During my recent cyber-travels, I encountered a Website featuring the Coalition for Gun Control. There I found an “Interview with Wendy Cukier” posted on July 29 by Elizabeth Mandelman. The article discussed the impact of heightened gun control and registration on the incidence of gun-related violence against women in Canada.
It was the replies to this article that I found to be most disturbing. They were posted by persons in disagreement with Ms. Mandelman and Ms. Cukier. However, rather than expressing respectful debate and dissent, their overall wording showed a blatant disrespect and even, in some instances, personal attack. The replies argued it was not guns that were responsible for the 1989 Montreal Massacre in which 14 women were killed and another 10 were injured. Instead, it was the perpetrator’s Islamic beliefs that were a direct cause of these deaths.
On the subject of Domestic Violence, I have some first-hand knowledge. My father was a Military man here in Canada, and, in most circumstances, a “law abiding citizen”. He was also a collector of hunting rifles and subscriber to many outdoor and gun-related magazines.
In later years, when he had long been sober, we were able to love and honour him as a parent. I’m proud of the fact that in his final years when he was dying of cancer I took excellent care of him and saw him through the pain, as any daughter should.
However, when I was young he was extremely abusive and violent. On many occasions he threatened to shoot my mother and even myself and my sisters. I don’t know how my 95-lb. mother survived those years of physical abuse. My older sister did not survive – I lost her to suicide when she was only 19. This was as a direct result of the childhood abuse.
My mother once confided to me that during those years she had lost all concern for her own well-being. She was determined to stay alive, not for her own sake, but to protect her children. I consider it to be a “long-shot” we were not all killed by one of his rifles. The number of times Mom was bed-ridden due to extensive physical abuse and too ashamed to face doctors or neighbours was beyond comprehension. Even now, years later, I find it hard to discuss these truths.
During his intermittent moments of sobriety and remorse, my father reluctantly agreed to allow my mother to lock away vital parts of each firearm. It was probably this insistence on my mother’s part that saved our lives.
In my humble opinion, an advanced and civilised society has no place for guns, other than in the military and for use by our police. Obviously there will always be men like my father who are violent, with or without access to firearms. However, studies show that heightened control and registration of guns coincides directly with a reduction in the number of deaths related to domestic violence. I am for anything that keeps women and children MORE SAFE, so they can finally grow past their fear to live happy and productive lives.
As for blaming the entire Muslim population for the recent incidences of abuse against women in Canada, I would like my readers to know that, while I abhor these so-called “honour killings”, (can there be any honour in the slaughter of defenceless women and children?) my own family were, to all outward appearances, as Christian as any you are likely to meet in a Canadian Church.
It’s time for humanity to take the next critical step toward enlightenment. Ladies and Gentlemen, please put down your weapons.
Only reason and respectful dialogue will take us where we need to go!
Donna Carrick July 29, 2009
Donna's Books are available through Amazon.ca and Amazon.com
For a darkly humourous look at this issue, visit Alex Carrick.com.
Quote from humorous Economist Alex Carrick:
Disturbed people with access to guns kill people.
Disturbed people without access to guns are less disturbing.
Comments (1)
Mrs Carrick,
I am a Canadian soldier AND a gun owner. And never, ever have any of the guns that I personally own or am issued by my government fired a shot of their own volition.
Guns by themselves, even loaded, are inanimate objects. There is a human component to everything a gun "does". It needs human input to come out of safe storage; it needs human input to be loaded and cocked; it needs human input to be aimed and it needs human input to be fired.
Without a human being behind it, a gun is just an inanimate mass of metal, wood and/or plastic.
As such, Gamil Garbi, aka Marc Lepine, is the one at fault for the Polytechnic mass-shooting. Not his rifle. Without a man with evil in his heart, that gun would have NEVER been used for such a thing. In anyone else's possession, it would have never been used for anything other than target shooting or hunting.
In fact, a gun is much like a car in that respect. A car won't fuel up by itself, start up by itself and mow down a kid crossing the street by itself. It requires a human being to do all of that. Not necessarily an evil but an inattentive, drunk or otherwise impaired human being behind the wheel will turn any car into a weapon in its own right.
And speaking of weapons, a gun is not necessarily a weapon. I know, it CAN be used as one. But then again, scissors, knives, hammers, cars, furniture, sporting equipment, these can all be used as weapons too. People don't refer to their kitchen knives as weapons because there was a stabbing recently. What constitutes a weapon is something you use or intend to use to harm someone. Hence, the guns the military issues me are weapons. They are intended for use in warfare. But the ones I personally own, they're just guns. They are sporting equipment that I use for target shooting and competition. Nothing sinister.
And for the record, whether it is my own personal firearms or my duty guns, I've yet to fire one at another human being and that is something I am GLAD about. It's come too close, way too close, more than once. I didn't like it. It's not a good feeling. And if I go through the rest of my life without having to aim at another human being, I'll die happy.
Mrs Carrick, I am not attempting to make small of your own experiences, of the hardships you had to go through.
However, insanity is defined as trying to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results. As such, gun control is the very definition of insanity. It is the one thing that failed and yet some people demand more and more of it. Gun control will do nothing against the guns that are illegally held by criminals. Those are smuggled into the country or stolen. They are never registered to law-abiding citizens. So, when the time to ban them comes, they will slip under the radar. They will never be found, never be seized. They will remain on the streets.
It will only make things safer for criminals who will now know for certain that none of their victims will have anything resembling the means to stand up to them.
Guns in the hands of good people are no threat to anyone. That is unless these good people are faced with extreme circumstances. But guns in the hands of bad people like drug dealers, rapists and other bad people (such as, no offence, your father) they become extremely dangerous pieces of equipment.
Oddly enough, just like a car. You might be a very safe, very conscientious driver but the driver next to you might be drunk or aggressive or have absolutely no care for the lives of others on or around the roads. His vehicle is no longer a mean of peaceful conveyance but an extremely dangerous piece of kit.
In closing, I have a few more points to bring up, with reference to gun control.
A country where only the police and the military have guns can be accurately described as a police state, where the government knows it can act in complete impunity because the PEOPLE will lack the means to stand up to it.
Gun control was deemed "successful" in the following instances: Germany, 1930's; Rwanda, early 1990's UN-imposed complete disarmament; The Balkans, both State and UN imposed disarmaments; Stalinist Russia; Mao's China. Need I go on?
Germany called itself the most enlightened country of the modern world after instituting "total gun control". Shortly thereafter, the Holocaust started. It is easy to round up and exterminate a population that lacks the means to fight back against soldiers with guns.
In Rwanda, nearly a MILLION Tutsi were massacred. Most of them were killed with machetes and other bladed implements. Canadian soldiers were taken hostage, at the edge of a blade, and forced to WATCH as WHOLE FAMILIES were butchered around them. How did these things happen? Because none of the population had guns, and these Canadian soldiers were UNARMED UN observers. Do you really think that a handful of Hutu men with machetes would have been able to do that had those soldiers been armed?
In Stalinist Russia, millions "disappeared", never to be seen or heard from again.
Likewise with Mao's China.
Need I go on?
Please, take the time to read through this. Take the time to look at the other side of the issue.
Posted by P. Dusablon | August 8, 2009 7:18 AM
Posted on August 8, 2009 07:18