Gun registry has made Canadians safer

There is a fly in Prof. Mauser’s unequivocally pro-gun ointment.

Study after study has not shown that almost all guns used by criminals are smuggled into Canada, as Mr. Mauser asserts.

In fact, by most accounts, 60 per cent of guns found at crime scenes are smuggled into Canada, and the remaining 40 per cent come from legal gun owners.

Of the 8,281 firearms seized nationally since November, 43 per cent were registered.

Nearly 3,000 guns are stolen annually in Canada, by definition ending up in the hands of criminals.

Furthermore, if one cares to look through Stats Canada’s Homicide in Canada 2007, one would see that there has been a decline in homicides overall, despite an increase in gang-related homicides.

Although Mr. Mauser asserts more domestic murders continue to be committed with kitchen knives than with firearms, and that somehow this is supposed to equate to a lack of success attributed to the gun registry, Stats Canada tells a vastly different story.

It shows that spousal homicide rates fell by 18 per cent, and that the victims are at equal risk of being shot or stabbed.

Perhaps Mr. Mauser should check his statistics before he begins to write about them, because the statistics as they stand point to the fallacies in his arguments.

The gun registry is not only an essential tool used by police to uncover the sources of guns used in crime, but also to remove firearms from potentially dangerous individuals, as well as people with a history of domestic violence.

Without a doubt, the gun registry has made Canadians safer.

Gordon Steele, Edmonton, Alberta.

Investigation, not ‘oversight’ needed

Over the last few weeks B.C. media have reported that a police officer spat in a motorist’s face, a drunken off-duty officer attacked and “arrested” an innocent man, three off-duty cops on motorcycles sped away from a pursuing police car, cops in the Peace region have been harassing and intimidating local residents, police in the Lower Mainland have done the same to critics of the Olympics and judges in two court cases have said police witnesses were lying under oath.

Even acknowledging the challenges of police work, there’s something seriously wrong here. But who polices the police?

When it comes to the RCMP, the force’s internal review system is clearly inadequate, as the deaths of Ian Bush and Robert Dziekanski so tragically show.

The complaint procedure for municipal cops isn’t any better. Police internal investigations are given “oversight” by ex-cops like deputy police complaint commissioner Bruce Brown. The department is headed by police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe.

In his previous job with B.C.’s Criminal Justice Branch, Lowe supported the four Mounties involved in Dziekanski’s death, saying the five taser blasts and other brutal treatment inflicted on Dziekanski were “reasonable and necessary.”

Now the person responsible for policing in B.C., Solicitor General Kash Heed, refuses to answer allegations about possible misconduct when he was West Vancouver police chief.

Is it any wonder that the revised Police Act that Heed claims will strengthen accountability falls far short of real reform?

Charges of wrongdoing by the RCMP and municipal police need investigation, not “oversight,” conducted by a civilian department unencumbered by cop loyalties.

But with people like this in charge provincially and with intransigence from the federal government, the goal of real reform seems elusive indeed.

Greg Klein, Vancouver