The Hill Times, March 26th, 2007
LETTERS

Gun owners respond to gun control letter in HT
Re: “To understand misuse of guns, look to Texas,” (Letters to the editor, p. 9, The Hill Times, March 19.). Instead of looking at the big picture, Mahmood Elahi uses extreme isolated events to provide proof for his claim.

Anyone can find anecdotal evidence to back up their assertions but to get a better idea of the impact that something has on society it is always more important to look at the big picture.

Jeff Gardiner
Waterloo, Ont.

* What does the action of one distressed Texan kid have to do with Canadian gun control? As far as I know, we are a very distinct society.

In the last 30 years, Canada has had more school shootings than Texas. Should we be learning something from this fact? Since we are talking about the U.S., maybe letter writer Mahmood Elahi could explain to us why U.S. cities such as Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago, which have the most stringent gun laws in the world are also the most violent cities in the U.S.? Maybe it is because criminals could not care less about our rules, regulations and social values.

Michel Trahan
Verdun, Que.

* Mahmood Elahi should do a better job of researching when he goes on one of his anti-gun tirades. When he says Texas is “the national capital of the gun culture,” he should have noted that the 2005 statistic for murder and non-negligent homicide was 6.2 (per 100,000 population), whereas the homicide rate in Washington, D.C. was 35.4.

What Mr. Elahi would never admit is how the presence of firearms actually contributes to a lower crime rate. There may be incidents of rare tragedies outlined in his letter (going back 13 years to find one), but vastly offset by the lives saved by law-abiding citizens using firearms for self-protection.

Getting back to relevance to Canada, legal gun ownership has never been a problem of crime or murder. Our murder rates have been steadily climbing over the last years since Bill C-68 and gun control was implemented in Canada. Given the choice of either having a gun control state/high murder rate like the city of Washington, D.C., or having the lower murder rate of Texas, I would choose the Lone Star state every time.

Lionel Trudel
Vancouver, B.C.

* Mahmood Elahi clearly displays his ignorance when it comes to violent crime and its relation to private firearms ownership. He leads readers to believe that Texas is a haven for violence and uses isolated incidents in order to make his point. However, when you look at the facts, this simply isn’t true.

Kyle Erhart
Winnipeg, Man.

* It’s clear letter-writer Mahmood Elahi is not properly informed about firearms, which may explain his irrational fear of them. We tend to fear the unknown and are quick to judge what we don’t understand.

Mr. Elahi is guilty of passing unfair judgment not only on firearms but on Texans as well. He states, when Texans like Juan Ramon get angry, they “start shooting.” Being of French Canadian heritage I would be offended if I was stereotyped as “a poutine eating lumberjack.” Unfortunately Mr. Elahi resorts to using stereotypes as a basis for his argument.

We have had a handgun registry in Canada since 1934, yet handgun crime is on the rise. Our long gun registry has cost close to $2-billion to date. The registry did not prevent a depressed and dangerous individual from shooting students at Dawson College.

Mr. Elahi fails to see the point that a gun cannot pull its own trigger. A gun is a tool, used for target shooting, hunting and to protect one’s life or the lives of others. The focus should not be on the tool, but on the individual.

Pierre Dupont
Oshawa, Ont.

* I find Mahmood Elahi’s letter regarding firearms ownership in Texas to be a quaint bit of propaganda at best.

Shawn Mulock
Calgary, Alta.

* It is inevitable that as long as there are unstable people willing to do harm to others, there will be murders of innocent people, regardless of whether these acts are performed through shootings, stabbings, bombings or beatings.

Dan Smith
London, Ont.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !