The tragedy of the shooting at Dawson College is that there is no protection against a madman. No law can prevent a person who is bent on self-destruction from destroying other people in the process.
Unfortunately too many people feel that they should be guaranteed complete protection from all of the bad things in life and politicians don’t seem to have integrity to tell them the plain truth: Bad things happen and all of the laws in the books can’t protect you from the crazies.
But that doesn’t stop governments from writing and passing laws based on the most recent crisis. Our current firearm laws got passed after the Ecole Polytechnique killings in Montreal. Then because of a series of shootings in the Jane-Finch area of Toronto the previous Liberal government began to talk about banning all handguns in Canada – at least those owned by law-abiding citizens. Now with the new tragedy at Dawson College it all starts again. Although Prime Minister Steven Harper has so far resisted the temptation to jump on the “more gun law” bandwagon comments reportedly made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MaKay postulating about the ban of all semi-auto firearms has a ring of déjà vu.
What is frustrating is that writers for the MSM, after all this time, have no concept of what the federal firearms act entails. Almost to a man/woman they are unable to differentiate between licensing and registration. Which turns most of their commentary into pure garbage.
The pro-registry commentary that one reads in the newspapers lambastes the government for continuing to talk about abolishing the firearms registry with the obvious inference that somehow the registry has some value in “stopping crime”. But the registry is only an inventory list. Once an individual has jumped through all of the hoops to get licensed to own firearms does it really make any difference what type or how many firearms he has? Not by my reckoning.
In fact, from a logical standpoint, the handgun registry should be scrapped along with the long gun registry. It has been in place since the mid 1930s and has not shown to have any value other than providing jobs within the bureaucracy. Again, if you are licensed to own a handgun why should the government care which one you choose to own?
But one cannot assume that logic, let alone intelligent thought, will save the day. Consider that in Britain some doctors called for a ban on ‘pointy’ knives. Baseball bats and golf clubs could be next.
If you really wanted to reduce violence in society you would get rid of drugs and alcohol. Let’s pass a law! Whoops – we’ve already done that.
