OTTAWA CANADA AND GUN OWNERSHIP

I have a T-shirt that proclaims in big letters, “I am a Canadian”. It was s gift from a good friend. I put it on this morning. I can identify with that Country after the horrific events of Ottawa. I do not believe my response OF identifying with Canada as an American was usual. As one MP said, “we as countries may rub one another the wrong way from time to time, but we stand together.”  That does not mean we are the same in all respects. Domestically speaking, Canada is a much more peaceful nation, and there is a reason for that. They do have an active gun lobby advocating unregulated gun ownership. However, Canadians, unlike Americans, do not have a “pseudo” constitutional right to bear arms, the high court in that nation stated in 1993, in a decision over the possession of convertible semi-automatic weapons. Under the duress of a rich gun lobby, our constitution has been misread and allows for wholesale-unregulated “gun” ownership—anything goes.

I suspect, but do not have the figures to back up my suspicion, there are more hunters, and rural residents amo0ng the 35 million people in Canada than there are in the 330 million people in the Untied States, which means the legitimate gun owners’ probably out number those who oppose gun ownership, still they have more sensible laws. A “good guy with a gun” shot and killed the single gunman in Ottawa; it is notable that the good person with a gun was a peace officer. It will be interesting to watch and see if the essentially false panic created by one terrorists in Canada stampedes the Canadian government into succumbing to the wishes of the gun lobby. If they take law enforcement out of the hands of the RCMP and turn law enforcement over to a bunch of thugs with guns, I will take off that T-shirt. 

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