Guest post by Brian A. McIlmoyle
Is public sentiment about firearms changing?
If pro gun rights letters and articles in local and national newspapers is any measure, the answer would have to be yes.
The question is why?
Has the Canadian “Gun Lobby” finally broken through the walls of fallacious statistics and emotional blackmail that the ant-gun lobby has erected over the past decades of Liberal government?
Have the experiences of American states moving to permit concealed carry of firearms by citizens, resulting not in daily bloodbaths in the streets, but in double digit reductions in violent crime, finally resulted in people actually looking at the issues?
Have the follies of the Canadian justice system in several high profile cases of persons being arrested for defending themselves against criminals woken up regular Canadians to a system that seems to favour the rights of criminals over victims?
Have high profile mass shootings in which unarmed victims were at the mercy of madmen pierced the veil of deception that the anti-gun Lobby cast over such events in the past Indeed, in case after case we have seen that such tragedies were magnified, not because the madman was armed, but because the victims were unarmed.
Has it finally become clear that police forces simply cannot be where crime happens all the time and more often than not people are on their own to defend themselves? Unfortunately Canadians are denied the tools to do so with any effect.
The most recent and horrific scenario of 500 people trapped on an island while a sociopath casually gunned them down, only to lay down his gun the instant an armed police officer arrived, sadly 90 minutes after the shooting began.
Are the arguments of those who would see every law abiding citizen disarmed finally ringing hollow to rational Canadians that realize that criminals don’t care about gun laws?
Have the examples of countless convicted criminals flouting multiple firearm prohibition orders and still committing crimes with guns finally demonstrated the fact that guns and law abiding gun owners are not the problem. The problem, it would appear, lies with the people who choose to live outside the law.
The mountain of evidence that is accumulating daily shows that law abiding citizens are waking up to the fact that criminals and insane people chose guns as their weapon of choice. The police are not able to protect them from random acts of violence, even if the chances of being a victim are low. That law abiding gun owners are not the cause of gun violence. And, in case after case of mass violence, one person with a gun could have very likely saved many others from the actions of an armed violent, psychopathic criminal.
Oftentimes the argument is made that “civilian disarmament is justified, if it could save just one human life!”
I think that Canadians are waking up to the fact that this argument is upside down. If it could save just one human life, is it not worth the risk of permitting law abiding citizens to be armed if they choose to be?
(FirearmsLaw.ca welcomes guest posts submissions on any subject related to firearms, gun law and politics. Please email posts to Solomon Friedman.)
