The very respectable New York Times today published a poignant, well-written story on the gun control issue in Canada. Perhaps the issue is best seen through the distant eyes of our southern neighbours, from the perspective of a liberal print publication in a city that has all but outlawed most firearms entirely, situated in a country that has more of them than it knows what to do with and defends that as a constitutional right.

But we hardly doubt it.

The gun control issue, like other emotional and passion-inducing issues, is best looked at through the clinical and cold eyes of those most affected by it.

Canada’s current incarnation of gun control was largely in response to a very tragic shooting in Montreal in 1989.  A shooting that had more to do with violence against women than with gun control, a fact that should be blindingly obvious to anyone who reads newspapers or watches television, as evidenced by the fact that the shooter deliberately separated men from women before targeting the just the women for his rampage.  The firearm used, which incidentally was not banned in the subsequent introduction of new firearms prohibitions and restrictions, was simply a means to amplify that man’s hatred of all women.

Closest to the tragedy were the survivors, 13 of them, and the parents of the 14 women who were brutally murdered.

In the New York Times’ story, Suzanne Laplant-Edward, the mother of a 21-year-old Anne-Marie, killed on December 6, 1989 in that deadly shooting, told the paper that the gun-control law “is a monument erected to the memory of our daughters.”

With respect to Ms Laplant-Edward, and not to diminish her personal loss: No, it isn’t.  Laws are not monuments, they are codes of behaviour.  Some in society will choose to follow them, because it is moral and just and right.  Others will exercise their free will and thought, and choose to ignore them.  When the laws are serious, this matter group are labelled criminals, and rightly so.

But criminalization as codified in our present gun-control laws is precisely the sort of issue that free will and thought exists to lobby to have changed and removed.

The same NY Times article referred to Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, who very publicly and proudly announced the removal of 58 guns from the streets of Toronto, all thanks to the long-gun registry, a by-product of the legislative changes following the Montreal massacre in 1989.  The guns were described as “illegal” and the registry attributed as “allowing” his force to seize them.

The trouble is, the gun control laws themselves deemed the firearms illegal, beause of a change in the law.

The police never suggested the firearms were illegally obtained, and in fact they mentioned that the person charged with their possession had probably acquired legally some years prior to the legislative changes.  Many of them simply were not re-registered under the new legislation when it came into effect.  No evidence has been hinted at to suggest the firearms had ever been acquired in order to commit a violent act, and indeed no such allegation was made.

The presence of these guns in a high-crime community was mentioned as an increased risk to public safety, as they could be stolen by criminals.

This seems to be the authorities waving the white flag, by effectively saying, “Hey, we know crime is out of control in your neighbourhood, we can’t do anything to stop it, so we had better take your guns away so they don’t get stolen and used in more crimes.”

That is not a ringing endorsement for law enforcement to say the least.

The cold, clinical approach would be to effectively enforce the law, deter crime though that effective enforcement, and severely penalize those who dare steal firearms, and use them to rob or murder.  Just as we should severely penalize those who rob and murder – regardless of what weapon they use.

Much is made of the registry and its 3.4 million queries in 2008.  In that year, there were a total of 65,283 police officers in Canada, according to Stats Canada.  Does that mean each officer performed a registry query an average of 52 times over the year?  Of course not.  The bulk of the queries are likely bulk queries done by police dispatchers any time an address is mentioned in a radio call, or any number of other routine and often automated computer checks done daily by officers, investigators and police clerical staff.

To suggest that 3.4 million queries were done directly improving public safety is the height of farce.  Many times, queries are not even done until after a crime has occurred, a firearm has been recovered, etc., and although the registry contains 6.7 million long guns, clearly the most common crime gun is the handgun, meaning most of the registry is not even being checked.  And, we know that a large percentage of crime guns on the streets are in fact smuggled into Canada anyway.

Register handguns?  Absolutely.  Canada has been doing it for nearly 80 years already.  No one in the firearms community would dispute the need for restrictive handgun rules, and are happy to accept maintaining licence validity to maintain firearms ownership.

Registering long-guns, however, has utterly failed in its original mission.  And that is certainly no monument to murder victims, but rather an insult to them.