Gun control a waste of money

by Terry McGarvey
The Powell River Peak
28 December 2005

One of the tactics Paul Martin is employing in attempting to be re-elected as prime minister of this beautiful country is a blatant attempt to buy votes in the largest city in Canada.

I am referring to his statement that if he is re-elected, he will ban all handguns.  Of course, this is optional for those provinces that don't want to institute the new ban.  Alberta and Saskatchewan have already said they will not uphold this law if passed.

How ridiculous can that be?  Handgun registry and control laws for legal handguns have been in effect in this country since 1934.

Martin obviously has not done his homework when it comes to gun owners in this country.  He and his cohorts have squandered nearly $2 billion on a useless gun registry that was supposed to cost $1.5 million and has not done one thing to reduce gun crime in this country.  During the institution of these gun control laws, people responsible for registering guns lost hundreds of thousands of these registrations, never to be recovered.

In spite of this registry, the use of guns to kill people goes unchecked.

The registrations were for guns in the possession of the law-abiding people of this country.  I would suggest to Martin that very few, if any, registered guns have been used to kill people.  His statement that the guns being used to kill people are being stolen from collectors is, to say the least, ridiculous.

If Martin and his government had chosen to spend the $2 billion to beef up control of the borders to choke off the illegal importation of guns to this country, we would have been a lot further ahead.

Martin said on television recently that guns kill people.  Guns don't kill people, people do.  That's like saying that eating utensils make people obese � ridiculous drivel.

As many people may know, nearly two years ago, Australia banned guns entirely within its borders.  Here are a few first year statistics from Australia as published by Ed Chenel, a police officer in Australia.

• 640,381 guns were surrendered by the people of Australia, which were destroyed, costing taxpayers more than $500 million.
  
  

• Homicides are up 3.2 per cent.
  
  

• Assaults are up 8.6 per cent.
  
  

• Armed robberies are up 44 per cent.
  
  

• In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are up 300 per cent.
  
  

While figures in the last 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robberies with firearms, this has changed dramatically upward in the ensuing 12 months.  These stupid laws have guaranteed the criminals unarmed prey.

Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense has been expended in "successfully" ridding Australian society of guns.  This is sure to be repeated here in Canada if we don't stop these idiots from passing ridiculous laws that don't benefit anyone but the illegal element in our society.

Terry McGarvey would like people to consider Prime Minister Paul Martin's recent comments regarding Canada's gun laws when voting in the upcoming federal election.