Dear Editor,
In response to the letter [Gun Ban Overdue, May 22, The News], there are many misconceptions mentioned in that article.
The biggest one is that there is a correlation between having legally owned guns in the country and tragedies such as the one in Nova Scotia occurring.
These types of murderous rampages are not committed by people legally owning hunting rifles or handguns used for target practice at a local gun club.
The guns used in the Nova Scotoa masssacre were not owned legally and the vast majority of assault rifles in the country are not owned legally, but brought into the country illegally and sold on the black market.
If the federal Liberal government is serious about preventing these types of massacres, they should be increasing funding to border services and specialized police units to intercept sipments of illegal firearms and track down those on the black market and seize them.
The punishment for owning an illegal firearm should be severe, with lengthy incarceration sentences and lifetime bans on possessing weapons. Get tough on crime but leave law abiding, registered gun owners alone.
My father owned a hunting rifle and it was never once an issue for the family.
RELATED LETTER: First guns were banned, what’s next?
The kids knew not to go near it, and I never felt it was unsafe in any way whatsoever.
I know there are a lot of law abiding gun owners in Maple Ridge and they’re concerned about the Trudeau government forcing them to relinquish their legally owned hunting rifles, handguns, and shotguns.
This gun ban looks like a slippery slope, where soon virtually all guns may be on the banned list.
It wasn’t that long ago that a Liberal government enacted a long-gun registry and wasted millions of taxpayers hard earned dollars on it only to have it scrapped in the end, amounting to nothing in return for the money spent on it. There are much better uses these funds could go towards that would keep society as a whole much more safe.
Maple Ridge is also a communty that is largely impacted in a negative way by this gun ban.
ANOTHER RELATED LETTER: Banning guns is not the solution
It would be a shame to see a local business like Wanstall’s go out of business or the many gun clubs and shooting ranges in the Lower Mainland. Many people likely don’t realize that RCMP members use these shooting ranges to practise their target shooting throughout the year, since they only have one mandatory target practice session a year with the RCMP.
And the author of the Gun ban overdue letter to the editor also asks why is this gun ban happening now and not earlier?
The answer should be obvious. It’s no coincidence that this gun ban is happening right on the heels of the massacre in Nova Scotia and the Liberals are going to be in trouble going into the next election, having lost their majority government.
Since there is no evidence to suggest that a gun ban will prevent these types of massacres from contnuing to happen, it appears to just be another way for the Liberals to try and galvanize their base of supporters through misinformation.
Chris O’Brian, Maple Ridge
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