Letter: Guns not to blame for violence
Date: Oct 14, 2006 12:49 PM
PUBLICATION: The Leader-Post (Regina)
DATE: 2006.10.14
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Letters
PAGE: B8
BYLINE: Greg Illerbrun
SOURCE: The Leader-Post
WORD COUNT: 343

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Guns not to blame for violence

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With the latest school shooting, we are once again hearing calls for
stricter gun control and/or total gun bans. Let’s take a step back and
all imagine we are in what the anti-firearms community believes to be a
perfect world with no guns.

In the case of the Dawson College shooting, if no firearms were
available, that still leaves us with Kimveer Gill, an individual bent on
destruction and death, and one who carefully planned his deadly actions.
Does anyone believe that if there were no guns Gill would have done
nothing? I would suggest that this is highly unlikely!

In the UK after the Dunblane shooting, politicians there banned all
handguns. Today, there are more handguns in Britain than ever. However,
authorities have no idea where the handguns are. Owning a handgun is now
a status symbol on the streets. To add insult to injury, crime rates are
going higher.

In spite of this, a lot of Canadians still think that we should all be
disarmed. Imagine the heyday the criminals would have knowing that
average citizens are defenceless and must wait for police to show up to
defend them, assuming that they were able to contact the police in the
first place. Maybe that is why crime is up in all jurisdictions that
have gun bans.

Why is it that we as Canadians accept the fact without question that
armoured truck guards can carry guns to protect our money, but the idea
of carrying guns to protect human life is a non-starter? Obviously
society puts more value on money than human life!

On another note, the shooting sports inject $3.15 billion Canadian into
the UK’s economy, per year. While our population is much lower, I am
told ours is over $1 billion per year. Hardly a figure worth sneering at
or flushing away, as the gun opponents would have us do.

Let’s hope the politicians focus their attention on the root causes of
crime and abnormal behaviour rather than an inanimate object, in this
case, guns.

Greg Illerbrun
Illerbrun is firearms chairman of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation.
Swift Current