Guns, law & order, & Stephen Harper

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The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule. ~~P.J. O’Rourke, Holidays from Hell, 1989

About 80 per cent of Canada's nine million guns are owned by men, so perhaps by definition, gun control is a "woman's issue." And repeated polling shows a substantial majority of women support the gun registry, perhaps because we know that guns are often used to harm or intimidate women in the throes of domestic violence. Women around the world are at greatest risk of harm from their intimate partners—“the usual suspects” in such cases. Fully 85 per cent of Canadian women who are murdered are killed by their spouse or partner, and most of those shot dead are killed with legally owned firearms.

Despite pro-gun lobby bluster, this gun violence is not just an urban phenomenon — the rate of women killed with guns is higher in rural areas because rural people own more guns. And murder is just the tip of the domestic violence iceberg—for every woman killed, many more are injured or threatened. And these “domestic violence” incidents appear in the papers almost daily. Several examples from a short period in 2009 (when this article originally appeared):

Smith AB, July 30^th: Ian Jeffrey Paget kills estranged wife Joan Hanson, her daughter and granddaughter, and then turns the rifle on himself at her rural home in northern Alberta.

Kitchener ON, August 11^th: Nadia Gehl is shot in early February at a bus stop near her home. Months later, police nab 3 suspects: her husband and two of his friends.

Orangeville ON, September 13^th: Police investigate a murder-suicide that left a mother of two and her estranged husband dead. Witnesses say 39-year-old Heidi Ferguson, shot in the chest, sought help at a neighbour's. As she lay dying, Ferguson reportedly cried, "I've been shot by my husband ... please help me." An avid hunter and gun collector, Hugh Ferguson turned the gun on himself after a standoff with police.

Winnipeg MB, September 17^th: Police are called after a 19-year-old woman is allegedly assaulted and threatened with a firearm. The woman flees the house and calls police from another area residence.

Fort St. John BC, September 30^th: A northeastern B.C. man is shot and killed by the RCMP after a five-day standoff that began when the 41-year-old farm resident pursued a van carrying his wife, an unspecified number of children and a friend, and shot out the front tires.

Since the gun registry was created, close to 23,000 firearms licenses have been refused or revoked because of safety concerns. We register our cars and our dogs--not to register our guns would be criminal.

No matter what the gun lobby says, gun control works. Consider the following :

· Controls on rifles and shotguns were strengthened in 1991: that year 1441 Canadians were killed with guns. By 2005, the number of such deaths dropped by almost half, to 818.

· The number of women murdered with guns fell from 85 in 1991 to 32 in 2005. But the number of women murdered by weapons other than firearms declined only slightly during the same period of time. Again, the effectiveness of gun control is inescapable.

My son was at Dawson College on September 13, 2006 when Kimveer Gill went on his murderous rampage. I will never understand why Mr. Gill had such easy access to such enormous firepower--the fact that he managed to kill “only” a single young woman was due to the fortuitous coincidental presence of two brave and well-trained police officers. (I say “only” because, of course, for her parents, family and friends, the murder of 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa is no small loss.) Kimveer Gill didn't need those guns and he shouldn't have had them. Why should his right to feel "big and bad" have trumped Ms. De Sousa’s, my son's, or anyone else’s safety?

And so I support more gun control, not less. Please don’t let Stephen Harper destroy our gun laws.

Though our Prime Minister may refuse to face it, rifles and shotguns are the firearms used most often to threaten women and children, and the weapons of choice in the murder of police officers. Look, for example, at the 3 Mounties killed in Mayerthorpe, AB. And the only charges levied in that case were against the gun providers, who were traceable because of the gun registry!

When Mr. Harper talks about law and order one day, and gutting gun control the next, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Contact your MP on this issue. Don't let Mr. Harper play fast and loose with our children's lives.

Of Pardons and Handguns: Mr. Harper, are you listening?

When Prime Minister Harper recently discovered, three years after the fact, that convicted pedophile Graham James had obtained a pardon, the PM was concerned enough to interrupt the Public Safety Minister on Easter Sunday to discuss changing the pardon laws.

Here’s another example of injustice that begs for Prime Ministerial activism: the case of Stephanie Hoddinott, a 20-year-old woman from Midland, Ontario. Stephanie had a 4.0 GPA in her veterinarian technician program, was smart, beautiful, and well-loved. On January 10th, she was murdered in her home by an ex-boyfriend who had legally purchased a handgun—supposedly for target-shooting. Says her mother, Brenda Passa, “Stephanie wasn’t just my daughter, she was my sister, and my best friend.”

The young man, Jake Ferrier, shot himself in the head almost immediately afterward, lingering several days on life support before succumbing.

In a letter to Mr. Harper, Ms. Passa wonders why we permit so many guns in our society since we no longer hunt for food. She can’t understand why, in her province, an 18-year-old isn’t considered mature enough to legally buy a case of beer, but IS permitted to own a handgun. Just one pull of the trigger separates the law abiding citizen from the law breaking criminal, she says, pointing out our handgun restrictions date from 1930. Times have changed: “Being 18 in 1930 is not like being 18 in 2010. Children live with their parents longer; they are younger emotionally and need time to develop before dangerous weapons” are made available.

She wants the Prime Minister to change the age limits for gun ownership, and she wants target shooters to have their weapons confined to shooting ranges.

“I hope no one ever has to endure what I went through,” she says. On January 10th, Jake started texting Stephanie repeatedly (he had texted her 40 times the day before). She didn’t respond; he came to their house. Ms. Passa met him at the door to say Stephanie wouldn’t see him. He said, “Not even for two minutes?” and Ms. Passa told him, “No, not even for two minutes, Jake. I’m sorry, I can’t make her.” She shut the door.

“I liked him,” Ms. Passa says. She feels nobody who knew him would have predicted what happened next, insisting there had been no warning signs. But he did lie on the Possession and Acquisition License (PAL), the form that's completed and (supposedly) assessed before a person is permitted to buy a gun. Ms. Passa says the PAL asks several significant questions. “Guess what?” she says, “the murderer lied on his application.” Jake Ferrier’s parents were in the midst of a divorce, and he had also recently broken up with Stephanie, facts the form asked for but Jake declined to note. “People are lying on these forms,” she says.

Ms. Passa went to her daughter’s room—Stephanie was packing for Toronto where she’d just started working at U of T. Her long-term plan was to attend vet school. Ms. Passa asked if Jake had made any threats. Stephanie said the problem was only that he was texting her incessantly. They finally decided Ms. Passa would call the young man’s mother to discuss the situation. Ms. Passa went to shower first. While in the shower, she heard two loud bangs.

By the time she threw on her pyjamas and ran to her daughter’s room, Stephanie was face down on the bed and Ms. Passa’s boyfriend was speaking with 911. She kept calling Stephanie’s name: no answer. Turning the girl over revealed she’d been shot in the head. The 911 technician told Ms. Passa to start CPR. “I blew in her mouth--blood was coming out of her neck and the top of her head. My daughter died in my arms, to the sound of my screaming." The 911 crew arrived to find her covered in her daughter’s blood.

Ms. Passa is clearly devastated. She has nightmares, she cries everyday. She says she herself would legally be permitted to purchase a handgun immediately, asking, “Do you think I am in any state of mind to own a handgun?”

Ms. Pass intends to do everything in her power to toughen the gun laws. She is convinced keeping guns at shooting ranges would be workable and effective. “Fighting this is the only thing keeping my will to live, that's the only thing I have left now. Stephanie is not dying for nothing.”

Prime Minister, Ms. Passa wants to know, can you help? Or does your concern—your compassion--extend only to possible problems with the pardon system?

A Facebook page set up by Stephanie’s cousin Tyler Hoddinott, “RIP Stephanie Hoddinott,” has over 4000 members. And counting.

(This article, originally published in The Toronto Star under the title, "Woman's murder exposes need to raise age for gun ownership," was named a Finalist for the Short Article Award Writing Award from the Professional Writers Association of Canada. Winner to be announced June 18, 2011. See the press release HERE.)