) and these problems have got to be looked at and have got to
be dealt with."
Well,
duh. Most Canadians would likely say the best way those "problems"
could be "dealt with" is by scrapping the registry. But Martin won't
do that, oh no.
"We
are committed to gun control and we are committed to the registration of
weapons," he insisted, establishing once again his credentials as The Man
Who is All Things to All People.
There,
in one prime ministerial statement, you have an eloquent summation of both the
gun problem and the political problem in this country. So Martin is
"committed to gun control." Big deal - who isn't?
ESCAPED
NOTICE?
What
seems to have escaped his notice is that guns are out of control (just like the
registry's costs) - and no nice list of registered gun owners is going to fix
that.
Martin
need only pick up a Toronto Sun at random, say, from last week, to see what I
mean.
As
we closed out 2003, the city's murder total had reached 64, nearly half of those
gun murders. Most of these shootings remain unsolved; almost all are believed to
be gang-related. Those two facts are no coincidence - witnesses to such crimes
are either criminals themselves or gang-terrorized neighbourhood residents, who
understandably have little confidence that our justice system will protect them
if they rat the gangsters out. Gun crimes overall were up sharply - 35%.
Needless
to say, most if not all of the weapons used in those crimes were illegally
obtained, unregistered handguns.
Meawhile,
in Acton on Dec. 31, far from Toronto's mean streets, a 15-year-old boy was shot
dead in his father's home and a 17-year-old friend charged. Two rifles were
seized from the home - both of them legally registered (though police are still
investigating whether they were legally stored).
The
point is clear - the registry had no bearing on any of these murders. Cops
across Canada could give Martin an earful on how that $1 billion could be better
spent. (So could Customs officers - who, as the Sun's Maria McClintock revealed
this week, are powerless to stop a flood of guns and drugs coming through the
mail.)
So,
what will Martin do? I have a theory.
As
with the other hot-button issues du jour - like same-sex marriage - he'll make
enough noise to signal his deep concern, then work like crazy to avoid doing
anything concrete about it before the spring election.
PLATFORM
PLANK
That
way, he'll placate millions of gun registry critics without offending all those
who still naively believe it's a useful tool in restricting gun crime. And if he
does it right, he might even succeed in swiping one of the Conservative party's
strongest potential platform planks - just as he did right before the 2000
campaign, when he announced huge tax cuts, a shameless steal from the Alliance
playbook.
I
can see the 2004 Grit campaign now: "Vote Liberal and we'll make sensible,
safe reforms to the gun laws; vote Conservative and those gun nuts will have us
all packing heat." Meanwhile, the illegal guns will keep coming and the
shooters will go on laughing at our cops and courts.
If
Martin was truly "committed" to stopping gun crime, of course, he
could make one simple change, with relatively little cost or fuss: Impose a
mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years on anyone who commits a crime with
a gun, and a mandatory five years on anyone caught with an illegally obtained
gun. No plea-bargains, no deals.
It
would be bold, it would offend all those intellectuals who tell us crime is down
and jails don't work, but it would finally be effective "gun control."
Alas, he won't dare do it. Will he?
C'mon
Paul, prove me wrong. Make my day.