THUNDER BAY – A recent letter in the Ottawa Citizen outlined perhaps what is wrong in Ottawa more clearly than anything I have read on the ongoing debate on the gun registry. The author asked why the gun registry takes aim at hunters and target shooters?
“The ineffectiveness of federal gun control laws is guaranteed because they have always been aimed at the wrong target; namely, law-abiding citizens. It ignores the most dangerous and those most likely to acquire firearms illegally — namely, convicted criminals.
“The poor aim of successive governments and the chiefs of police has resulted in them not having the legislative authority or the national computer system that can tell them the current addresses of more than 300,000 persons who have been prohibited from owning firearms by the courts, subject to a restraining order, and/or firearms licences that have been refused or revoked. That’s a gun control law that would most likely receive widespread support. Well, support from everyone except convicted criminals, misguided civil libertarians and liberal politicians.”
Why does it take a letter to the editor to state what politicians and chiefs of police should have seen as an obvious solution to the entire situation. It would give police a valuable tool in the fight against crime.
It could also arm judges with the power to sentence dangerous offenders in the registry for breaking the law.
The people that the government should be focusing on are not hunters and shooters, they are people who have already demonstrated that they are incapable of following the law.
The Liberals with their creation of the federal gun registry wasted a billion dollars implementing a system that is seen by the innocent as punishing them, while ignoring those who are the real problem. Imagine if those Liberal MPs applied such measures at home to their children? They would be grounding their children because they might be bad?
The sheer common sense of such a change to the federal firearms registry likely means that Michael Ignatieff will fail to understand it, and wouldn’t support dropping the current “good guy registry” for a “bad guy registry”.
Likely, even though Jack Layton is proposing amendments to the current bill before the House of Commons, he will remain fixated on supporting the current flawed registry.
September marks the start of a new school year. The letter writer in the Ottawa Citizen offers a lesson to Canada’s politicians. One can only hope they are all smart enough to figure out it makes sense.
Besides, it would likely offer every MP in Ottawa the opportunity to agree on something that would make sense, and be far more cost effective, all while actually enhancing public safety.
In a perfect political world, Michael Ignatieff would propose this legislation, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper could second the bill.
That of course is just my opinion, as always your mileage may vary.
James Murray
Read More: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/registry+ignores+real+criminals/3476254/story.html#ixzz0yejRsCsl