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It's a war out there THE CANADIAN STATESMAN, APRIL 25,2001 PAGE 7 Gun owners, control advocates battle over legislation BY JOE CHIN Staff Writer DURHAM - As an avid hunter, Brian Lehen has blasted many a duck and goose from the skies. Now, he's getting a taste of what it's like to be in the crosshairs himself. For more than a year now the Pickering resident has been among the countless ordinary Canadian gun owners caught in the middle of a nasty mnning battle between the federal government government and opponents of its Firearms Act. On one side, he was being compelled by the government government to register his firearms; on the other, he was being pressured pressured by fellow gun owners and civil libertarians to defy the legislation. legislation. Ultimately, Mr. Lehen elected elected to abide by the law, obtaining his licence early last fall. "It took a bit of soul searching, searching, particularly since a few of my friends were dead-set against it, but I decided the furor was about basically nothing," he said recently, stocking up on hunting and angling supplies for the coming season at Gagnon Sports in Oshawa. "We are already required to have a licence for so many things in our lives - from our vehicles vehicles to our pets - so having one more didn't seem like such a big deal,tO mej.lJ uj jjiiii' xli'ilnnuU "I do have concerns the government government may have an ulterior motive, but I'm prepared at this time to give them the benefit of the doubt." Mr. Lehen might sound like the voice of reason, but it is perhaps still too early to know whether he's in the majority, despite the govern- A ment's claim - some three months after the deadline for registering - that the campaign has been a success. According to the Canadian Firearms Centre, the agency responsible responsible for licensing, more' than two million firearm licences have either been issued, to be processed or refused. If the centre's centre's estimate of 2.3 million firearm owners in Canada is accurate, accurate, then this constitutes a remarkably remarkably high 87 per cent compliance compliance rate. Other sources, however, put the number of firearms at closer to six million which, if considered considered in this light, makes the government's government's claim much less impressive. impressive. It's this inability by the government government and pro and con gun control groups to reach agreement agreement on anything that has characterized characterized the issue ever since Bill C-68 was first introduced back in 1995 by then Justice Minister Allan Rock. Since then the bill has been roundly condemned condemned by critics, as everything from being Hitlerian, to violating violating the Canadian constitution, to being a socialist plot to confiscate confiscate every gun in Canada with out compensation. Outside of the government, gun registration has its advocates. advocates. The legislation is supported supported by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian police chiefs association and the police departments of Canada's two largest cities, Toronto and Montreal. One of the strongest proponents is the Coalition for Gun Control, a Toronto-based organization which claims that some 71 per cent of Canadians support a complete ban on handguns handguns for civilian use. "An average of more than 1,200 Canadians have been killed and over 1,000 have been injured with firearms each year during the past 10 years," noted Wendy Cukier, the coalition's president and a professor of Justice Justice Studies at Ryerson University- University- Studies by the influential influential coalition show that during 1995, 911 Canadians Canadians committed committed suicide with firearms, 145 were killed with firearms in homicides, 49 died in "accidents," 6 were killed in legal interventions interventions and 14 deaths were undetermined, creating an overall firearms death rate of 3.8 per 100,000. "While some have suggested firearms deaths and injuries are not serious problems compared to other causes of death such as cancer, public health professionals professionals have tended to set priorities based not only on the rate of death but on the extent to which .many of the deaths, were ; preventable," preventable," Professor Cukier said. According to the coalition, citing studies, the economic costs of gun deaths and injuries in Canada have been estimated at $6 billion per year. The cost among young people is particularly high: firearms deaths are the third leading cause of death among young people people aged 15-24. Canada is fifth among industrialized industrialized countries in the firearms ■ death rate among children under the age of 14. Advocates also suggest the new gun registry and licensing procedures procedures will allow police to screen gun owners. And yet, according to critics, this was already possible under the old Firearms Acquisition Certificate s)'stem, and in a manner that was far less intrusive to all Canadians. As well, it is often noted that criminals, the purported target of this legislation, tend to acquire acquire their guns by means other than legitimate purchases and so will escape the pmvisions of the new law. The National Firearms Association, Association, a Calgary-based organization organization which boasts a membership membership of 120,000, is adamant that C-68, which essentially embedded embedded a complex regulatory scheme in the criminal law, is doomed to fail. The association argues "criminal charges and criminal penalties are - or should be - restricted to cases where the threat to society from the prohibited prohibited behaviour is both real and serious, not petty or theoretical." Instead, die organization has called for a system of qualification qualification of owner-users by profes sionals in the shooting sports field. While the debate may be new to this country, it isn't new to our neighbours to the south. And not surprisingly, with the exception of alluding to the Second Amendment, much of the debate in Canada has followed the same course as in the U.S. Americanization of the issue probably reached its peak last spring when Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Association, travelled to Canada to blast the law, proclaiming it to be "an unenforceable fraud." In a speech to the British Columbia Columbia Wildlife Association, the 76-year-old actor-gun advocate chided Canadians for letting the government erode what he called their "God-given" right to own guns without interference. "Our countries mirror each other in so many ways," he said. "But now, while we still fight to protect this most basic freedom, your government finds it convenient convenient to run roughshod over your gun rights. My friends, how did this happen?" Mr. Heston is correct that the U.S. and Canada have much in common. But it hardly hardly needs mentioning that one thing Canadians have no desire to share is the U.S.'s sky-high rate of gun-related murders, which is some 15 times the Canadian level. Although this country too has a frontier heritage, Canada has always had stricter gun control laws than the U.S. Here, handgun handgun ownership is restricted to police, collectors and gun club members. Licensing and registration registration of handguns have been required since the 1930s. - As a -result, this country :hafc I only one million handguns compared compared to the U.S.'s 77 million. The social toll is vastly different too: One study estimated the cost of death and injury from firearms to be $495 per capita in the U.S. versus $195 in Canada. The impetus for even tougher measures was the 1989 'Montreal 'Montreal Massacre' of 14 young women at an engineering school. Six years later, Parliament passed the Firearms Act tightening tightening handgun regulations and extending extending the registration requirements requirements to rifles and shotguns. Several provinces, led by Alberta, Alberta, challenged the law on the grounds the federal government is intruding on a matter that should be left to them. And what do ordinary Canadians Canadians think of the whole protracted protracted issue? According to a 1991 Angus Reid survey,, most think die main reason for owning owning firearms in Canada is hunting. hunting. A strong majority of respondents respondents in rural areas are favourable towards hunting, while a majority of big city respondents respondents are opposed to it. Self-defence is a troublesome and often cited right to own firearms. Most Canadians view the debate on self-protection as one that is restricted to the U.S. The prevailing attitude is there is no need for self-defence in Canada - that our superior social systems have, more or less, eliminated eliminated these problems. In general, those who think gun control effective are more likely than those who think it is ineffective to support universal registration. There are, however, some people who favour registration registration and confiscation whether or not they think gun control is effective. Overall, it seems support and opposition to firearms registration registration is a reflection of individual values. Those who would like to see a future Canada without guns support registration regardless regardless of whether they really believe believe it will be effective, and regardless of the cost. Those who support the right to own firearms, or favour hunting, or are gun owners are least likely '9ÊKP to support registration, ' l though many of them would do so if they thought it would provide worthwhile results. results. What is obvious is that, for universal firearm registration to do anything beyond inconveniencing inconveniencing gun owners, there must be a high level of compliance. If there is a low level of compliance, critics critics have argued, the police will not be able to use the data with any degree of certainty. certainty. Gun owners cannot be coerced into practising "safe storage." Unregistered stolen guns will not be reported to the police. The strongest proponents of registration arc those who think Canadians w should not have a right to own a firearm under, any circumstances. For many of them matters of cost and trade-offs are irrelevant. irrelevant. Whether or not it will be effective is irrelevant. They feel it to be a moral decision, similar in concept concept to the 1920s-30s prohibition of alcohol. They will probably not be completely satisfied with any law which allows anyone in Canada to continue owning a gun. It is safe to predict that passage passage of C-68 is not the end of the conflict, but the beginning of a wider battle between government government and gun owners. Meanwhile, ordinary firearm owners, like Mr. Lehen, go about their business as always. "We've had guns in our family family for several generations," he said. "Both my father and grandfather grandfather are hunters - that's what we keep guns for. There's this controversy, but really all I and my friends are interested in is doing a bit of hunting ..." A D SALE PRICES END SUN., APR. 29, OR WHERE SEARS IS CLOSED, SAT., APR. 28,2001, WHILE QUANTITIES LAST y\ Size Sears reg. Sale, each P185/75R14 73.99 54.99 P195/75R14 77.99 57.99 P205/75R14 79.99 59.99 P205/75R15 83.99 62.99 P215/75R15 89.99 66.99 P225/75R15 93.99 69.99 P235/75R15XL 99.99 74.99 P175/70R13 . 65.99 48.99 P185/70R14 77.99 57.99 P195/70R14 79.99 59.99 P205/70R14 83.99 62.99 P205/70R15 87.99 65.99 P215/70R15 90.99 67.99 P185/65R14 79.99 59.99 P225/60R16 111.99 83.99 Other sizes also on sale 111 Tracy Berkshire photo/ Canadian Institute for Legislative Action More than 30,000 angry Canadians went to Parliament Hill in Ottawa September, 199S to voice their anger of Bill C-68 during the Fed Up Rally 2. 1 O 00 OFF COOLING SERVICE APRIL'S SPECIALS 25% OFF TUNE-UPS © © ONTARIO'S DRIVE CLEAN NP0440901 ACCREDITED TEST AND REPAIR CENTRES for more information call 1-888-758-2999 WWW.driveClean.COm Copyright 2001, Sears Canada Inc. OSHAWA CENTRE DIRECT LINE 576-1716 HOURS MON.-FRI 7:30-9P.M. SATURDAY 7:30-6P.M. SUNDAY 11-5P.M,