Article smears gun owners

Re: Why some gun-control opponents want to ‘other’ one of Canada’s worst mass killers (online), R. Blake Brown, Jan. 5

I am disappointed by r. Blake Brown’s gratuitous insult of millions of Canadians. It was uncalled for. In his article he claimed that, “members of the firearms community seek to ‘other’ the gunman — to distinguish him from other gun owners, and to intimate that he was not a ‘real’ Canadian firearms owner.” The “gunman” being Marc Lépine, whose birth name was Gamil Gharbi, who murdered 14 women in 1989.

Brown smears Canadian firearms owners as racist or anti-immigrant because they prefer to use the murderer’s birth name, Gamil Gharbi, rather than the name he later assumed, Marc Lépine. It’s hard to see how merely referring to the origins of the killer implies racism. does calling the killer Marc Lépine imply prejudice against Québécois?

Occam’s razor suggests a much simpler explanation: Lépine (or Gharbi) was aberrant. The facts show that Gharbi/lépine differs from most Canadians. Not only is he not a typical firearms owner, he is not a typical Canadian immigrant either. It’s not difficult to see Gharbi/lépine as deviant.

First, very few people are murderers; according to Statistics Canada murderers are not typical people. Second, exceptionally few firearms owners are murderers. Third, Gharbi’s upbringing was hardly normal. He was raised by a single mother who was abandoned by her abusive husband. Gamil Gharbi changed his name to Marc Lépine in a vain effort to fit into Canadian society.

Statistics Canada statistics show that Canadian gun owners are less likely to commit murder than other Canadians. Millions of Canadians are licensed to own firearms legally. Most (75 per cent) own firearms to hunt wild animals or to engage in sport shooting (20 per cent). Gharbi was neither a sport shooter nor a hunter. Almost all firearms owners use their firearms legally.

Firearms owners are exemplary middle-class Canadians: they are employed, tax-paying, law-abiding, contributing citizens. demographically, civilian gun owners include women as well as men, and immigrants as well as native-born Canadians.

Gary Mauser, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University