As American tackles its gun culture, Canada goes the other way

Participants hold candles Tuesday Dec. 18, 2012 during a vigil to honor victims of the Newtown, Conn. school shootings. (AP Photo/The High Point Enterprise, Don Davis Jr.)

Just as Canada jumps on the NRA?s bandwagon, the United States seems ready for gun control reforms.?In the past, mass shootings in the U.S. ?had little impact? on Americans? ?attitudes toward gun control,? reports the Pew Research Center.

But this week, days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the signs were stronger than ever that the pendulum might finally swing away from the National Rifle Association?s stranglehold on U.S. federal and state legislatures.? U.S. Senators are making noises about gun control, and President Barack Obama looks pretty motivated, tasking VP Joe Biden to lead the gun control charge.

Even more encouraging for gun control advocates is corporate America?s retreat from the firearms industry itself.?Stock prices for major gun manufacturers fell sharply this week.?One of the most prominent U.S. private equity firms dropped its investment in the now infamous maker of the rifle used in the Connecticut killings. And Fortune 500 retailer Dick?s Sporting Goods stopped selling the gun altogether.

On the other hand, skepticism about real reforms seems warranted. Walmart?s actions are telling: the retailer took down references to the infamous rifle from their website but kept selling the gun in its stores. Symbolic gestures may be respectful, but lip service won?t save lives. If people think all they need to do is grieve, then nothing much will change when it comes to gun violence in the U.S.

Moreover, that pendulum has a long way to swing ? away from the fanatical defence of gun ?rights? like unlimited access to assault rifles ? in order to bring the U.S. back in line with the rest of the industrialized world. The scale of gun proliferation in the U.S. is so extreme that, even if radical changes were made, the starting point would still be hundreds of millions of guns in the homes, and on the streets, of America.

Lastly, the U.S. Constitution might foil any legislative reforms, although some argue otherwise.

The lessons for Canada, however, are clear.?Any society that has almost as many guns as people is going to have routine mass shootings:?the Columbine High School massacre, the Beltway sniper attacks, the Virginia Tech massacre, the Fort Hood shooting, the 2011 Tucson shooting, the Aurora theater shooting, the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin?and?now Sandy Hook.

Why so many??Simple risk management.?There will always be people who pose a risk to themselves and others.?Give them a machete, an explosive, a gun, and a mass killing becomes more likely. More guns, more funerals.

All of which makes Canada?s lost opportunity of this year so heartbreaking. Already, Toronto police have seized fewer guns since the demise of the federal long gun registry, which must reflect a national trend. With checks and balances on long gun ownership practically eliminated by the Harper government, the number of guns in Canada is destined to rise much faster than in the past. More guns, more funerals ? and?more gun suicides than gun homicides, by the way.

I doubt that Canadians fully realize just how far the Harper government went with its gun rights legislation of this year. In the last election, voters were not led to believe that the Conservatives would destroy all existing records of registered long guns. Nor did Conservatives disclose that they would eliminate some basic checks and balances that exist in most industrialized nations, even in the United States. The feds passed a regulation last July forbidding the provincial chief firearms officers from requiring that gun sellers keep records.

And just this week, of all times, we learn that the Harper government imported the American ?gun show loophole? that even pro-gun?U.S. lawmakers see as?dangerous. Organized crime must be licking their chops at the thought of buying, selling and laundering crime guns at unsupervised sites all over the Great White North. Legal gun owners won?t know what they?re getting, of course, because long guns aren?t registered any more.

Even worse, gun shows are breeding grounds for gun proliferation, American-style. So no more gun registry, no more checks and balances, and now, incredibly, unsupervised gun shows, all contrary to police leaders? best advice. This was not the mandate given to the Harper government by Canadians, who have ended up with a Wild West gun-show of a nation.

The provinces (other than Quebec) are also willing accomplices in this new era of gun rights in Canada. The provinces easily could have taken a copy of the entire registry for investigative purposes before the central records were destroyed by the feds, which is exactly what Quebec?s chief firearms officer did. They did no such thing ? nor did they support Quebec?s constitutional challenge of the new federal gun rights laws.

This latter omission by the provinces is particularly disappointing in Ontario. The McGuinty government had been solid on fighting gun crime after the 2005 spike in gun homicides in Toronto (I was the provincial attorney general at the time), but was cowed by its 2011 election results in rural Ontario, presumably.?How else can one explain Ontario doing no more than Alberta when the time came to stand up for gun control, and stand against the federal gun rights laws of this year?

Though we have far, far fewer guns here in Canada than in the U.S., our new gun rights era has just begun. The only pro-gun control Canadian government is separatist, though it must be said that Jean Charest?s Liberal government got an A+ on gun control courage.

Federal Liberal leadership hopefuls have lost their nerve on gun control, notwithstanding the significant decline in gun deaths during the life of the long gun registry. Federal Liberal leadership candidate Marc Garneau mused about prohibiting assault rifles already restricted by Canadian laws ? better than nothing ? but he balked at a federal registry for long guns, which makes his position not so different than Justin Trudeau?s.

I wonder if the Ontario Liberal leadership race can awaken some gun control convictions. There is plenty here for Ontario to do. More on that in the next column.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author?s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

Source: http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/12/19/as-american-tackles-its-gun-culture-canada-goes-the-other-way/

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