Time to focus on the issue of guns

Re: Justice crumbled today: First Nations community reacts after Stanley verdict, Feb. 10

Whenever tragedies fuelled by inadequate or absent gun control policies happen, as they did on the Stanley farm and up in La Loche, the gunrelated issues get swept under the rug, and the tragedy is treated as something else, such as purely a racial divide issue or an issue of a mentally unbalanced kid not having received the help he needed.

Gerald Stanley had a legal right to keep a semi-automatic handgun on his property, but that gun cost Colten Boushie his life and irrevocably altered the lives of Mr. Stanley and his family.

It was wrong of Mr. Stanley to grab a handgun, designed to kill other human beings, rather than the farm shotgun, and had he done the latter, I doubt anyone would have been slain.

The federal or provincial government must step in to fund automatic civil lawsuits against anyone whose firearm is misused in such a way as to result in a pointless death.

O.J. Simpson was not convicted of murder, but the family of Ron Goldman made him pay dearly. Those bold enough or foolish enough to keep semiautomatic weapons on their property should be obliged to have millions of dollars in liability insurance and to prove they have that before getting licensed for those weapons. Even well-trained police officers have trouble finessing the use of such weapons, which is why they are so rarely drawn here in Canada. Ron Charach, Toronto Charach is a psychiatrist and public safety advocate