Slain cop’s dad blasts gun law

I sincerely believed, following my Nov. 28 meeting with Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, that he would have at least recognized the devastating human cost of flaws in Canada’s current gun control laws and that, in spite of his evasive answers and dispassionate commitment regarding the scope and strength of the upcoming new measures, he would have enough empathy toward victims’ families to change something in relation to tragedies committed with legal firearms.

However, there is nothing in Bill C-71 that would have changed anything in connection with the violent and preventable death of my son, (Lac-Simon police officer) Thierry LeRoux.

What flaws am I talking about? Those that allow individuals to legally possess guns despite the fact that authorities are aware of violent or suicidal behaviour, as in the case of the man who killed my son. Indeed, the police had had many interactions with Anthony Papatie. They confiscated his weapons barely five months before the tragic shooting of my son on Feb. 13, 2016.

But, apart from having a criminal record for the most severe crimes, the law only requires authorities to consider a relatively limited list of very serious risk factors. There is nothing in the law that mandates judges or firearms officers to prevent access to guns to those who display these factors.

So despite Papatie’s violent and suicidal past, it was Thierry himself, on the orders of his superiors, who had to return his guns to him, including the one that ended up killing him.

How can anyone not see a problem with this completely legal situation? Does the government really think that maintaining the status quo is in the public’s interest?

Even the United States has stricter rules in some respects. For example, some states automatically prohibit gun ownership for anyone subject to a restraining order involving an intimate partner, anyone who has a history of abusing alcohol or drugs, or anyone who suffers from a mental disorder and has a history of violent behaviour against themselves or another.

Yet the only change Minister Goodale is proposing with respect to the legal access to firearms is to allow background checks to reach further back in time. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t have changed anything in Thierry’s case, since authorities were already well aware of the man’s violent past when they decided he could continue to own guns.

My family and I were counting on the Liberal party to make sure that Thierry’s death was not in vain. I travelled to Ottawa to ask the minister in person to tighten the legal criteria for owning firearms, so that police and courts systematically prioritize public safety rather than gun ownership, especially when it comes to obvious risks. Such measures could have prevented my son’s death at the age of 26.

Or, if the government prefers to rely on better enforcement instead of legislative solutions, where are the grand announcements, multimillion-dollar budgets and expert summits to better identify at-risk individuals, educate the courts and support preventative police interventions? Is the Liberal party so afraid of the gun lobby that it prefers to maintain a system that costs the lives of innocent citizens?

There is still time to bring in significant amendments to Bill C-71. By the time the bill is adopted, I hope to be able to revise my comments and applaud a government that seeks to protect the public, rather than denounce one that is bowing before the gun lobby, just like its predecessor. Michel LeRoux, father of Const. Thierry LeRoux (1989-2016), Chicoutimi, Que.