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6- The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday January 23, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com OPINION & LETTERS The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: The Oakville Beaver is a division of IAN OLIVER Group Publisher Media Group Ltd. NEIL OLIVER Publisher DAVID HARVEY General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ALEXANDRIA ANCHOR Circ. Manager Generation whenever The logic behind an Ontario Ministry of Education directive where teachers no longer penalize late assignments escapes us. What's the point of establishing homework deadlines if students know they won't lose marks for failing to meet them? Is anyone else concerned that this new initiative may leave some students illequipped to handle real-world demands? We appreciate that the primary purpose of assigning homework is to test students' understanding of the curriculum and their ability to clearly convey that knowledge through a specific class project. However, isn't the high school experience also supposed to be about readying our young people for real life? We fear this ill-conceived policy will result in future generations of graduates who won't be able to cope with even the most basic obligations of employment. We also suspect many in the business world will find it disconcerting to learn that meeting deadlines for work is being given less importance among Ontario's high school students. Permitting students to complete school assignments -- reprisal free -- weeks or months after they are due isn't practical and isn't fair to conscientious students who always complete their work on time. Right or wrong, many aspects of life in the real world demand an ability to meet target dates. Using the public service sector example of a fast food restaurant, a worker who can't meet the consumer's expectation of a quick turnaround on an order has an impact on the company's productivity, the customer's satisfaction and, ultimately, the worker's continued employment. Similarly, we can't imagine a powerful advertising client being terribly receptive to being told their deadline for a national advertising campaign is secondary to the whims of a creative team that prefers to work at its own pace. How could a utility company be expected to survive if all its customers submitted payments weeks or months after they were due? A world absent of deadlines -- and no repercussions for missing them -- would be chaotic. We tend to agree with Nelson High School student Sabrina Shaheen, who is bang on when she concludes that, "it will be everybody's problem once these students graduate." The Oakville Beaver welcomes letters from its readers. Letters will be edited for clarity, length, legal considerations and grammar. In order to be published all letters must contain the name, address and phone number of the author. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, Oakville Beaver, 467 Speers Rd., Oakville, ON, L6K 3S4, or via e-mail to editor@oakvillebeaver.com. The Beaver reserves the right to refuse to publish a letter. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Statistics indicate handgun ban doesn't work Here we go again! Toronto Mayor David Miller and his left-wing extremist views on banning handguns is outright fraud. First of all, remember federal Liberals imposed, without mandate, their gun registration legislation (Bill C-68) falsely claiming it would decrease crime? Yet The Oakville Beaver Jan. 16 editorial, Time to ban handguns stated "the gun involved in the shooting was legally registered." Make no mistake this is further proof the Liberal billion dollar boondoggle gun registry is totally useless. Every day brings further proof that banning guns is a no-brainer. Here is some of it. In the U.K. total offences with weapons in 1997/98 were 12,805 and of those, 2,636 were handgun offences. Then the U.K. banned handguns in 1997, and yet in 2005 total weapons offences skyrocketed to 21,521 and handgun offences increased to 4,671. In 1966, New Jersey adopted the most stringent gun law in the USA. Two years later (1968) murders with handguns were up 46 per cent and robberies with handguns nearly doubled in those same two years. In 1976, Washington D.C. implemented gun control, yet since then gun murders are up 134 per cent. Again in Washington D.C. (with gun control) the murder rate is 69 per 100,000 persons. Yet in Indianapolis, with no gun control, the rate is nine per 100,000 citizens. In 1987, Florida adopted the right to carry weapons (for self defence), yet rates of homicides dropped. In the 1990s certain American states allowed concealed handguns (for defensive purposes) and as a result of this worthwhile strategy, murders dropped in eight out of 10 states and violent crime dropped in nine out of 10 states. Back to Canada. More people are getting murdered with knives than guns according to Statistics Canada. So, David Miller, are you going to shove knife registration and knife banning down our throats? And remember, when the next federal election arrives, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc all refuse to support mandatory sentences in gun-related crimes. Unbelievable. These Liberal left-wing, anti-gun crusaders are nonsensical control freaks. These anti-gun fascists share the self-righteous arrogance of the Eco-fascists and will stop at nothing. Remember, guns don't kill people, the idiot gun user/owner who pulls the trigger is responsible. Ban criminals and thugs who flout the laws of our country. PAUL WINTER Pud BY STEVE NEASE snease@haltonsearch.com The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone 416-340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate. The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline.