Why don’t you.. use Gamil’s real name… say anything against so-called honor killings… speak out against gang violence… and those who’ve been rendered defenseless by Windy’s evil legislation?

Since you’re attacking law-abiding Kanuckistan firearms owners instead, we know your professed concerns for women’s safety are total BS.

To date, I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot about what law-abiding firearm owners are against, including arbitrary and sweeping demonization, bloated bureaucracy, and a frightening tendency of anti-firearm groups to deny them the presumption of innocence.

However, it is also important to understand just for what law-abiding firearm owners actually stand.

To this end, please allow me to elucidate that the preservation of rights and freedoms, efficient and effective usage of finite public resources and funds, personal accountability and a justice-centric legal system are notions for which law-abiding firearms owners not only stand, but also cherish.

I’m not sure if you have been following this tragic story, but this week (of July 29, 2009) a Canadian jury convicted 17-year-old Melissa Todorovic for first-degree murder of 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel. The case in question was replete with a very many chilling details: the Crown (prosection) told the jury during the trial that Todorovic was murderously jealous of Stefanie – a girl she had never actually met, and that together with her boyfriend she orchestrated the luring Stefanie out of her East York home, to her death. On that fateful day, 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel was stabbed six times, then left to die on a snow-covered sidewalk, steps away from her home. The Toronto judge sentenced Melissa Todorovic as an adult, meaning that she will serve a sentence of 25 years, and will not be up for parole until after she has served at least seven years of her sentence.

Allow me to make some very plain and telling points.

Firstly, young Stefanie’s tragic death was by knife, not by firearm – not that the choice of actual implement should matter a whit. A knife, like a firearm, baseball bat or wantonly misused automobile is only a means that enables a criminal to carry out the illegal – and less academically stated, evil – end & intent in their heart and mind. (This is a point I have previously posted on your site, in a comment to your piece “An Interview with Documentary Filmmaker Shelley Saywell”- http://advocacynet.org/wordpress-mu/emandelman/2009/07/23/an-interview-with-documentary-filmmaker-shelley-saywell/). In the judge’s own words, ‘Todorovic has a “frightening” character flaw’, and the type of murder implement used in this case is as wholly irrelevant as it was substitutable. The same would hold true if a firearm had been used; recalling what I had said in the initial paragraph of this comment, law-abiding firearm owners both stand for and cherish personal accountability, not the damnation of inanimate objects.

Secondly, while the physical stabbing was performed by Todorovic’s boyfriend, the murder was premeditated and set in motion by Todorovic herself, about whom the judge said in his pronouncements that, “the puppetmaster is not less blameworthy than the puppet.” I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions with regard to that statement, but suffice it to say that the Canadian justice system recognizes that violence is not something restricted to the y-chromosome; this 17-year-old convicted female had a criminally culpable hand in the direct destruction of three lives, among them her own. Recalling what I had said in the initial paragraph of this comment, law-abiding firearm owners both stand for and cherish a justice-centric legal system, as oppose to one pandering to the popular conceptions of select circles.

Thirdly, something is very wrong indeed when a person – male or female, regardless of age, and competent to stand trial – convicted in this case is eligible for parole in just seven years, and faces a maximum sentence of just twenty-five years (the typical maximum sentence in Canada). Rather than pour money into lobbying the further regulation and restriction of law-abiding firearms owners, funds could better be used to advocate for a more justice-centric legal system in Canada (one that allows truer life sentences, as well as consecutive – not concurrent – sentencing, for example). Entities like The Coalition for Gun Control – presided over by Wendy Cukier – whom you recently interviewed, have not only been responsible for the diversion of (hours upon hours of attention and) funds from such legal-reform efforts, but have also had issues (to put it mildly) complying with the Canada Revenue Agency, our national tax body. Recalling what I had said in the initial paragraph of this comment, law-abiding firearm owners both stand for and cherish the efficient and effective usage of finite public resources and funds. Sadly, this seems to be the very antithesis for which organizations that seek to malign them stand.

As Justice Ian Nordheimer stated, “Death is permanent and there’s no second chances…. there’s a price to pay. It’s not a video game where you press restart and it’s over.” It is critical that all Canadians – indeed, all law-abiding individuals the world over – focus our efforts and finite resources on the pursuit and achievement of meaningful change. In the real-world, where there are no restart-buttons to be pressed, it is imperative that we choose wisely when allotting our focus.

If she had been right, they would be working. There should be some sort of actual, discernable effect in violent crime rates that could be attributed to the Firearms Act.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Professor Cukier’s views have simply failed to map to reality, let alone prevent violent crime, at horrendous cost. The fact that Dawson College shooter Kimveer Gill’s firearms were all registered is just one demonstration of how abjectly unrealistic Professor Cukier’s views and policies are.

Her experiment has failed to produce the results we were promised. Simply put, her track record gives her about as much credibility on firearms matters as those of temperance advocates on alcohol policy post-Prohibition.

We’ve tried her ideas; they’ve failed to deliver. It’s time we stopped wasting tax dollars and law enforcement resources on them and moved towards more realistic firearms policies that will make Canada safer.

Between the three of us (Wendy Cukier, yourself, and I), I am quite confident none of us can reasonably speak on the subject of statistics (I believe you and her are both Poli Sci majors, and I am a Software Engineer – I’m not sure, but I don’t think any of us are professional statisticians).

I can say for sure, however that Ms. Cukier’s attempt at using statistics to mislead the general public is genuinely disturbing.

In her interview, Ms. Cukier uses a lot of “ifs” to fear monger and come up with hypothetical situations that may happen. She goes on to misuse an incomplete and out of context set of statistics to justify why the current system of gun control should be in place to keep those “ifs” from happening. Any pragmatic person can apply this type of logic and misrepresentation to justify any number of “noble” laws or regulations – how do you think the Holocaust happened?

As you and I have discussed through our private correspondence the issue of gun control, or rather, the control of gun related violence, is a complex issue dealing with many of sensitive social, economic, and political issues.

Ms. Cukier is hardly in a position to offer an unbiased perspective on gun control in Canada. Her “Coalition” started out as a charity but had it’s charitable society status revoked after it was determined it was an elaborate tax evasion scheme. Her opinions on the subject are based primarily on an incorrect perception of the general firearms community. Her chief supporter, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, is a for-profit political lobby (in the same way the NRA is in the States), who receives huge sums of donations from CGI, the software company that built and supports the gun registry.

Elizabeth, again, I invite you to dig deeper into the matter of gun control in Canada as opposed to formulating a perspective based solely upon what’s on the surface.

There is an inherent danger in taking the opinion of a zealous organization whose credibility is questionable at best. The Canadian Government did that, and well over $3 Billion dollars and 15 years later, illegal handguns are still readily procurable by urban gangs, random, indiscriminate shootings still make national headlines, and domestic violence (with or without firearms) is still an unacceptable plague to our society.

If the CFGC has it’s way, Canada would end up like the United Kingdom, where firearms ownership is banned, but violent crime is through the roof and tyrannical government control and surveillance over every aspect of life is common place.

As a Canadian firearms owner, I can’t emphasize enough that I support gun control to the extent that such measures are reasonable, make sense, and enhances public safety. When gun control is none of these things (as it is in Canada) it serves to be a tremendous waste of a finite resources, which thereby reduce public safety and must be opposed, reformed, and replaced.

Thanks for reading, Elizabeth, have a great evening!

You are correct in stating that you haven’t been using an emotional plea, and neither have I. There are fellows in other countries such as Uganda, Argentina, Nepal and Serbia, working on the same issue that I am. However, in those countries, there are no harmonized laws. Take a look at the statistics on domestic abuse and the use of firearms in those places, and maybe you’ll understand better why sometimes regulation is a good thing. I’m here looking at the Firearms Act as good practice, determing what elements are useful and what changes could be made to make the legislation even better. So by me being here, I am working to help other places in the world that you say are in need of people like me, with convictions.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-224-x/85-224-x2008000-eng.pdf

That would mean there would need to be 60 million spouses in Canada, which there is not, not even 1/4 of that. So really, we are talking about less than 10 women per year. But if it saves even 1 life, $2 billion is worth it (as well as the loss of Canadian culture, personal rights and freedoms). Too bad the rest of the entire planet doesn’t think this way, all it would take is trillions times trillions of dollars and we could solve all of the world’s ills. Too bad things don’t actually work that way.