Column: Canada needs more gun control

PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2004.12.26
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PNAME: Editorial
PAGE: A22
COLUMN: Ron Petrie
BYLINE: Ron Petrie
SOURCE: The Canadian Press
DATELINE: OTTAWA

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Canada needs more gun control

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My gift to you this Christmas is a doozy. Not only did it cost a billion dollars — perhaps two billion dollars by the time all the bills are paid — some assembly is required. On the plus side, mine is the crappy present to end all crappy presents

Here are your assembly instructions:

1. Fetch a pair of scissors.

2. Clip and save as indicated below:

OTTAWA (CP) — Effective yesterday, the government today announced that the national requirements for the licensing and possession of guns have been expanded to include all hand-held, trigger-activated applicators of hot adhesives.

“This is a true newspaper clipping,” said a federal spokesman. “It’s just like that famous ‘Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus’ letter to the editor. If you read it in the paper, it is so. And look, here you are, reading it in a newspaper clipping: Canada now has a glue gun registry.”

Other honest-to-goodness, for-real federal spokespeople made repeated assurances that federal glue-gun control will be enforced with the same efficiency and effectiveness as Canadians have come to expect from the regulation of all firearms in the country.

“Yes, this is also true,” said a federal spokesman. “Honest. If a person doesn’t want to face huge registration fees or even bigger fines, he or she had better ash-can that ol’ glue gun. And soon!”

3. Place the clipping in a conspicuous spot to be found by any relative or acquaintance who really ought not to be in possession of a glue gun, particularly during this time of the year. Remember, Christmas is not only about receiving, but also about giving. You will be doing both the amateur craftsperson, the giver of bad handicrafts, and yourself, the receiver of same, a favour.

Merry Christmas.

No, no, no. No need to go on thanking me profusely. I do this as much for my own benefit as for yours. You and I, we have long embraced as one of our fundamental core values the belief that there are two types of people in the world:

* the person who opens the fridge door, sees an empty egg carton and thinks, dang, no omelette this morning, and

* the person who opens the fridge door, spots the empty egg carton, lets out a little whoop of creative inspiration, fetches the craft supplies, commences to snipping the egg carton and glue-gunning, glue-gunning and snipping, and eventually produces an object of considerable cotton-ball enhancement and woolly yarn embellishment that is technically Chuckles the Happy Christmas Caterpillar, or possibly Snake.

It is that second category of people who, after the age of 12 — 13 max — need to be stopped.

And I know what some of you are thinking. As amazed as you are by how your ol’ buddy Ron managed to salvage at least some public good from the billion-dollar federal gun-registry fiasco, you are also mortified by his intrusion, however phoney-baloney, on the rights and freedoms of law-abiding individuals. You might even have half a mind to start dragging out the old rhetoric:

* Glue guns don’t make Christmas presents of a Stryofoam-cup reindeer with plastic craftstore googly eyes and pipe cleaner antlers; people make Christmas presents of a felt-and-coffee-can Santa that covers the bathroom’s extra roll of standby toilet paper until it’s needed (the paper).

* When glue guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have glue guns, and probably only those outlaws who are in-laws.

I hear you. And allow me to respond, festively, as follows: Shut up.

Nothing in my Christmas present to you this year is intended to curtail the responsible use of glue guns by responsible glue-gun owners. The only individual whose rights are denied is the glue gun — and here I use the word loosely — artisan.

Before glue guns, the only folks who gave arts or crafts as presents were those people who could actually paint, sew, sculpt, nail, knit, carve, weave. Because, before glue guns, the only handicraft adhesive was the white paste, which took 24 hours to set, a full day of no fiddling whatsoever with the craft until it was dry, a resolve that typically lasted maybe 17 minutes and then oops!

That, or the clear glue from the squeezy tube that gave off such powerful fumes that after 17 minutes it was, like … craft? like, dude, what craft? tee-hee-hee!

But with the glue gun came hot, instant, permanent fixtures and the next we knew the macaroni-encrusted goblet fashioned from the old bleach jug and spray-painted gold wasn’t just for Mother’s Day anymore.

Glue-gun control. Now more than ever.

And have a pleasant new year.

Ron Petrie is a columnist for the Regina Leader Post.