Column: Gun control law is off target

PUBLICATION: The Leader-Post (Regina)
DATE: 2004.11.01
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Minus 20
PAGE: B7
BYLINE: Tyler Metcalfe
SOURCE: Special to The Leader-Post

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Gun control law is off target

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Gun registration is not a good thing at all. I am a hunter and along
with my family own a few guns. However, with the government enforcing
the gun laws, it makes it difficult for the few hunters remaining to
actually stay in the sport.

For one reason, registering your firearms is a time consuming effort –
as well as the matter of the small fee, and then you have to wait for a
small sticker to place on each of your firearms.

Why, you may ask, do we make this tiresome effort? I cannot answer that
for you. The No. 1 excuse for this new law is that it is supposedly to
keep track of the guns that the criminals tend to use.

On the other hand, how many gun-wielding murderers carry a huge hunting
rifle? Honestly I would have to say very few, if any at all. The murders
I have heard about that have involved firearms have been all handgun
related incidents and there is no way that a gun violation is going to
be on the mind of a psychotic murderer while they are gunning down
innocent civilians.

I have nothing against the registration of handguns or machine guns
because I believe that their sole purpose is for war itself.

Besides most of the hunting rifle deaths are accidental, and for the few
I have heard of, they have mostly been in other parts of the world, not
specifically in Canada.

Gun control has not done anything for me, or other law abiding citizens,
and I do not support it. So from one citizen to another, leave us
firearm owners with what dignity and rights we still possess.

- Metcalfe contributed this article to Minus 20, a page featuring the
views of a group of Saskatchewan young people under 20 that appears
regularly.