In the late eighties and early nineties I, and many others, wrote impassioned articles on the Liberal anti-gun ownership stance. We broached every subject from the right to bear arms to the Crowns assertion there was no such right even though it was the Crown which encouraged, heartily I might add, the ownership of arms in colonizations early years. That was so far back in the history few seemed to recall it but it was there.
The anti-arms movement protested in every fashion possible including the ridiculous assertion that the police were the only ones who needed to be armed in the modern world. Since that time and the exorbitant cost placed on the taxpayer, owner and non-owner alike, we have the stellar social record of an increase in arms violence that has resulted in teenagers, adults, foreign visitors, and veterans being killed by both criminals, family members, and police. The reasons have constantly been foreshadowed by mentality.
Last month I read Tom Mulcair is ready to push this agenda to the forefront again and if he is successful you can bet it will result in another staggering financial cost to a country which still has a long list of social issues lacking any significant address. We have people going hungry and homeless in our towns and cities, people being ignored and denied who deserve disability status including veterans, a flip-flopping economy due to billionaire-agenda world markets, grossly undertrained police officers, a failing pollution-reduction strategy from governing indifference, wholly underfunded Mental Health programs, billions poured into the wasteland of the war on drugs, and a plethora of associated systemic problems.
When are these lackeys, and I mean that across the political party spectrum, going to get it through their self-absorbed heads the law already has all the ability it needs to track down weapons ? It is small wonder so many Canadians feel helpless when it comes to voting. The choices for leadership vanish as quickly as the election concludes when all parties go no further than to bargain away the ethics they swore to uphold in order to accomplish lobbied agendas. When one considers the second paragraph, are we doomed to follow the U.S. path of social self-destruction from refusing to open our eyes to a much greater picture of our desire to survive ? Why is our leadership so stagnated in 20th-century social dogma ?
Dennis Ouellette
Prince George
