PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE:
WED JAN.14,2004
PAGE:
A19
BYLINE:
GEORGE GRUENEFELD
CLASS:
Comment
EDITION:
Metro DATELINE:
WORDS:
805
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Canada's
gun legislation is a double-barrelled disaster
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Prime
Minister Paul Martin says he'll revisit Canada's gun legislation. As a gun owner
and taxpayer, I applaud this unexpected clarity of thought. A billion-dollar tab
for convoluted legislation that fails to achieve its mandate is a galling misuse
of taxes. But the tab comes as no surprise. In 1997, as editor for Western
Sportsman magazine, I predicted that the registry would cost Canadians some
$1.76-billion, far more than the $85-million promised by Allan Rock, then
minister of justice.
The
cost was one deception from the gun registry's promoters. There were others --
starting with the notion that Canada needs a gun-control scheme to keep guns
from criminals and madmen. They failed to point out that Canadians have required
police permission to possess a handgun since 1913. Mandatory handgun
registration has been in place since 1934, and acquisition certificates have
been required to obtain any firearm (rifles and shotguns included) since 1978.
By
the early 1990s, that licensing system required all applicants to divulge
personal information about their private lives and provide the underwriting of
two professionals who knew the individual. It entailed a mandatory delay of
several months before the firearms-acquisition certificate was actually issued,
and laid out tough stipulations concerning the secure storage of firearms and
mandatory firearms training for new applicants.
Another
myth was that Canada needed a registry to avert tragedies such as the 1989
slaying of 14 students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, or Valery Fabrikant's
1992 gunning down of four colleagues at Montreal's Concordia University. The
reality is that our current gun-owner licensing and firearms-registration
process can no more prevent such horrific massacres than could the previous
measures. Had we used existing processes with due diligence, these tragic events
might have been prevented.
Marc
Lepine received a firearms acquisition certificate -- supposedly after
authorities conducted the required background checks -- with which he purchased
the Ruger Mini-14 rifle that he carried into Ecole Polytechnique. He would also
have been issued a Possession and Acquisition Licence under the current firearms
legislation on the basis of the same cursory background check.
Despite
exhibiting numerous danger signs in front of co-workers, family and friends,
Prof. Fabrikant was able to purchase four duly registered handguns without
question. Evidently, the required background checks were either not done or were
not done with diligence. The overwhelming sense among Canada's gun owners is
that most firearms possession and acquisition licences issued over the past
several years have been rubber-stamped, and it's just a matter of time before
history repeats itself.
As
for the suggestion that the police need to know whether there are firearms on
the premises of an investigation, front-line police officers in municipal,
provincial and federal forces have told me of two major fallacies in the
statement. Police are trained to expect the presence of some kind of weapon
(knife, screwdriver or firearm) in any situation, regardless of whether firearms
are registered as present. And front-line police do not actually have direct
access to the information provided by the firearms registry. This billion-dollar
exercise does them little good.
I'm
particularly irked that opposition to the registry has been blamed on rural
Western rednecks. Ontario alone has some 135,000 hunters -- more than Alberta's
98,000 hunters or Manitoba's 90,000. I've yet to find hunters in favour of the
registry, even though most have reluctantly complied with the law of the land.
Nor
are all gun owners rural types. During my years in Montreal, Saskatoon and
Vancouver, I became friends with shooters who lived in apartments, condominiums,
or suburban homes, held responsible jobs, had guns -- and who hated Bill C-68. I
wager similar groups are in every major Canadian city, Toronto included.
People
like us don't oppose the Firearms Act simply because of the obscene expenditure
of tax dollars, or the certainty that the bungling that led to the last
gun-control scheme's failure will be repeated, leading to even more severe
measures (this time, the government will know exactly what guns we own when it
comes to confiscate them). We also resent that during the consultation leading
up to the registry, the government eagerly sought anti-firearm advocates'
advice, and snubbed gun owners. When we peacefully protested on Parliament Hill,
the RCMP dispatched snipers to surrounding buildings to train their sights on
us.
Yes,
Canadian gun owners applaud Paul Martin's gesture to placate Western voters by
ordering a review of the Firearms Act expenditures. But why bother? Three other
reviews have already been shelved. Mr. Martin is on record as committed to the
registry. He's unlikely to revoke the measures.
George Gruenefeld, a former outdoors columnist for the Montreal Gazette, has edited several outdoors magazines.