For those who legally purchased their first firearm in the past 20 years, it may come as a surprise to learn the push for firearm owner licensing and universal gun registration began more than half a century ago.
In 1965 the National Council of Women presented a brief to Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.
One of their eleven resolutions? License all firearms, air rifles and air pistols.[i]
The following year, after former U.S. Marine Charles Whitman shot and killed 14 people and injured 31 others at the University of Texas, the call to license gun owners and ban firearms was immediate in both the United States and Canada.
Unsurprisingly, the question asked then is the same one asked today.
“Charles Whitman was a man eminently qualified to possess a firearms permit under any foreseeable type of legislation which could be passed by the American Congress or the Canadian Parliament,” wrote Vancouver Sun columnist Paul St. Pierre. [ii]
“What law could be framed to prevent a young man of such outward appearance of sanity and decency from owning firearms?” he asked.
The answer then is the same as it is today, too.
“Unencumbered private ownership of firearms is a tradition deeply rooted in our Canadian heritage and is a right far too basic and elemental to risk its loss through misdirected, ill-advised and fundamentally unworkable laws,” wrote Allen Bill, Alberta Outdoors columnist for the Calgary Herald. [iii]
“Good gun laws should be directed against the unlawful and careless use of guns, not against honest citizens. The present system of registration of handguns has done nothing to reduce crime involving concealable firearms,” Allen Bill wrote.
Fast forward a decade.
On May 28, 1975, 16-year-old Michael Slobodian took a .444 lever-action rifle and a .22 calibre semi-automatic rifle to Brampton Centennial Secondary School to kill a teacher he hated.
The coroner inquest’s jury recommended the following:[iv]
- Licence requirement to purchase a rifle or shotgun
- Firearm safety training requirement to be eligible for a license
- License requirement to purchase ammunition
- Safe storage requirements for firearms
- Sales record-keeping requirement for all stores selling firearms and ammunition
The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police echoed the licensing requirement recommended by the inquest’s jury and added one of their own: anyone in possession of a firearm without a license should be punished with a mandatory minimum one-year sentence.[v]
The jury’s recommendations sparked calls from Ontario and Ottawa’s political class to ban the sale and possession of all semi-automatic rifles.
They completely ignored Slobodian’s primary murder weapon – a lever-action rifle.
Five months later on October 27, 1975, 18-year-old Robert Poulin took a sawed-off shotgun to St. Pius X High School in Ottawa where he killed one student, injured half a dozen more before killing himself.
The coroner inquest’s jury recommended the following:[vi]
- Total ban on handguns
- Licence requirement to purchase a rifle or shotgun
- Firearm safety training requirement to be eligible for a license
- License requirement to purchase ammunition
- Safe storage requirements for firearms
- Sales record-keeping requirement for all stores selling firearms and ammunition
It’s no coincidence the list of recommendations by juries in both Coroner’s Inquests are practically identical.
Both inquests were headed by Ontario’s Chief Coroner at the time, Dr. Harold B. Cotnam.
Dr. Cotnam ordered both inquest juries to recommend stricter ‘gun control’, monitoring school attendance and, in the case of the Poulin shootings, banning pornography.
Both inquest juries complied, to the letter, with Dr. Cotnam’s instructions.
The jury recommendations for both inquests led directly to the Firearms Acquisition Certificate system imposed on Canadians by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau two years later.
The next time the government bans guns totally unrelated to the latest crime committed by a deranged person, don’t be surprised.
The clarion call to ban guns was a political solution unrelated to the problem it purports to solve.
The recommendation to ban handguns was completely disconnected to Robert Poulin’s murder weapon, just as the May 1st gun ban is completely disconnected to the Nova Scotia murders.
Like his father before him, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes in that timeless political maxim of tyrants everywhere.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Sources:
[i] Ottawa Journal, February 1, 1965, Page 18
[ii] Vancouver Sun, August 3, 1966, Page 31
[iii] Calgary Herald, February 19, 1965, Page 15
[iv] The Leader-Post, June 26, 1975, Page 48
[v] Ottawa Citizen, June 26, 1975, Page 70
[vi] Ottawa Citizen, December 5, 1975, Page 1
Why did Toronto Mayor John Tory back off a city-wide handgun ban?