Legal gun owners unfairly targeted

Re: Gun laws inadequate, Letter to the editor, July 29

Letter writer Ron Charach critiques the already draconian firearms legislation regime whereby firearms are put “beyond reach” for protection of life and family by criminal law and regulation.

But Charach targets only licensed firearm owners, a population vetted, checked, trained and statistically shown to be five times less likely to commit a violent crime than the population at large. Apparently of no concern to Charach are criminal elements and actual terrorists.

Last I checked, Canada still had a constitutional democracy where the “presumption of innocence” and minority rights are enshrined in the Charter.

In my Canada, destroying the rights of scrupulously law-abiding firearm owners in the absence of any evidence that the public safety would be served is a nonstarter. Robert S. Sciuk, Wellesley, Ont. Ron Charach now advocates the seizure of legally owned restricted firearms presumably under retroactive legislation or perhaps by a government that simply thinks it can make up the rules as it goes along when it comes to guns. Even Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control would oppose that, arguing that property rights and the rule of law are of greater importance than gun laws.

Even if the restricted, registered guns were to be all seized, I’m certain the ordinary hunting guns would suit wrong-doers quite nicely.

Britain did pretty much what Charach advocates 20 years ago, seizing all privately owned handguns. Handgun crime went up instead of down, and when Britain hosted the 2012 Olympics, it had to break its own gun laws because of the pistol-shooting events. James Morrow, Ottawa We don’t have a gun crime problem emanating from legal gun owners, and people like letter writer Ron Charach are simply single-issue alarmists trying to whip up an irrational fear with overly selective examples of firearms offences, hoping that we’ll all buy into his notion that we’re in the middle of some sort of epidemic.

My kids have been active recreational gun users since they were about seven years old, and I always thought they were safer because of the knowledge they have of firearms.

You’d think a psychiatrist would understand that education does more good than prohibition. Keith Beaudoin, Sturgeon County, Alta.