Sunday September 26, 2010
Make the gun registry unnecessary
By Jim Taylor
Canada still has a gun registry, but the debate is far from over. This week, the opposition parties combined to defeat a private member’s bill that would have abolished the gun registry, 153 to 151.
Canadians have spoken. That’s how a representative democracy works. Canadians want to keep the gun registry.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Stephen Harper continues to insist that Canadians overwhelmingly do not want a gun registry – presumably by the same logic that unreported crimes are increasing.
I am not a fan of the gun registry. I don’t want a gun registry. Not because I like guns – I don’t – but because I have a deep suspicion of all things bureaucratic.
Bureaucracies – especially those associated with governments — have a way of perpetuating themselves long after they’ve outlived their usefulness. Witness BC Rail. The year after the BC government sold it to Canadian National Railways, BC paid its new CEO Kevin Mahoney $800,000 to manage a 40 km spur line with no trains.
Not that the gun registry has outlived its usefulness.
If Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police say their forces check the registry regularly — an average of 6500 times every day — I consider it worthwhile.
If it saves even one life, I consider it worthwhile.
Flawed reasoning
I don’t understand gun owners’ reluctance to register their guns. I register my car, my boat, my retirement savings, my business. Why should guns be exempt?
I’m almost amused by the criticisms of the gun registry. For example, the argument that criminals will not register their weapons.
Well, doh!
Do fraud artists register their ponzi schemes? Do car thieves register a vehicle’s change of ownership? Do bank robbers make appointments? Get real!
But the fact that criminals withhold information doesn’t mean that the rest of us should. Why would honest gun owners want to model their behaviour on what criminals do?
Lack of courage
My real gripe with the gun registry is that our members of parliament didn’t have the guts to ban guns altogether.
In an increasing urban world, I see less and less reason to own a gun at all. A gun has only one purpose – to shoot projectiles intended to kill or maim. It is useless for any other purpose.
Admittedly, other human tools can also kill and maim. But knives and clubs, scythes and shovels, cars and explosives, all have other useful purposes. Guns don’t. You cannot use a gun to cook or sew, dig a garden or split firewood. You cannot use a gun to write a letter, travel, perform surgery, or cuddle an infant.
There are exceptions. People who work alone in the woods – rangers, hunters, trappers, foresters – may well need a gun for protection. Police may need guns.
I live in the kind of rural area that’s supposed to need guns.
Almost every day, deer saunter through our property, eating our roses. Even if I had a gun, I’m not allowed to shoot them.
Coyotes trot up our lane. They treat cats and small dogs as snack food. We can’t shoot them either.
Occasional bears amble down from the mountain ridges to feast on orchard apples and vineyard grapes. Nope – can’t shoot them either.
So what’s the point of having a gun, if you can’t use it? And if you can’t use it in a genuinely rural area, what possible use does a gun have in an urban condominium complex?
Weapon of choice
I can see only two reasons for having a gun. One, to intimidate someone else who doesn’t have a gun. Two, to deter someone else you fear might have a gun.
It’s significant that the only class of crime that has increased in Canada over recent decades is gun-related crime. All other forms of violent crime have decreased.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed – when killers invade schools and workplaces in North America, they invariably use guns. The bell tolls: Fort Hood, 13 victims. Blacksburg, 32. Seattle, 6. Columbine, 12. Montreal, 14. Santa Clara, 6. Carthage, 8. Binghampton, 14…
But I have yet to read about someone who terrorizes a university, an office, a school, with a bow and arrow.
The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine states, “There are at least a dozen case-controlled studies in the peer-reviewed literature, all or which have found that a gun in the home is associated with an increased risk of suicide.”
The reason is simple. Unlike drugs and knives, a bullet in the brain doesn’t offer a second chance.
“The presence of a gun in the home,” the Journal continues, “no matter how the gun is stored, is a risk factor for completed suicide.”
The Journal states, unequivocally: “Restriction of access to lethal means is one of the few suicide-prevention policies with proven effectiveness.”
And I haven’t even mentioned accidental firearms injuries….
Given the risks, why would anyone want a gun in their home, registered or not?
If guns were restricted to those who need them professionally, we wouldn’t need a gun registry at all.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
Vern Ratzlaff wrote from Saskatoon, about last week’s column on the banning of head coverings in France, “Good article, Jim; I’m with you (having lived and worked in Moslem countries and being friends with devout Moslems).”
Cliff Boldt wondered about limits: “I have always wondered where to draw the line when it came to multiculturalism. What is acceptable to bring to Canada from the ‘Old country’, what is not, and who decides?”
An occasional reader I know only as Carl had this thought: “I’m stuck with the thought that, in my idea of just governance, no government has any right to define the content of any religion regardless of how antiquated or stupid it might be. Just leave it alone — those practices are not stronger than the existing culture, and will soon die away.”
I don’t usually reply to readers’ comments, but in this case I think he’s wrong. He would be right if it were simply a matter of one culture eventually displacing another, but sanctifying certain practices as religious may mean that the more those practices slip out of sync with surrounding society, the more members of that religion will consider them inviolable.
John McTavish found insight on burqas and niqabs in (dare I say this?) of all places, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.
“Real humanity, Barth suggests, consists in our relationship with God and with one another. Without this double-sided encounter we cease to be really human…
“Human being, then — at least according to Barth’s theologically ( i.e., christologically ) grounded anthropology — consists in being in encounter which Barth suggests takes place
(1) as one person looks the other in the eye;
(2) as this encounter leads to mutual speech and hearing;
(3) as this encounter in turn leads to rendering mutual assistance to one another; and finally
(4) as all of this is done on both sides with gladness.
“If his thoughts on a theologically-based anthropology are more or less correct, then the niqabs, while permitting, if narrowly, the first expression of the basic form of our humanity to be realized, would seem to make it even more difficult to exercise the final expression.”
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NEW BOOK OUT AT LAST
Five years ago, I swore I would never write another book. It was simply too much work! Then Mike Schwartzentruber, now the President of Wood Lake Publishing, asked me to write a sequel to my earlier “Everyday Parables.” For reasons I explain in the book, I could not say no to Mike.
The result is “More Everyday Parables,” available now from Wood Lake. The official price is $19.95 Canadian; they’re offering a special introductory web price of $15.96. (I understand there may be an electronic downloadable version coming later.)
You can read about it, and order it, by clicking here.
Or you can contact Wood Lake at 9590 Jim Bailey Road, Kelowna, BC, Canada V4V 1R2, telephone 1-800-663-2775.
My first book of parables consisted mostly of “object lessons,” metaphors relating things of various kinds to insights about God, Jesus, the church, the Christian faith… Jesus told quite a few of that kind of parable, likening the Kingdom to a mustard seed, yeast, a lost coin, etc. But most of his parables were stories. So I decided for this second book of parables to concentrate on stories too, and see how they might spin out into religious insights.
They’re not just re-tellings of Jesus’ stories, in modern guise. I tried to look for stories that he could not have told, because the circumstances and technologies did not exist in his time. Whether they work or not, only you can tell me.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
If you know someone else who might like to receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to [email protected] Or, if you wish, forward them a copy of this column. But please put your name on it, so they don’t think I’m sending out spam.
For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild’s United Online site,
- David Keating’s “SeemslikeGod” page
- The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity home page
- Alan Reynold’s weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap,”
- Wayne Irwin’s Model T Websites, a simple (and cheap) seven-page website for congregations who want to develop a web presence.
- Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not terribly religious, but they are fun; write [email protected] to get onto her mailing list.
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