Excellent Job, Tracey !

[WomenAgainstGunControl] Interview

I was asked to do an interview with Patricia in Dec, below is the article.

Tracey
Blowing away stereotypes of gun registry opponents

Monday, 3 January 2005
Patricia Robertson

When Liberal MP Roger Gallaway stood up to oppose his party’s long-standing gun registry, it shattered a few myths about those fighting gun control in this country. After all, everybody thought that opponents of the gun registry are supposed to be white, male conservatives from the western Canadian countryside. But here was a Liberal from Sarnia, Ont., asking the Speaker of the House for a separate vote on the National Firearms Program.
Its $80-million final allocation was up for review at year’s end. The one-time supporter of Bill C-68 told reporters he didn’t think it was worth spending what is now approaching $1 billion to build a registry he believes does nothing to protect Canadians anyway.

It wasn’t long before pressure from within his party forced Gallaway to back down. And with the Liberals stubbornly holding their ground on the registry–in January 2004, Albina Guarnieri, then minister of state (civil preparedness), reviewed the program at the prime minister’s request, concluding that it should continue, with spending caps in place–opposition to the pricy policy is starting to emerge from all kinds of unlikely corners, including, perhaps surprisingly, many urban and professional women.

“Bill C-68 is a disgrace,” says retired University of Toronto professor Judith Ross. “It pretends to be about crime control while it is actually aimed at the elimination of private ownership of firearms in Canada. The Liberals should be at least ashamed at this outrageous waste of money and of trying to confiscate the property of law-abiding citizens.”
Ross has been an avid shooter for 22 years. She’s also an impassioned speaker on the topic of women and firearms. In a 1995 presentation to the Senate standing committee on constitutional and legal affairs, Ross appeared with three other women–an Olympic athlete, a professor and a biologist–all members of the Association of Women Shooters of Canada, to make their arguments to repeal C-68.

Kelly Semple, executive director of Alberta’s Hunting for Tomorrow Foundation and an Edmonton bow hunter who owns and uses firearms, says she can sympathize with those who think the registry will cut down on gun crimes. “Do we want to do things that make it a safer world? Sure we do,” says Semple. “Do we want to be part of a system that allows us to have ready access to things that can help the police and that sort of thing? Well, who would say no to that?” She says she’s not opposed to requiring gun owners to be licensed, but sees the whole idea of a central database in Ottawa recording minute details about every gun owner in Canada as unnecessarily intrusive. And like Gallaway, she wonders just exactly what kind of protection it’s supposed to provide Canadians. “What would C-68 do to prevent a tragedy like the [1989 Ecole Polytechnique] Montreal Massacre?”
she asks. “Clearly, nothing.”

Then there are women like Tracy Kleim of Moose Jaw, Sask., who says that government has no place at all telling Canadians if they can or can’t own firearms. “C-68 denies me my God-given right or nature’s right to self-preservation,” says the Canadian director of the U.S.-based Women Against Gun Control. If Ottawa wants to fight crime, she says, taking firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is the wrong approach. “Criminals prey on the helpless,” says Kleim. “If we start to take responsibility for ourselves then we will be safer. We have to stop coddling
the criminals, open our eyes to what’s happening.” Ethnic gangs and motorcycle gangs are the ones making life dangerous for Canadians, says Kleim. All the registry does is waste money. “I can’t even fathom how many lives would have been saved if we spent it on anything else: police, military, health care, a sex-offender registry; those are just a few on the list.”

But as long as public policy is controlled by the “politically correct coffee crowd in the east,” adds Kleim, there doesn’t seem to be a lot that women, or anyone else can do to put a stop to it–though she, like the other women, will continue to fight it. The only changes Ottawa was willing to consider recently were some minor adjustments to the legislation (the introduction of Bill C-10A) in early December, which promised the waiving of some fees and tougher gun crime provisions. These women’s work, it seems, is
never done.

Tracey Kleim
Canadian Director
Women Against Gun Control

“Women helped take away guns. Now women must help get them back.”