At long last, some common sense out of Ottawa about gun control. 

            I have hesitated for some time to write about gun control. In my experience, it’s the most explosive topic I ever tackle – even more so than abortion, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and federal deficits. 

            Gun owners believe in their right to own guns. They tend to react strongly against anything they perceive as a threat. Perhaps that explains why they own guns at all. 

            The legislation introduced in Ottawa last week recognizes that Canada is not a uniform nation.  According to the 2011 census, more than 80% of Canadians live in urban areas; slightly under 20% in rural areas. 

            In rural areas, people want keep their guns to protect themselves against wild animals; in urban areas, people want to get rid of guns to protect themselves from other people. 

            Two distinct purposes.  One size does not fit all.

            So it makes sense to grant municipalities control over guns in their areas of jurisdiction.

Attempting to understand

            I can understand that rural dwellers feel a need for guns. I’ve lived in areas where no one went out in the woods to collect firewood, or pick huckleberries, without taking along a gun in the truck.

            An acquaintance, a conservation officer often travelling alone through the bush, always carries a large bore handgun for protection .

            Even though, in most cases, animals would rather avoid humans than attack them. I’ve spent about 30 summers in Canada’s backwoods. I’ve never once had a bear exhibit aggressive behaviour towards me. Close calls, yes. Intent to harm, never.

            I wouldn’t make the same claim about cougars. Or wolverines. Or a pack of wolves. Especially if I’m injured.

            I try to sympathize, to some extent, with hunters. They take care of their guns. They use their guns only for hunting. 

            Still, I can’t understand why anyone in a modern society needs to hunt wild game for food. And I will never understand how hunters can derive pleasure from killing something. 

            At one time, in my youth, I owned a bow and arrow. I tried to shoot some living things. I missed consistently. And then one day, perhaps by accident, I hit a bird. I watched it die. 

            I put the bow and arrow away, and never used them again.

Reduce the risk

            In urban areas, the danger is not from marauding raccoons or predatory squirrels, but from other humans. And there, I contend, the fewer guns around the safer everyone is. 

            Gun defenders will retort that cars kill more people than bullets. Knives stab. Hammers can bludgeon. Would I ban them too?

            No, because they also have useful purposes. You cannot deliver kids to school in a gun. Or use a gun to slice a tomato. Or drive nails with a gun.

            Guns, on the other hand, have only one purpose. They fire bullets. Even if the NRA argues that guns themselves don’t kill, bullets do. 

Gang warfare

            The vast majority of guns in urban areas are in the hands of gangs. Gangs rely on the anonymity of large populations. I can safely predict that there are no gang wars in Stewart or Crawford Bay. But there are in Surrey and Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

            Certainly, gun violence occurs in rural areas too. Gabriel Wortman’s 13-hour rampage in Nova Scotia last year is an example. So was Jim Roszko’s shooting of four RCMP officers near Mayerthorpe, Alberta, in 2005. Deranged individuals are not limited to urban centres. 

            But those instances are notable because they’re exceptions. 

            The vast majority of Canada’s 650-plus annual gun killings occur in urban areas. 

            Urban gangs smuggle high-powered weapons from the U.S. Urban gangs steal legal guns and use them illegally. Urban gangs eliminate threats with a hail of bullets. 

            Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart immediately declared his intention to use the city’s new powers to ban handguns. Surrey mayor Doug McCallum made a similar statement. Both cities have recently seen a surge in gun violence.

            Granted, criminalizing some guns will not get them out of the hands of criminals. But it certainly makes it easier to identify who the criminals are. 

            Federal law already outlaws 1277 assault weapons, semi-automatic weapons and hand guns, by my count. In criminal hands, who cares? The problem is getting them out of circulation. 

            Federal legislation will offer to buy back many of those prohibited weapons. Owners who wish to keep their guns, as museum pieces, may do so after rendering them kill-proof. 

            At the very least, that reduces the potential supply of lethal weapons.

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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

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YOUR TURN

My column about Valentines seems to have tweaked a few noses. 

            Among other things, I had proposed that the conventional message, “Be my valentine” presumed a sense of personal possession of the other. Clare Neufeld challenged my interpretation: “It seems you were focused on only one or two facets of belonging. I tend to think of belonging, as meaning ‘appropriately connected’, in language of today. In my social & generational experience, it was never used in pejorative context. If it was used that way, by someone, it seemed to be our locally generated social response to say, ‘That’s not correct. It is not the right kind of belonging!’ 

            “To ‘belong’, (I belong with you, you belong with me), was interpreted/understood to be saying ‘we belong together.’ Just as a  nut with appropriate threading, belongs to/with a bolt with similar size/threading. One does not belong without the appropriate ‘fit’.” 

Mary Law read my Valentine Sunday column, and “Am guessing you may get flooded with love hugs and best wishes in response.” [Mary attached her own “True Love” card.]  She went on, “My oldest brother just passed and we're missing him as much as you must be missing Joan. God bless you for all the sharing you've done and still have to do. May all that wisdom and love you've played forward come back to warm your heart, give you comfort, encouragement and bountiful joy today and everyday.”

When James West hears “Be mine” the word that comes to him is “’responsible’. I am okay with being the Lord’s. If I own others as God owns me I see a depth of meaning and purpose that goes way beyond being used as a thing. Perhaps ‘Be my Valentine’ is a practical way of catching a glimpse of God’s love working through us. It’s right there with Mr. Rogers’ ‘Won’t you be my neighbor?’”

Steve Roney felt, “I think you are wrong to assert that in many cultures, including ours, there is an assumption that, in marriage, the male owns the female. This may be true in some cultures, but never in English common law, and not in the Bible. Not in Korea or China or Islam, either. 

            “Marriage does imply a contractual commitment of both parties, and so gives each specific rights over the other. Or does traditionally.

            “The legal principle was ‘couverture,’ the idea that a married couple was a corporate person, like a corporation. Accordingly, neither the

wife nor the husband held property independently; but the marital

property was held in the husband’s name.”

Karen Toole agreed that, “Couples rule; there is no doubt about it.  Nature dictates and nurture enforces.  So the odd man or woman is always odd. Which leads to suspicion and loneliness. 

            “To take a leap, maybe the connection of possession does have something to do with it all….I got told when I got ordained that I could not be minister and a wife…dark ages then….but no freedom to choose the third option of both!

            “How would you put that kind of openness and freedom in a conventional Valentine?  Something like, ‘Can we create a Valentine together?’ Or maybe ‘Will you be love for me, if I am love you?’ My love may not be enough for you, your love may not be enough for me…but it will always be a place to come home to, if you need to come home, if I need to come home.”  

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

                       Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

                       I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

                       Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

                       The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns