Gun Deaths and Liberal "Logic"

In his rebuttal to a National Post editorial "Ditch the Gun Registry" (Feb. 3, 2006), Emile - J. Therien misuses statistics to inflame public opinion to his personal view that we need to further regulate, and indeed ban guns to save us from ourselves, if not each other. How patronizing.

If he wants to custom-tailor statistics to support his anti-gun bias, let's similarly use them to carry some other examples to equally ridiculous conclusions.

There are approximately 2,800 automobile-related deaths each year in Canada, about 3.5 times the current (not "30 year average") annual gun death rate of approximately 800, (in a country of 31 million people!), with 4/5 of those deaths being suicides (ie. no danger to anyone else). So why don't we enforce "the public interest" by lowering the speed limit on all roads to 10 kph and eliminate virtually all auto deaths. In fact why don't we ban automobiles altogether since they also account for an additional 25,000 hospital admissions per year, and far more when we consider the pollution they cause, clearly a far more lethal and dangerous indulgence than guns, with which the public should not be trusted

There are also about 1,700 drunk driving deaths per year, and if we include all of the homicides, assaults, rapes and marriage break-ups caused by alcohol, we should ban that too. Clearly the all-knowing elites like Mr. Therian have a duty to protect us from ourselves.

I am not aware that any of us has a right to an absolutely risk-free life. I'd like to think that I am entitled to some degree of personal happiness, and the pursuit of any sport, indulgence or activity that allows me that happiness. I could care less whether you approve or not. As long as I am responsible, and my activity doesn't harm others, we don't need more and bigger government to waste money making ineffective rules that are far past any reasonable point of diminishing returns when it comes to the so-called "public interest".

Instead of feeding make-work armies of bureaucrats to go after responsible gun hobbiests, we need armies of new police officers on our streets like Guiliani did in New York to clean up the gangs and the thugs and the drugs, and get illegal guns off the streets. THAT, Mr. Therien (and Misters Miller, Bryant and McGuinty) would be acting SMARTLY in "the public interest".