"U.S. gun lobbies: the inmates who run the asylum"

If you've spent even 30 seconds over over the past couple of weeks since the shooting of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords ( who was just successfully moved to intensive care at Texas Medical Center) thinking about gun control, you owe it to yourself to read this fine article by Gerald Caplan in yesterday's Toronto Globe and Mail.

It's such a great piece, I wish I'd written it myself. Here are the first two paragraphs...

"Why is the United States so much more violent than Canada?

Canadians receive, even welcome, violence-based American mass culture pumped out 24/7 by the mammoth entertainment industry. Yet our society remains dramatically less violent than theirs. Take guns.

"The United States has by far the highest gun homicide rate in the industrialized world. In a study of 23 of these nations, the American rate was nearly 20 times higher than the others. Some 100,000 shootings take place in the U.S. every year, 30,000 of them fatal. In Canada, with about one-tenth the U.S. population, 190 people were killed by guns in 2006. More than a million Americans have died from gun violence, whether by murders, suicides or accidents, since Martin Luther King was gunned down in 1968."

Caplan goes on to remind us that the NRA's annual budget is $307 million and represents some 4 million members. The pernicious effect of this group's power, according to Caplan:

"Here’s the paradox you need to grasp about the NRA: Its ferocious opposition to any form of gun control is motivated precisely by the American orgy of gun violence. Because of this violence, it will maintain its relentless pressure for government to eliminate (except for children) literally every possible constraint on owning and carrying guns – and the deadlier the gun, better."

Gun violence in America: how can anyone believe that MORE guns make people safer? Aren't 300 million guns enough, if that strategy made any sense at all?

Perhaps this is all because the US public school system has failed to instill critical thinking in its students and graduates.

Or maybe it's the relentless marketing of violence and guns in the movies and other media, the 'product placement' most of us seem to ignore. Weapons are among the biggest of US--and world, especially permanent members of the UN Security Council--business.

This is not just about the NRA...it's about the corruption of the political process.

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Gerry Caplan is a Canadian academic, public policy analyst, commentator and political activist. He has worked in academia, as a political organizer for the New Democratic Party, an education advocate, in broadcasting and African affairs and as a commentator in various Canadian media. He was educated at the University of Toronto and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, which accorded him a doctorate in African history, according to Wikipedia.

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Beverly Akerman is a Montreal writer; her first collection of short fiction, The Meaning of Children, will soon be released by Exile Editions.

The solution is simple: Canada needs MORE gun controls

Follow @Beverly_Akerman

The late Anastasia De Sousa, who died at Dawson College, September 13, 2006

Today being the fourth anniversary of the tragic murder of another "beautiful young Canadian with everything to live for," Anastasia De Sousa, during the Dawson College Shooting , I've decided to post the opinion article I wrote following the Sept. 13, 2006 rampage by the deranged Kimveer Gill. Versions of this piece appeared at the time in The Montreal Gazette and The National Post. The memorial notice for Ms. De Sousa is here; you may leave a message of condolence here.

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I am the mother of a Dawson College student, was friendly with a beloved husband and father killed at Concordia University 14 years ago, and worked in a non-traditional occupation - molecular genetics research - when the Ecole Polytechnique massacre took place. My husband is a provincial politician who spends much of the year at the National Assembly in Quebec City, where three were killed and 13 wounded by a deranged Canadian soldier in 1984. And so I feel myself uniquely placed to respond to the events of Sept. 13.

My response is not to launch a fruitless inquiry into the "root causes" of this catastrophic occurrence. I couldn't care a whit whether the perpetrator of last Wednesday's atrocities was refused academic admission to Dawson College, whether he was bullied as a child, either in school or at home. I think it's irrelevant if he grew up with a chip on his shoulder because of some imagined slight, or even if he or his family suffered in the past from some form of persecution, be it real or imagined, in Canada or elsewhere.

To me, there can be no mitigating factors for murder, whether the locus of attack is a college campus in downtown Montreal, a nightclub in Tel Aviv, a skyscraper in New York City, or some parched crossroads among the rubble of Afghanistan. Murder is murder is murder. Each one should fall under the rubric of "hate crime."

When 14 young Montrealers, full of hope, ambition and promise, had their lives snuffed out because they had earned the privilege of studying engineering while another could not, many people I knew, especially women, insisted the "root cause" of this crime was our society's oppression of women, an opinion at which I scoffed.

When gun control was trumpeted as the panacea to these horrible killings, I was skeptical. I bought the argument that gun control penalized the law-abiding, rather than the criminals. I was sensitive to the position that people living rural lifestyles needed firearms as part of their daily lives, a situation unimaginable to me, given my urban existence.

Well, I am skeptical and sensitive no more. Last Wednesday was the drop that made the glass overflow, as we say in Quebec. The balance has shifted. I realize more clearly now that my choice must be to care more for the potential victims than the potential perpetrators.

So that's my response to the Dawson killings: No more guns. It's as simple as that. Because no one can accurately predict who among us will become unhinged enough to explode in bloody slaughter, I believe that guns should be unavailable to the public.

I don't trust psychiatrists - much less gun-registry officials - to ferret out what lies deep in the hearts of men. After all, Concordia administrators, some of whom had equipped their own offices with locks and panic buttons because of Valery Fabrikant's continued harassment, consulted a psychiatrist about the demented professor before his murderous rampage. I saw the same psychiatrist on television last week, hovering in the background following the Dawson shootings.

According to journalist Morris Wolfe, the psychiatrist had deemed it "unlikely" that Fabrikant, a professor repeatedly denied tenure, would become violent.

So if a trained psychiatrist with an abiding interest in severe and chronic psychotic illness, confronted with a man he himself has diagnosed as having "a personality disorder" cannot foresee the coming explosion of rage, all the administrative screening in the world won't be able to keep legal guns out of the hands of loonies. The solution that's clearest to me is to make guns - both legal and illegal - impossible to get.

And so, as a mother, a woman, and a sentient human being, I'm telling Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the entire government of Canada to wake up and smell the coffee: If you persist in your intended dismantling of the gun registry instead of making it harder for people to own guns, there will be hundreds of thousands of us marching in the streets of Montreal. I guarantee it.

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I continue to believe that guns, especially long guns, are too readily available in our society. The government of Canada--under the guise of a private member's bill--is attempting to destroy the long gun registry, part of a web of regulations that seeks to make Canada's gun owners more accountable for their weapons and has been shown effective and even cost-effective.

The psychiatrist, Warren Steiner, contacted me after my piece(s) appeared to say Mr. Wolfe had it all wrong and that he--Dr. Steiner--regretted not having demanded retraction of the statements ascribed to him. Four years later, the comments are still available here. Dr. Steiner has since made the recovery--or lack thereof--of the Dawson community a particular research interest. And it looks to be a lucrative, longterm one.

Gun Control: Canadian politicians are forgetting rural women

Outcry and national poll suggests Canadians, and women in particular, support gun registry

(a press release from the Coalition for Gun Control)



TORONTO, April 26, 2010 -

Citing letters from rural women’s groups across the country and just released polling results, the Coalition for Gun Control is calling on federal politicians to remember that the vocal opponents to gun control do not speak for Canadians, for rural women nor even for all gun owners.

“We hear repeatedly that gun control is an urban issue that “punishes” rural gun owners,” said Wendy Cukier, Coalition for Gun Control president. “The terrible irony is that where there are more guns, there are also higher rates of gun death and injury. Most police officers killed with guns are murdered with rifles and shotguns but suicides with firearms and domestic violence in rural communities seldom make the front page. Rural women’s groups, psychiatrists and health care professionals along with police have all documented these problems and why the registry is important to help keep guns from people who are a danger to themselves or others. Rifles and shotguns are the guns most often used in violence against women because those are the firearms most readily available.”



Citing a just released Leger and Leger poll, Cukier added: “Twice as many Canadians (59 per cent) say the registration of rifles and shotguns should be maintained compared to those who say it should be scrapped (27 per cent). In every province but Manitoba and Saskatchewan more people support the registry than oppose it. The poll also shows that women support the gun registry (66 per cent) compared to men (51 per cent). More people living with gun owners (47 per cent) support the registry than oppose it (36 per cent) and a substantial proportion of gun owners (36 per cent) actually support the registry (versus 59 per cent opposed). The opponents may be louder and better financed, but among households with guns in Canada, votes are almost evenly split. Many politicians from rural areas seem to forget that women vote too.”



Poll Highlights

1. Overall, supporters of the registry outnumber opponents by 2:1
- 59 per cent said registration is useful and should be maintained compared to 27 per cent who thought it was useless and should be scrapped and 14 per cent who said undecided or preferred not to say.



2. In every province across Canada, except Manitoba/Saskatchewan more people support the registry than oppose it.

Quebec 74 per cent to 12 per cent, Ontario 58 per cent versus 27 per cent, MB/SK 39 per cent versus 45 per cent, ALB 48 per cent versus 37 per cent, BC 57 per cent versus 31per cent



3. Women are more likely to support the registry (66 per cent) than men (51 per cent)



4. Parents also support the registration of firearms with 61 per cent for and 26 per cent against.



The omnibus poll conducted by Leger and Leger for the Coalition for Gun Control had 1506 respondents (margin of error ± 2,53%, 19 times out of 20) n December 21 to 23, 2009 and asked:



Recently, new legislation was introduced to eliminate the need to register rifles and shotguns. While licenses to own are renewed periodically, registration is a one time only procedure that occurs when a gun is purchased. A lot of money was spent setting up the system, but the current cost of registering rifles and shotguns is three million dollars a year. Some people say that registration ensures gun owners are accountable for their firearms and that the registry is an important tool used daily by police to prevent and investigate crime. Others say that registering guns unduly burdens gun owners, is of no use and should be eliminated. Which represents your position?



Response:

The concept of registering guns is useful and should be maintained; or

The concept of registering guns is useless and should be eliminated



Among the groups which have formally opposed the Government proposal to end the registration of rifles and shotguns are: the Coalition of Provincial and Territorial Advisory Councils on the Status of Women; Provincial Association of Transition Houses and Services of Saskatchewan; Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters; The Grande Cache Transition House Society; Manitoba Association of Women's Shelters (Nova House Inc.); Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres; The Federation des femmes du Quebec; Association feminine d’éducation et d’action sociale, Women’s Sexual Assault Centre of Renfrew Council; Manitoba Action Committee on the Status of Women; Kenora Sexual Assault Centre; as well as National Associations such as Canadian Federation of University Women; National Council of Women of Canada; YWCA Canada; The Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs; and National Association of Women and the Law.



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For more information, please visit www.guncontrol.ca