Musings —12.06.2015 10:26 AM
—Fourteen reasons
…why we still need effective gun safety laws.
- Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student
- Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
- Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
- Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
- Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
- Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
- Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
- Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
- Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
- Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
- Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
- Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
- Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
- Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student
Agreed. And there are some images that you can never erase from your mind. For example, the little girl trying to run away from the napalm burns in Viet Nam, or the “girl with the Delacroix face” kneeling over the body of Jeff Miller at Kent State in 1970. For me, it also includes the photo of the woman with the tears streaming down her face as she lights a candle at the first memorial in Montreal for the Polytechnique victims. One picture tells a whole story.
Don’t want to sound like an NRA hack but you do realize that a mini 14 is just a military styled 223 round rifle. Yes it is semi auto which may make it somewhat more dangerous in the amount of rounds fired in a minute. There are many other semi auto center fire rifles of larger calibers available. A tremendous amount of rim fire semi auto rifles available as well. The good ol’ 22 long used in the same manner could be just about as dangerous. The old style lever action rifles can have a quite fast rate of fire. I agree certain weapons need not be sold i.e military styled ones but I also understand that there are many similar/same caliber rifles that are the same power and caliber so just as dangerous. The gun is just a mechanism for firing the bullet. It is who has the gun and their reason to own it. I think that here in Canada we have a pretty good process. Need to take a course and then apply for you PAL the police at that time should be doing their part to ensure that people who apply are qualified and appropriate to own them. Other than outlawing all guns (which won’t happen) there is no true safe way to have gun control. As we all know criminals will get guns regardless if it is legal to own or not. I don’t know what the right answer is but I know waving our arms about a certain weapon only distracts and does not help the issue at large. Just over a year ago a man with an old styled lever action killed a soldier at the war memorial. He could have killed far more people if he had decided to shoot at the general public, he didn’t. Thank God. But I didn’t here the call to outlaw old Winchester styled lever actions.
I guess what I was trying to say is that you can’t outlaw Crazy people or people determined to kill others. Timothy McVeigh used a truck full of fertilizer a diesel fuel. People who are determined to kill will kill
The key word being EFFECTIVE.
Lots of good arguments here but I just want to add a few points. Most illegal guns start out as legal guns before they are stolen, sold, traded, whatever so controls on legal guns will eventually filter down and restrict the volume of illegal guns available. Most police calls are for domestic violence and the registry did help to ensure that officers responding to those calls knew as much as possible about the place they would be walking into. It was my understanding that they would reference the registry many hundreds of times a day Canada wide and I would have thought a law and order party like the Conservatives would have seen the benefit of giving the police that heads up on any situation they might be facing, but apparently not. Most gun injuries are simply opportunistic. Some guy gets into a fight with his brother in law, if they have fists, that’s what they use, if they have baseball bats, that’s what they use, if they have guns, that’s what they use. So in this scenario, having no guns around means the brawl might be ugly but more than likely not lethal, in this case the presence of the gun is the problem. Many gun injuries are accidents, often involving children due to improper storage, but again, the simple presence of the gun is the problem. Emergency ward doctors will tell you most gun wounds they see are due to opportunity or accident so the idea that criminals will get guns despite the law, or criminals will disobey laws anyway are really a minor part of the entire gun debate. In most cases, it is the presence of the gun that is the problem, not the intent.
Well said. The goal is to have fewer guns. Of any kind. For any reason. Full stop.
I would also support a law that required all guns to be stored with police or a licensed gun club, unless owned by a livestock farmer, as a means of predator control , or subsistence hunters in rural areas or people living and working in remote areas with a real chance of encountering dangerous wildlife (Churchill Manitoba cones to mind). Nobody needs a gun in an urban centre at all unless it is for sport shooting at an event or club. So you don’t need one at home. Just like nobody needs dynamite, or a palette of potassium nitrate fertilizer.
With respect, several family and friends are police officers.
None, NONE have ever specifically done a firearms registry check when responding to any call. Literally no front line officer I have ever spoken to intentionally consult the firearms registry prior to or after the non-restricted data was deleated.
They have run checks via CPIC to see if anyone at a residence has a firearms licence, but even if the check came back negative, they still assume firearms are present.
I agree with most of your comment. However, I don’t think we’ve ever seen the key statistic on how many gun crimes involve stolen guns as opposed to illegally imported guns or legally owned guns. It is important, I think, if you want to implement regulations that protect the general public against gun violence.
My hypothesis is that most “gun crime” of the sort we get here in the lower mainland of BC involves illegally imported weapons. I don’t think that legally-owned or stolen guns are a big factor in gun crime, except for the unfortunate exception of domestic violence similar “hot blood” crimes. Until I see numbers, that’s just an opinion.
Lepine, IIRC, obtained his weapon legally. I’m not sure anything we’ve done since that terrible crime has done anything to reduce the likelihood of a similar crime in the future.
Probably shouldn’t say this, but I forget what kind of non-disclosure agreement I signed. About 25 years ago I worked on a contract with the RCMP, at the CPIC centre, fielding calls from police forces around Canada and internationally. Most of the calls had to do with connectivity to the CPIC database, which of course held the gun registry. Most reconnections were pretty routine, but I remember one day when the thing was unavailable because of maintenance, one dispatcher phoned in and was almost frantic. She was dispatching an officer to a domestic violence situation where she knew from past scenes that there were guns, and she couldn’t access the database. Here she was sending an officer to a place she knew was a problem, and she couldn’t tell the officer anything more than “Be careful”. All I could tell her was “I’m sorry, but it’ll be about 4 hours before we’re back on line”. Every time I think of the ditching of that database, I think of that dispatcher and the fear in her voice. ‘Nuff said.
Even without the registry, they would still be in the system as having a PAL, therefore, the police could have proceeded with the assumption that firearms were present in the house.
Don’t want to sound disrespectful but how would have the registry helped in this situation, it is not like there was real time tracking on the guns. They already knew it was a domestic violence call (already dangerous) with a history of guns in the house (super dangerous). She could give the police had as much info as they required i.e. that they were likely heading into a very dangerous situation with likely weapons involved. If the registry was working and said no guns at that address would they have then walked in without worrying about weapons, no. Police I know say they assume guns present at all times, it would be ridiculous not to assume that. The dispatcher was frantic as she/he likely thought the registry would make a difference but the police already had the info they needed to know. Access to the registry would have made no difference. To rely on the registry would and could be fatal. I mean if it says no weapons, and you rely on that info it could result in very bad consequences, that is why police assume there are guns even if the registry said none around.