Letter: Liberal gun policies are useless

Letter: Liberal gun policies are useless
Date: Oct 31, 2005 7:47 AM
PUBLICATION: Montreal Gazette
DATE: 2005.10.30
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial / Op-ed
PAGE: A14
SOURCE: The Gazette
WORD COUNT: 202

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Liberal gun policies are useless

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Gerry Barr believes Canada must play a more prominent role in the
control of small arms (Letters, Oct. 28). To bolster his view he cites
the convention regarding anti-personnel land mines.

Control of small arms and land mines is difficult if the players are not
in agreement. Syria is shipping out AK47s as fast as it can buy them
from Bulgaria. Neither country gives a hoot about international
conventions.

What is Canada doing? UN ambassador Allan Rock supports the harebrained
scheme of engraving all new firearms with a country-of-origin code.
Manufacturers have estimated that this will cause a $200 increase in the
purchase price of a shotgun.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government, by way of the Coalition for Gun
Control, has sent money to South Africa to implement a Canadian-style
gun registration scheme. Indications are the South African experience is
a fiasco much like our own.

Further Canadian expertise in this matter is to blame the United States
for Canadian inner-city gun crime with an unsubstantiated declaration
that 50 per cent of criminal handguns come from the U.S. In fact, the
problem lies with understaffed, underfunded Canadian border controls.

Paul Martin and his gun-control supporters are more concerned with
window-dressing than the roots of crime in Canada.

Paul Chicoine
Laval