The Hon. Stephen Harper Prime Minister of Canada & The Hon. Peter Van Loan Minister of Public Safety Dear Ministers: On behalf of Science for Peace, Canada and Canadians Concerned About Violence In Entertainment, I wish to express strong opposition to Bill C-301 and any other bills, such as that introduced in the Senate recently to end the long-gun registry. We believe that any measures to weaken existing gun control laws are a retrograde step that ignore the facts on how gun violence in our communities has been reduced by their implementation. Research shows that every illegal gun begins as a legal gun. All gun owners need to be regularly screened and licensed and all guns, including rifles and shotguns, must be registered. Rifles and shotguns are the guns most often used to kill - in domestic violence, suicides, accidents and in the murder of police officers. The powerful semi-automatic used to murder 14 young women at l'Ecole Polytechnique is still sold as an unrestricted "hunting" rifle. While handguns are the major problem in urban gang crime, rifles and shotguns are also misused. Surrey police, for example, recently reported seizing 200 rifles and shotguns compared to 100 other guns. In Toronto, rifles and shotguns are often stockpiled by gangs. This has led Mayor David Miller to call for a gun free city. And every sawed off shotgun began as a "duck gun". Any gun in the wrong hands is potentially dangerous. It is odd that the experience of law enforcement officers and highly respected organizations such as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Canadian Public Health Association, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, women's organization and victims groups who have steadfastly supported gun control laws, are being ignored. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police opposes Bill C-301 and insists that all gun owners should be licensed and all guns should be registered. Among their reasons are the following: - Registration makes gun owners accountable for their firearms and helps reinforce the licensing provisions of the law. - It is key to taking preventive actions and removing firearms where there is a risk. - It helps police investigations (police from coast to coast use the firearms registry nearly 10,000 times a day) - It allows police to differentiate between legal and illegal firearms. - It reduces the chances that legal guns will be diverted to illegal markets. Illegal guns flowing from the U.S. and Mexico are a growing problem. The proposed bills will only add to the problem. It has been emphasized in recent news coverage that the drug wars in North America, spilling over into Canada, particularly in B.C., are in part due to easy availablility of guns and lax controls in the U.S. In addition, 5 major shoot-outs such as those that occurred in Pittsburg, Penn., Birmingham, New York, and Washington State have be reported in the last month alone). It is true, that there have been cost overuns in developing the gun registry but these have since come down following the initial outlay. Furthermore, that money is a sunk cost and nothing is to be gained by dismantling the existing system. Current expenditures are for screening and licensing gun owners, not registering guns. The RCMP estimate that if the registration of rifles and shotguns were discontinued, only $3 million per year would be saved. If the Conservative Government was to stop waiving gun registering and licensing fees, taxpayers would save an estimated $20 million annually. Any attempt to relax controls on restricted and prohibited guns such as handguns, assault weapons and machine guns, we believe, is a mistake. Similarly, any measures that would allow civilians to take military assault weapons such as the AK-47 to shooting ranges mitigates progress being made toward reducing the attraction of such entertainment. The latter is still fuelled by popular culture such as violent video games that glamorize the ownership and use of dangerous weapons. In many cases this kind of harmful entertainment is supported by our own tax dollars. In the interests of public safety a much more practical initiative would be to eliminate funding for audiovisual productions for entertainment purposes, known to contribute to destabilization of communities through youth gang violence. No one measure is the entire answer for ensuring public safety. A number of strategies are required. One is for better public education on the use and misuse of firearms. Another is for them to be strictly controlled. Long overdue is the need for the reduction in the commercial exploitation of children through the production and distribution of harmful war games that encourage violence as a form of conflict resolution. Yours very truly Rose Anne Dyson Ed.D. Consultant in Media Education Chair: Science for Peace (Media Working Group), University of Toronto President: Canadians Concerned about Violence in Entertainment http://www.c-cave.com