By Chris McGarry

May 7, 2008

The Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines insanity as extreme folly or unreasonableness. Folly is defined as a lack of good sense or normal prudence and oversight while unreasonableness in defined as not acting according to reason.

These three words almost perfectly describe the approach Canadian governments over the past 40 years have taken when addressing increasing rates of violent crime. In the eyes of many politicians, lobbyists and community leaders, inanimate objects called firearms are responsible for all of the violent crime in our society.

“If we could just ban handguns, or “all guns” as these people naively chant, gang violence would somehow just disappear from the streets of our cities. Canadian gun laws have only gotten tighter since the 1960s while at the same time governments have steadily mollycoddled serious and even highly dangerous offenders all in the name of rehabilitation.

Modern liberalism has perverted what used to be the social order in this nation. Violent criminals, whether they are 14 or 44 are still often seen by professionals not as the threats to society that they represent, but as people who’ve had a hard life and can be fixed up and put back onto the street in a relatively short time.

To put it another way, an individual is not fully responsible for his or her actions as other factors are always to blame. And while we’re on the subject of crime, let’s start with Canada’s failed young offender system.

From Halifax to Victoria, young offenders and especially youth gangs have become increasingly brazen and violent over the past two decades. A few months ago, Vancouver Police reported that is has become fashionable to young gang members in the city to carry handguns.

Then there are these bleeding heart, socialistic social workers, pediatricians and even the Coalition for Gun Control who have stated that keeping guns in the home poses a potential safety risk to children and that teaching children responsible firearm use from an early age is somehow detrimental to their growth, or some psychological mumbo jumbo.

The hard truth is, if more children and youths were taught valuable life skills such as how to safely hunt and shoot, fewer of them would be joining gangs and blowing each other with black market handguns. But the bleeding hearts seem quite happy with their pie-in-the-sky agenda.

One woman even told me once that parents should become criminals for physically disciplining their children because spanking causes children to become aggressive and violent in which I responded by saying, “If that’s indeed true, there must have been a school shooting every day back in the 1940s, 50s and 60s!.”

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. Older gun owners sadly remember the day 31 years ago when Canadian citizens could no longer just walk into the neighborhood Canadian Tire or Eaton’s and buy a long gun with no licensing or hassle.

Canada’s first school shooting occurred in Brampton, Ontario on May 28, 1975 when 16-year-old Michael Slobodian walked into his school and shot three people dead and wounded 14 others before taking his own life. This often forgotten tragedy was the driving force in getting the Firearm Acquisition Certificate (F.A.C) system implemented in1978.

Flash forward to 14 years later. Marc Lepine walked into a Montreal college in 1989 and murdered 14 unarmed women, an action which led to the passing of the Firearms Act in 1995. A shooting at another Montreal college in 2006 has led to calls for tighter gun laws. People have to stop believing that “feel good” laws are the answer to preventing future massacres. And now we have factions of the anti-gun crowd calling for the banning of certain firearms because they’re too “scary looking” or “contrary to Canadian hunting traditions.” NDP leader Jack Layton says handguns and semi-automatic should be banned because they have no place in Canada.

As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Layton’s Canada doesn’t extend past southern Ontario. And besides, brave Canadian soldiers have and are still fighting on the other side of the world with “military style” weaponry so people like Jack Layton and other socialists can live in a country where they’re free to speak their minds without fear.

How did we get to this point? Perhaps we have a few generations of people who’ve grown up in suburbia and have no practical knowledge of firearms other than what Hollywood has taught them. Perhaps Canadians have become too apathetic and fail to realize what can happen to a disarmed populace such as the slaughter of millions of unarmed civilians in the killing fields of Cambodia or Nazi Germany.

God willing, Bruce Montague of Dryden, Ontario will win his court challenge sometime in the near future. In the meantime, let’s focus on the things that are causing many of society’s ills such as a lax criminal justice system and the breakdown of the family but also of our communities. Let’s stop seeing firearms as mere evil inanimate objects and as tools which have many purposes.