On scanning the headlines of this morning's Calgary Herald, the one for the City section declared, "Gunfire rocks northeast."  The prominence of the item was probably related to the peculiarities of some of the circumstances, which I will not relate here, otherwise we might have expected the article to appear in an obscure corner of an inside page. 

    The central facts are becoming all too common:  a domestic dispute; a convenient firearm and ammunition; an abusive partner loses control; another woman is executed.  I am horrified at the growing carnage associated with these senseless, irredeemable moments marked by the squeezing of a trigger.  Today's news item humanizes and underscores the general and growing problem of firearms' violence. 

    The arguments against gun control are disingenuously complicated, or deliberately misstated by radical gun owners and dealers.  I necessarily simplify my argument here by dealing with one uncluttered aspect of the problem.  The anti-gun control lobby is  insidiously and circuitously funded by The American Rifle Association and its fraternal organizations who are, in turn, funded and encouraged by the mammoth American arms industry. 

    This is a sovereignty issue.  The ethos of gun violence in the United States, maintained by the invocation of that constitutional anachronism, "the right to bear arms," could before clearly and honestly restated as "the right to make a profit -- at any cost!"  Almost as many people in the U.S. die each year at the barrel of a gun as did their servicemen and women in the whole of the Vietnam War.  The post-cold war period, characterized by a growing number of international arms embargoes and reductions in military expenditure, has impinged upon the arms industry's voracious appetite for sustained growth.  Let us not see it maintained in exchange for a growing Canadian body count. 

   Expect more pressure from the gun lobby to relax regulations in the coming years.  Meanwhile, I implore you, stand firm and pass the Bill before you.  It is not a panacea for gun violence in Canada, but it establishes a level of regulation which is fair to the legitimate hunter, and sports person, while respecting the concerns of the rest of  Canadians.  Regrettably, our community has learned not to expect any support from our member of Parliament, Preston Manning.  We are rather more confident in you and the other members of the Upper House to act in our best interests and that of society at large. 

P.S.  Sadly, after writing this letter, I returned home to the evening news that yet another woman was shot and killed today in a downtown parking lot. 

     At the time of writing this article it has been more than three months since, in state of sadness and outrage, I wrote the above letter to the party leaders in the Senate and the six Senators from Alberta.  I received replies from all.  For the most part it was the usual stuff:  form letters selected for their proximity to answering particular concerns.  There were also a couple of surprises.  Joyce Fairbairn, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, took the time to write a note of encouragement in her own hand at the bottom of her form letter, -- a nice touch!  But, most surprisingly, I received a customized three page reply from Ron Ghitter Q.C., a Conservative Senator from Alberta.  For his courtesy and effort I commend him; for his observations, I might just as well have addressed my letter to a doorpost and expected it to spontaneously and intelligently reply.  Just a few of his comments are worth responding to in brief. 

   "Many of the domestic homicides," Ghitter notes, "... are [committed] with legally owned firearms ... [and therefore] registration will make no difference."  Wrong!  If registration of the gun owner is a renewable licensing, as proposed, then any record of domestic violence or other invalidating criminal act may well deny the individual immediate access to a weapon by which to spontaneously blow somebody's head off.  Ghitter also notes that "more people will die in automobile accidents in Canada during the coming Labour Day weekend ... than will be killed during the whole year by husbands using firearms against their spouses." Well, thank you very much, Mr. Ghitter, for putting my concerns in perspective and setting my mind at ease.  Mmmmm, now if I remember that more patients die at the hands of incompetent doctors each year than die in automobile accidents, Eureka!  I won't have to be concerned with traffic fatalities! 

    For some reason our illustrious Senator felt it was necessary to point out that "42 per cent of the victims in domestic homicides involving firearms were men."  He does not specify, however, if any were shot by brothers or male room-mates.  But even if he is implying that these men were killed by their spouses, I have a great deal of trouble with them being unproblematically designated "victims."  Women who kill men in domestic situations usually do so after being chronically abused, and often in a moment of self-defence.  In any event, this is just one more reason why there should be tighter controls.  And finally, to give him credit, he points out that the "'large' number of annual firearms related deaths in Canada includes roughly 1000 suicides" (by far the largest single figure).  Thanks for the information ... (?).  Oh! now I see what he's doing!  He's trying to minimize the two paltry murders mentioned in my letter by unceremoniously burying their bodies beneath a cascade of proliferating numbers.  Two women, Mr. Ghitter, Kimberley Cahoon and Janice Morrison, were assassinated.  Besides, I made it plain that the "news item humanizes and underscores the general and growing problem of firearms' violence."  Anyway, for what it's worth, I raised my small voice above the placid surface of my all-too-complicit silence. 

    On November 15 I attended the Tory Senators' road-show at the Westward Inn, Calgary, the last stop on its sweep through the western provinces.  Its ostensible task was to hear the views of the people on the proposed legislation.  In fact they turned out to be thinly veiled pep rallies for the gun lobby.  Ghitter, aware of the potential for violent, illegal and/or anti-social conduct from this crowd played it like a maestro, alternately pumping and placating those in attendance.  Gerry St. Germain stumbled and bumbled through his sentences, making appropriate sounds of disapproval and assent.  Walter Twinn, looking as though he was in need of a vacation or a long sleep was conspicuously silent.  Midway though the morning I knew there was little to be gained by being there.  All of the scheduled witnesses were anti-legislation with the exception, I presumed, of the Physicians for Global Survival / Project Ploughshares group whom I decided to stay and support.  But it failed to show, I suspect, for tactical reasons following the lead of the Coalition for Gun Control and other supporters of the legislation who decided to boycott the hearings.  Not a bad idea:  it rendered the whole show a rather pathetic parody of intelligent opposition. 

    A number of comments are worth repeating here to reflect the general emotional and manipulative tenor of the session.  Stan Webb of the Alberta Fish and Wildlife Officers Association was able to put consecutive sentences together in a jewel of doublespeak: "their law-abiding" membership, he predicted, would refuse to comply with the law.  On the other hand, perhaps this made supreme sense to his  audience, since he was later to assert that Bill C-68 reflected an urban inability to understand "rural logic." 

    Objections by Brian Hodges of the International Practical Shooting Association gave Ghitter and St. Germain the excuse to trot out the flag.  Ghitter reflected, "I'm sure the Minister [Alan Rock] does not want the arms they [international competitors] use to be made illegal," adding the incitant supplement, "at least that's what he says."  St. Germain talked of Canadian shooters and their tradition of distinguished international performance.  He rambled on about our young competitors who "were never a problem"; he gravely condemned the federal government's "annihilation (sic) of our private ranges." 

    Lionel Conn (appropriately named) was unashamed to disclose his masculinist colours:  "the problem is that some of these women on these various boards don't know what they are talking about."  St. Germain saw an opportunity for male solidarity by reminding the audience that these (women's) groups (operating on emotion implied) had decided to boycott these hearings "where logic was being defined" (rural, male logic, I presume).  One Doug Fawcet talked of being guided by the Ten Commandments -- in his use of weapons -- as the principle of law (I imagine Jesus was exemplary for Doug in that he was never known to point his weapon); another talked more generally of the guiding principles of the Church, and community values.  Both of these commentators, I'm sure, were exemplary in their articulation of "rural logic." 

    Finally, I would like to end my reflections on the hearing proper by recording a quotable delivered by each of the Senators.  Ron Ghitter:  "We are non-political in the Senate, you must understand"; Gerry St. Germain:  "I know these people in Ottawa, they're smug about things"; and Walter Twinn:  "If I seemed bored all morning, it's because I'm frustrated." 

    There was one moment of sunshine during the  day;  a  breath of  fresh  air to clear the smell of gunsmoke from the room (but then, having been raised in the shadow of a gas works, what do I know about fresh air and sunshine).  I met a venerable elderly gentleman named Darwin Cronkhite.  He looked as though he could have been anybody's favourite grandfather (I'm only guessing since I come from a pretty screwed up family).  An open, ruddy face revealed a warmth of nature not often encountered nowadays.  His large, calloused hands and massive, portly frame attested to a strength in labour of epic pioneer proportions (I love romantic images).  He wore a chunky Fair Isle sweater that added even greater bulk to his presence.  Curiously, the overall effect was not one of intimidation, but one which imparted a rather domestic look to this gentle giant.  He, too, was part of the gun lobby, but a member of notably more moderate views (of course we must remember that Atilla the Hun appears rather saintly next to Hitler).  Writing as Director, Zone 2, of the Alberta Fish and Game Association, representing 40 percent of geographical Alberta, he delivered an open letter to the Senators.  He was kind enough to give me a copy of this 3000 word missal (that's missal, not missile), only small excerpts of which I am able to cite in this rather short article. 

    Unlike the witnesses who orally presented, Darwin takes a discriminating stand on permissible firearms.  "Sportsmen (sic)," he insists, "certainly do not need machine guns to hunt game with.  Neither do they need them for predator control.  Machine guns are designed solely for wartime -- to kill people."  He goes on to conclude:  "The point I am trying to make is that machine guns must be confiscated from those who do not have the authority to possess them."  And Darwin, not accustomed to clouding issues, makes it absolutely clear, in his opinion, who these "unauthorized" users are:  "We must view with apprehension the flaunting of Canadian laws by misguided Native activists flaunting and firing [nice alliteration here] machine guns at enforcement personnel.  More prescriptively for this pesky problem, by way of three stinging questions, he indirectly charges Rock to solve the problem:  "Shouldn't a Justice Minister be especially concerned with illegal AK 47s on Indian reserves?  Shouldn't he go after the culprits. (sic)  Or do we have a different law for renegade Indians?"  Wow!  No namby-pamby political correctness here.  Yet, give Darwin his due, he doesn't want "Natives" to be deprived of their rights as rural dwellers. No!  He concedes that firearms are needed "in sparcly (sic) settled areas." 

     As for murder, Darwin assures us, "the weapon of choice is definientely (sic) not a firearm."  Murderers, we should be comforted to know, would rather use "manual force, ligatures, knives, baseball bats ..., suffocation, automobile[s] ..., bath tub[s], [and] poisons that's poisons, not poissons]."  Whew! good news!  In summary, Darwin's is a philosophy which rejects a "stupid (sic) unenforceceable (sic) [law]" by which "fishing expeditions in peoples (sic) homes will be [made] a way of life" (although this might be eagerly welcomed in the Maritimes).  Legitimate gun owners must be on guard against a Hitler," a "Mussolini," an "Emperor Hiro Hito," "Bolsheviks," and a "[Joseph] Mcarthy (sic) [???]."  In the light of all this, it is the "duty of the Senate ... to make a somber (sic) second evaluation [of Bill C-68]."  Thank goodness the gun lobby has a Darwin to moderate the excesses of their radicals.  Darwin, would you please be a grandfather to my children and teach them to be just as literate and socially aware as you? 

    With the exception of Darwin, I am appalled at the rhetoric from gun-toting hicks who, with varying degrees of awareness, regurgitate aphorisms developed by a rather more  insidious bunch of corporate slicks with swelling interest in the bloated, stinking corpses of Profit and Power.  "After all," they would have us echo, "shouldn't we all understand by now that guns don't kill; people do."  How peculiar that this gnome is used to dismiss opposition to controls by reifying the very gulf between the actor and the action that makes a gun killing so very easy.  The killer with a gun is separated from the dirty  immediacy of a stabbing or strangulation.  Instead, s/he has moved some distance along the continuum toward the clinical sterility of the bomb aimer's sights or the missile tracker's radar screen.  How ridiculous it would sound to declare, "bombs don't kill, pilots do," as if somehow this minor actor could be removed, firstly, from the destruction of the weapons s/he delivers and, secondly, from the complex cultural equation -- the small "a" anonymous authority -- that justifies and facilitates the waging of war.  Nobody, not even the gun-toting hick, can be blind to the (growing) ethos of violence in N.A.F.T.A. society.  And this, too, amounts to a (civil) war, justified and facilitated by a complex cultural equation in which each of us is a symbol and a minor actor who is "authorized" to pull a trigger. 

    The gap between the actor and the action in the "guns don't kill" tag is interesting for more than the lie it utters.  It instantiates a fundamental legal philosophy that distinguishes the U.S.A. from all other western societies.  This philosophy hinges on the notion of "clear and present danger" which radically constrains considerations of cause and effect in criminal law.  For example, the fact that pornography may be proven as causal in violence against women would hardly be a technical consideration for its legal control in the United States.  Similarly, incitements to violence such as cross-burning, and hate literature which might actually advocate killing the members of certain groups, is not in and of itself illegal.  The principle of "clear and present danger" loosens the relationship between cause and effect almost to the point of its obliteration. By contrast, Canadian law recognizes the notion of "indirect harm," the inevitable links between cause and effect.  It is this (tenuous?) principle which has enabled the drafting, and hopefully the passage, of Bill C-68.  As one who often casts a jaundiced eye toward a legal system which still blindly protects the privileges of Capital while perpetuating old oppressions, I am rather thankful that this one vestige of British jurisprudence may yet serve to stem the tide of madness breaking along the 49th parallel. 

     Of course there is a price to pay:  at some level it is necessary to deface the icon of individual freedom.  American law is prepared to maintain the illusion of liberty until the ultimate act of rape, robbery, arson, murder, and so on, is committed by the individual.  It is at this point that the cult of individuality finally and oppressively impinges on the liberty of others and the perpetrator is, hopefully, deprived of his or hers.  In its attempt to attenuate effects, Canadian law is prepared to sacrifice the illusion of individual liberty by exercising some control over causes.  Both systems effectively sacrifice liberty:  the American through something akin to social Darwinism (no relation by blood or philosophy to my good friend); the Canadian by paternal intervention; it is only the point of  intervention that shifts.  The choices are not easy.  But when push comes to shove, I'll opt for a little paternal intrusion. 

    Besides which, the gun-totin' hicks have got their protest all wrong.  In their enthusiasm to declare that "guns don't kill, people do," they support the major provision of Bill C-68:  to register the gun owners, the people who have the agency to take a life.  Gun registration is already required by law.  Bill C-68 is a thoughtful revision of that law, bringing it up to date and closing loopholes.  "But don't y'all know that these 'pussy' gun-control advocates intend turning all God-fearin', gol-darn, gun-totin' hicks into criminals with them thar rules."  Well, that is simply a question of choice, isn't it?  If a new law demands compliance, then we choose to comply, -- or not.  Take your pick.  But perhaps I'm being a little insensitive; I'm ignoring a real fear amongst gun owners (with the  exception of Darwin Cronkhite) -- registration will require the ability to write.