Letter: World without firearms is not necessarily safer
Date: Oct 13, 2006 11:22 AM
PUBLICATION: The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
DATE: 2006.10.13
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Forum
PAGE: A13
BYLINE: Greg Illerbrun
SOURCE: The StarPhoenix
WORD COUNT: 227

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World without firearms is not necessarily safer

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With the latest school shooting, we again hear calls for stricter
controls and/or a total ban on guns.

But imagine ourselves in what the anti-fi rearms community believes to
be a perfect world — one without guns. In the Dawson school case, that
still leaves us with Kimveer Gill, an individual bent on destruction and
death, and one who carefully planned his actions. Does anyone really
believe that Gill would have done nothing if there were no guns?

After the Dunblane shooting, U.K. politicians banned all handguns.
Today, Britain has more handguns than ever but authorities have no idea
where they are.

Owning a handgun is now a status symbol on streets, and to add insult to
injury, crime rates are rising. In spite of this, a lot of Canadians
still think that we all should be disarmed.

Why do Canadians accept without question that armored truck guards
should carry guns to protect our money, but the idea of carrying guns to
protect human life is a non-starter? As well, I’m told shooting sports
inject more than $1 billion a year into Canada’s economy, hardly a fi
gure worth sneering at or fl ushing away as the anti-gun advocates would
have us do.

Let’s hope the politicians focus their attention on the root causes of
crime and abnormal behavior rather than on inanimate objects called
guns.

Greg Illerbrun
Firearms chair,
Sask. Wildlife Federation