The recent shooting in the U.S.A. has sparked a movement to stop the gun violence in that country. Canada does have better gun laws than they do, but I still believe we are at serious risk of similar gun violence if we do not better control our guns.
When Marc Lepine shot those 14 women in Quebec years ago our government at the time responded by setting up a Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry treated all gun owners as criminals, did nothing to reduce the risk of gun violence and cost the taxpayer a fortune.
I am a gun owner, a hunter, and a farmer, and I own several guns. None of my guns are weapons. They are tools. The gun used to shoot 14 young women at L’ecole Polytechnique in 1989 was a semi-automatic rifle. A hunter or farmer does not want or need a semi-automatic gun, as he aims to use as few bullets as possible to subdue his quarry.
An animal shot just once in the chest usually results in a lot of bloodied and wasted meat, and every bullet thereafter compounds the problem. A semi- automatic gun is not required for hunting, but it does make a pretty good weapon if the the user is disposed to pursue that goal.
In addition the fact that each squeeze of the trigger produces another bullet, and a nanosecond of inattentiveness can turn out badly, make semi-automatic guns far too dangerous to be placed in the hands of the public. You couldn’t pay me enough to own a semi-automatic gun.
The time it takes to jack another bullet into the chamber is definitely time well spent.
If the government had gotten rid of semi-automatic guns instead of subjecting us all to a gun registry it would have done far more to reduce the chance of gun violence.
Now pistols and such are considered to be restricted weapons, and they are only supposed to be used at a target shooting range. They can’t be kept in your glove compartment or used for hunting of any kind. They are supposed to be strictly controlled. Yet the gun that killed Coulton Boushie was a semi-automatic pistol, which the owner had stored in his shed.
I recently saw a gun shop advertising a 24-inch long, eight shot, 12 gauge shotgun for sale. That is a small hand-held cannon. Surely, I thought, that can’t be legal in Canada, but there it was. There is no job that would require this gun as a tool; it is clearly designed to be a weapon.
It’s time for Canada to show our American siblings the way, get rid of the weapons and allow law-abiding gun owners to keep their tools. If we don’t, we too are headed for misery.
Rod Retzlaff,
Glade, B.C.