TAKING AIM AT GUN VIOLENCE
GUN CONTROL SHOULDN’T BE AS HARD AS OUR POLITICIANS MAKE IT OUT TO BE
The mass shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in California took place despite the fact that the state, by U.S. standards, has very strict gun laws. The strictest in the country, by some reckonings.
It has a ban on assault weapons, and regulations on ammunition sales. It lets family members seek restraining orders against guntoting sons, daughters, brothers or sisters who scare them, and has considered widening that power to coworkers, teachers and others. It has background checks and a waiting period on gun purchases; licenses all dealers and tracks sales records; bans ownership to convicted criminals or the mentally ill; and requires gun buyers to pass a safety test.
California received the highest rating of any state from a national anti-gun organization, and just replaced liberal Gov. Jerry Brown with the even more liberal Gavin Newsom, who quickly blasted the National Rifle Association as “bankrupt morally,” charging: “they need to be held to account to their rhetoric and their actions.”
Figures suggest the state’s efforts have had an effect in reducing gun crimes, but they haven’t halted the carnage. There have been numerous multiple-victim shootings — in 2011, 2015, 2017, in March of this year and again last week at the bar in Thousand Oaks that left 13 dead. The state has the highest number of mass shooting deaths in the country (though it also has twice the population of any state but Texas), and the second-highest total of registered guns (after Texas).
Last week’s attack came at the hands of a military veteran who served in Afghanistan and paused long enough to post a social media message noting he had no real reason for his actions except “life is boring, so why not?” He was using a legally obtained weapon, with an expanded magazine. His mother hadn’t sought a restraining order despite knowing he needed help and reportedly fearing what he might do. He’d been visited by mental-health professionals after a neighbour noticed him acting erratically, but was cleared.
Critics of gun laws may use the Thousand Oaks tragedy to argue that stricter laws aren’t the answer to gun violence, as they do after most such tragedies. The answer, they maintain, is to enforce the laws that exist: it serves no purpose to pile new laws on old, when the killings keep happening anyway. Opponents will insist that if there were no guns at all, or if they were much more difficult to obtain, the record would be better.
Canadians tend to write off Americans as gun-crazy at the best of times, in thrall to a “right to bear arms” written up by some 18th-century revolutionaries who knew nothing more murderous than muskets that had to be loaded one shot at a time. The reality is more complicated than that, but the issue is a timely one, as both the Liberals and Conservatives have unveiled plans to combat a perceived increase in danger from gangs and gun violence.
Canada isn’t the U.S., and we don’t have the “opencarry” or “stand-yourground” laws that allow ordinary people to swagger around with a pistol in their pocket. Ours is more a concern about limiting access to guns for criminals, gang members or disturbed individuals. The supply can never be completely blocked as long as we share a lengthy, leaky border with the U.S., but our gun culture is also not so entrenched that it’s pointless to try.
Naturally, the parties couldn’t bring themselves to agree on the remedy. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s camp, loath to actually blame criminals for crime, supports a “multi-dimensional approach” that leans heavily on prevention.
“You need the community-based activity. You need the enhanced police activity. You need the stronger activity at the border. It is a comprehensive, coherent plan, plus you need the backup of legislation like Bill C-71,” said Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, last seen reversing the party’s aversion to sending child-killer Terri-Lynne McClintic back to a prison with actual bars.
Bill C-71, a Liberal attempt to tighten up firearms laws, is being handled with extreme care. Their previous attempt at gun regulation, the ill-fated and grossly bungled firearms registry, succeeded mainly in upsetting law-abiding gun owners by wrapping them in new layers of red tape. Goodale has been careful to emphasize the latest effort will be “modest and reasonable,” and will be “respectful toward law-abiding firearms owners and businesses.” The legislation includes more intense background checks, mandatory records of all gun sales, increased restrictions on transporting a firearm, and powers for police to categorize weapons as restricted or prohibited.
Opposition leader Andrew Scheer, in comparison, has seized on the ever-popular Tory meme that getting tougher on criminals will dissuade them from their chosen path, or at least remove them to a jail cell where they can’t hurt the innocent.
“Conservatives will take action to make it easier for police to target gang members and put them behind bars, where they belong,” he pledged just hours after the California shooting. “We’re going to put an end to the revolving-door prison system and take these violent thugs off of the streets for good.”
Scheer no doubt noticed that fiery pledges to lock up thugs and evildoers worked well for former prime minister Stephen Harper and hopes it will work for him as well, though it also inspires one to wonder how the “revolving-door prison system” and the ongoing presence of thugs on the street managed to survive Harper’s nine years in power. He’s well within the confines of Harper-era policy positions when he dismisses calls for handgun bans in Toronto and Montreal as “lazy government.” Real governments, he suggests, prefer the “harder, more challenging” option “to get real criminals off the street.”
Scheer will never win a machismo competition, but, that aside, neither party seems to have stumbled onto the obvious, i.e. that combating gun violence doesn’t rest on one simple set of rules but is a bewilderingly complex problem that rises from deep within whatever impetus it is that drives humans to shoot things. In this case, both sets of proposals make sense: much smarter, stricter and intense actions to understand and prevent gun violence, accompanied by enforcement of laws that do no favours for offenders and put them where they can’t do any more harm.
The answer in this case is simple: do both. Take the Tory plan and the Liberal plan, tape them together and get on with it. Fighting gang violence and gun crime shouldn’t be an election issue at all. Voters won’t punish any government that tries too hard to keep them safe.