It makes sense, on the 20th anniversary of the December 6 Montreal massacre, to remember the victims -- the dead and the wounded.
It makes sense to talk about violence against women, to talk about mental illness, the dangers of ignoring warning signs, as well as how to strike the balance between acting on those warning signs and not being alarmist.
But it makes no sense to use December 6 as a justification for keeping the long-gun registry.
Yet women’s groups and anti-gun activists areusing the anniversary for just that reason. After parliament voted, in early November, to repeal the registry, Alexa Conradi, president ofthe Federation des femmes du Quebec said, “Close to 20 years after the shooting, we seem to be forgetting why we decided to do this in the first place.”
The Montreal massacre may well have been the catalyst for the gun registry, but if the years since have shown us that it is expensive and ineffectual, does keeping it honour the dead -- or protect any future victims?
The gun registry would not have stopped Marc Lepine, though it may have forced him to register his semi-automatic rifle first.
I am doubtful this would have saved lives that day, though perhaps journalists covering the story would have gotten his name and address more quickly.
Three years ago, also in Montreal, Kimveer Gill opened fire at Dawson College. He had dutifully registered the guns he brought with him.
It isn’t paperwork or officiousness that will prevent the kind of crimes Lepine and Gill committed.
Mandatory sentencing, making sure bail and parole aren’t handed out like candy, while good ideas after crimes are committed, are not initiatives that would have prevented either killer from carrying out their plans, nor would they have impeded the perpetrators at Virginia Tech, Columbine and so on.
In fact, once someone as unbalanced as any of these murderers decides to go on a rampage, it seems the only thing that will stop them is a bullet.
Sadly, in most cases, it seems to be those of the self-inflicted variety that do the trick. One exception was the recent attack at Fort Hood, where Nihal Malik Hasan committed jihad-inspired murder.
But of course, people on a military base are armed.
If they weren’t, the numbers at Fort Hood would have been much higher.
One could argue that the 1989 tragedy would likely have been stopped earlier on had some of the students and faculty at L’Ecole Polytechnique been armed.
Ditto Dawson College, where a security guard who was in close proximity to the killer was not armed.
And contrary to the bigoted assumptions many Canadians have about every square centimetre of the United States being heavily-armed, guns were restricted on the Virginia Tech campus.
Criminals, it is safe to say, don’t obey the law. (The Columbine killers broke several of Colorado's gun control laws.)
The rest of us generally do. If guns are illegal, only criminals have them. But allowing citizens with no criminal or mental illness history to carry guns is an idea most Canadians reject reflexively.
I am not suggesting that an armed populace would signal the end to rampage killings, or that we should all be armed.
I have no interest in owning a gun. What I am suggesting is that it is misguided to suggest the Montreal massacre of any other of these horrible events, would have been prevented by the gun registry, or by laws making it more difficult for non-criminals to own guns.
Let us mention a few truths. First the so-called 'Marc Lepine', not his real name, was born to and raised by a woman-hating, woman-beating, North African Muslim. The attempt by feminists to present him as a typical Canadian male is blatantly dishonest. Secondly, more men are killed by guns than women, so again the feminists are dishonest.
However the most important truth is that guns are tools, unable to discriminate or commit evil or good. It is imperative to return to holding people responsible and accountable for their actions, otherwise why not a registry for knives, bows and arrows, baseball bats, gold clubs and everything else used to commit murder. Murder by guns is actually far less frequent.
You got it all right, Rondi, except regarding the soldiers in Fort Hood being regularly armed. The general military population was not as a rule or standard practice, armed. Rather, it was a single, civilian, policeman with a duty handgun who put down the bad guy in question.
Which is why, sadly, the number of armed forces personnel who were victimised was so high, and why we can put the Fort Hood incident in the same category as L’Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson College: high body count massacres allowed to happen because the government did not trust its good citizens and soldiers with firearms.
Years ago, some town in Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting ANY firearm within the city limits. As a bit of humor, some town in (I think) Alabama passed a law requiring all adults, who are not criminals or have mental impairments, to own a functioning firearm. A couple of years later, a reporter, remembering these laws, did a study. He found that the crime rate in the Massachusetts town soared more than 50% while the same in Georga was cut by over 80% (and the murder rate fell to zero!) A researcher, interviewing convicts, found that robbers favored states with strict gun control laws "because they can't defend themselves." (If anyone knows the names of these towns, I would love to have them.)
While living in Alaska in the 1960s, we all wore firearms (I used a .357 Ruger revolver) as mandated for pilots by state law. One Friday evening, I was standing in line at the bank most pilots used (next to Lake Hood) and observed that everyone in line wore a handgun. I then realized that I had not heard of a bank robbery up there. (If some idiot had pulled a gun on a teller, there would be 2 or 3 who would think "free target" and the judge would say "justified!"
In my neighborhood last year, a woman (who did not have a gun) called police to say her house was being broken into. The police dispatcher heard her confrontation with the killer as he shot her to death. If I were that woman and I was confronted by someone intent on eliminating witnesses, woult I rather have a phone or a .38 revolver in my hand? Can you guess my choice? The police cannot be everywhere.
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