BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter from Paul Jackson — who calls himself a proud shooter of thousands of paper targets in a legal, government-controlled shooting range — is in response to 'LETTER: Reader calls new gun-control measures 'a step forward',' published June 22.
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I realize we can’t debate this issue forever through BarrieToday, but I really have to address the response by Paul Hutton to the letter written by Mark Cooper on June 17.
Mr. Cooper’s premise that Bill C-21 does nothing to protect the public at large is absolutely correct.
Mr. Hutton espouses a doctrine that is well rehearsed by the anti-gun lobby and is, at best, disingenuous. It is important that the public understands the real issues surrounding the headlines coming mainly from Toronto.
More than 90 per cent of shootings are drug dealers shooting drug dealers, rival gang members shooting each other for money or control of their “turf.” And more than 95 per cent of the guns being used are handguns smuggled in from the U.S. That’s really where the debate should end.
The government is impotent in their ability to control the flow of drugs and the flow of guns into Canada. This is not an attack on the Liberals for their lack of control of these two factors but rather a criticism of the government for picking the low-hanging fruit of legitimate gun owners instead of having the guts to say the truth, which is that there is very little they can do until the drug issue is tackled first. So, let us look at those government statistics cited by Mr. Hutton.
2.2 million is definitely not a “very small minority” of the population.
Twenty-five per cent of female victims related to firearms is terrible, but rifles were used almost exclusively in those attacks — nothing C-21 will address.
Rural attacks on women are more frequent — interesting and sad, but again, rifles, and nothing that Bill C-21 will address.
One hundred ninety-nine of 249 homicides by handgun or rifle/shotgun. Let’s break that down — of the 199, the vast majority is drug/gang related. Of the remainder, the weapon would be almost exclusively by rifle/shotgun. C-21 addresses neither.
Further, it has always been the case that a licensed gun owner could lose his guns by seizure if s/he becomes mentally unstable or is abusive to any family member — all it takes is a call to police from the spouse or child.
The number of handguns stolen or purchased legally and then sold to gang members is statistically zero. It is a fact that police departments in Canada have more handguns that they have lost or can’t account for than legal gun owners.
Finally, Mr. Hutton’s statement that if “‘innocent,’ licensed gun owners are responsible and pose no threat to themselves or others, this legislation isn’t aimed at them” is a downright lie. The one and only measure in Bill C-21 to address the handgun problem is aimed squarely and exclusively at licensed gun owners. The drug dealers and gang members in Toronto are laughing all the way to their next indiscriminate shooting spree.
If Mr. Hutton wants to save lives, I would suggest he tackles the issue of opioid deaths in Canada — 21,174 deaths of primarily young people between 2016 and 2020. Now that’s a statistic worth addressing, and would be a far better use for the billions of dollars being proposed to take the guns of law-abiding citizens.
Paul Jackson
Barrie
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