HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-10-24, Page 5Other Views
How’d we get 1 million handguns?
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Let me start this week by saying very few
people are without sin when it comes to
tackling bullying, including myself.
When I was younger, I’m loathe to admit
that I did participate in name-calling and
exclusion. It’s not something I’m proud of, but
to write about bullying without admitting that
I have been a bully would be dishonest.
When I was young, however, bullying didn’t
have the scope it does now.
Bullies didn’t murder people. Bullies might
have name-called or physically intimidated
people, or even in extreme cases attacked each
other.
But we live in a world where violence is
now more and more common. Whether it’s
actual violence, like the (purportedly bullying-
linked) stabbing that claimed the life of a
Hamilton teenager earlier this month or
alluding to violence, we’ve become
desensitized to bullying.
When I originally sat down to write about
this, my goal was to look at the tragic story of
14-year-old Devan Bracci-Selvey who was
murdered in Hamilton by at least two fellow
students outside of Sir Winston Churchill
Secondary School. This all happened in plain
view of Bracci-Selvey’s mother, who had
come to the school to pick him up due to his
safety concerns.
The police have detained four people in
relation to the incident. Two have been
released and two have been charged with first-
degree murder.
Murder in the first degree, for those of you
who didn’t grow up watching Law and Order
like I did, means that there was planning that
went into the action of the 14-year-old and 18-
year-old that have been charged with the
murder.
These aren’t adults fighting over something
and a heated exchange resulting in an
unintended death. Police say they have found
evidence that show that the accused knew
exactly what they were planning to do and had
considered their actions beforehand.
Most reports indicate the bullying was a
long-standing problem, and not just for
Bracci-Selvey, as, according to one family, the
same bullies forced another student to leave
Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School.
I wanted to write just about that because it’s
a heinous act that we need to realize is a
turning point for Canadians.
This isn’t something happening away from
here. This isn’t the gun violence south of the
border. This is Hamilton, a place I visited
several times when I was at school.
I wanted to write just about Bracci-Selvey,
but the simple fact of the matter is, this isn’t a
one-off incident.
We have politicians bullying each other
daily alongside special interest groups
targeting the politicians they don’t agree with.
In the south, President Donald Trump
constantly insults and verbally bullies, either
in Tweet or in speech, his enemies and now he
has even started to turn on his allies.
Our own federal election candidates have
gotten away from talking about the issues and
are instead focusing on character assassination
as I detailed in a previous column about the
leaders’ debate.
All of this happens and yet we’re not
enraged enough to change things. We, instead,
glorify these people by electing them.
Bullying is just as pervasive an issue as gun
control is south of the border. It’s a bold
statement, but it’s true because, just like we
tolerate the radicals who say their guns will
have to be taken from their “cold dead hands”,
we tolerate people bullying each other from
schoolyards all the way to upper echelons of
power and the result is the same: dead people.
We’ve all seen the bullying on the upper-
ends. You would need to have lived under a
rock for months to not realize the bullying that
is now just accepted in political discourse.
At the lower end, however, in school yards
and playgrounds, in arenas and on sports
fields, it can go unnoticed.
Like I said, my hands aren’t clean here, but
I’ve also been on the other side of it. Heck,
anyone who has ever refereed a minor sports
game has probably had a few unflattering
things yelled at them, and yet we tolerate it.
We need to stop bullying in all its forms if
we’re ever to bring an end to this era of fatal
bullying. Gun violence and knife violence,
like the daily incidents we hear about in the
United States and now within our own
borders, are a problem, but they’re also a
symptom of a society that allows people to
bully others without anyone calling them on it.
We all deserve better than what we have. We
all deserve a chance to be honest about who
we are without fear of reprisal and our
children, the most vulnerable to verbal attacks,
deserve to discover who they are without
having to face bullying.
So how do we fix it? Well, we take a page
from our local politicians when they are
dealing with each other. Despite having wildly
different ideals, they discuss issues without
resulting to name calling. If only the people
who want to run the country did the same.
It may seem like an odd place to start, but if
we can’t look to our Prime Minister, regardless
of their party, for a good example for our
children, who can we look to?
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2019. PAGE 5.
Take up the mantle
In this week’s issue of The Citizen, two
Citizen of the Year award winners are
eulogized: Betty Battye and Ernie Phillips.
Betty won the award in 1998 and Ernie was
honoured just recently in 2016.
Winners for very different reasons, Betty
and Ernie were both recognized as integral
cogs in the Blyth community machine and
now they’re gone.
After nearly 30 years as a local educator,
Betty kept active, volunteering at Blyth Public
School and the Blyth Festival, while also
planting flowers throughout the village and
making a point to visit the sick and immobile
in the area.
Ernie spent over 30 years as a member of the
Blyth Lions Club, working not only to make
his community a better place, but putting his
skill as a world-class engraver to use on local
trophies and awards; a skill he honed while
engraving the Stanley Cup, among other high-
profile hockey trophies.
As we here at North Huron Publishing work
through the process of selecting this year’s
Citizen of the Year winners, the deaths of Ernie
and Betty serve as a reminder that those who
have worked tirelessly to make our
communities a better place are in short supply
and they don’t live forever.
Citizen founder Keith Roulston will often
write about this and the spirit of volunteerism
that is, in some ways, declining. Many
residents rely on local government or private
investors to fund projects that, decades ago,
community members would achieve on their
own by rolling up their sleeves and fundraising
or, in many cases, doing the work themselves.
And while this year, without giving anything
away, there are some great nominees for our
annual volunteerism award, submissions are
always lacking. I don’t think there’s been a
year since I started with The Citizen 14 years
ago when we’ve been absolutely awash in
nominations. Along with the annual handing
out of the Citizen of the Year awards come the
annual story about nominations opening and
the inevitable story requesting further
nominations and extension of the deadline to
allow nominators more time.
While it’s probably true that engagement
simply isn’t what it used to be, I just think
volunteerism needs to continue to grow in
younger generations. Local service groups and
Legions are hurting for membership and
annual events are always in need of many
hands to lighten the workload.
Every time I attend an event that is revered
in our area, I speak to the volunteers, many of
them grandparents and they express concern
about the future of the event. As dedicated
volunteers pass away, younger generations are
not stepping up in the necessary numbers.
There are no new Betty Battyes or Ernie
Phillipses out there waiting to be plucked from
the clouds, but if enough people step up, the
community may be able to recreate them in the
aggregate.
There are many ways to get involved in your
community. Organizations are looking for
people just like you and they will not turn you
away. Like the Blyth Lions Club and its sports
pad project or the Brussels Leo Club and its
playground expansion, there are meaningful
improvements being carried out by people
who care about their communities and they
could always use a helping hand.
Don’t let the hard work and dedication of
people like Ernie and Betty and any number of
other volunteers crumble away. Instead of
waiting for someone to improve your village,
work to become that person.
As the election campaign drew to a
close, there was a constant parade of
people and groups on the nightly news
complaining that their favourite issue was
ignored – from mobility problems to lack of
low income housing.
One of the issues that seemed as if it
would have a high profile early in the
campaign was gun ownership, particularly
after a series of high-profile shooting incidents
on Toronto’s streets in September which, more
by good luck than good sense, thankfully led to
remarkably little loss of life. Later, the issue
disappeared.
The death toll from guns has been soaring,
up 249 in Canada in 2018, a 60 per cent
increase since 2014. Toronto recorded a
record high 428 shootings last year. Thankfully
many of these shooters apparently have bad
aim.
It’s a difficult issue that defies simple
solutions like banning handguns and assault
weapons. Most of these Toronto shootings
were pitched battles between gangs who used
handguns often smuggled in from the U.S. No
handgun ban could have stopped these
determined young criminals.
But there are terrible crimes carried out
with guns that began life in the legal stream.
On July 22, 2018, for instance, a gunman with
a history of mental illness went on a rampage
on Toronto’s Danforth Ave., killing two young
girls and wounding 13 others before taking his
own life. The .40-calibre Smith & Wesson
M&P handgun he used had been stolen from a
Saskatchewan gun shop two years earlier and
made its way to Toronto and into the hands of
someone who never should have possessed
such a deadly weapon.
One thing that amazed me, revealed in a
major article the Globe and Mail published in
September at the time of the violence between
street gangs, was the sheer number of restricted
and prohibited firearms that have been
registered. We’re not talking about rifles and
shotguns for hunting, we’re talking handguns
and assault rifles.
As of early 2017 there were 943,785
handguns registered and new registrations
were running more than 15,000 a month! I
would never have dreamed there were nearly a
million handguns in Canada. There were
83,100 restricted rifles, such as assault-style
weapons. (By comparison, when the long-gun
registry was shut down, there were 7.1 million
rifles and shotguns registered.)
Now I can understand the practical reasons
for farmers to have rifles and shotguns to
protect their livestock and for hunters to have
these same weapons, but why do we need a
million handguns in Canada? Many of the
owners of these guns say they use them for
target practice, but who needs a .40-calibre
Smith & Wesson for that? If the challenge is to
hit a bullseye in a target, a pellet gun will serve
the need and won’t pose a threat to the lives of
others.
But that’s not enough for some people. A
century of movies and television shows
featuring people shooting at each other seems
to have created a mystique about guns that
attracts some people to want to own one.
Thankfully, we aren’t as infected with gun
fascination as our American neighbours,
where 38,000 people annually die from gun
violence.
The American disease becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy when Americans convince
themselves they need a handgun for self-
defence, and the number of guns available
means you’re more likely to die from a
gunshot. In the recent high-profile death of a
Dallas woman who was shot by a police officer
through the window of her own home, she had
taken a handgun from her purse when she
heard someone in her back yard. The nervous
officer shot her when he perceived danger from
her gun.
The more guns there are around, the more
chance one of them will take a life. In the
Globe and Mail article, retired Metro Toronto
police office Bruce McLeod became an
advocate for banning handguns after his
daughter called him from the site of that
Danforth shooting last year. She and friends
had been celebrating a friend’s 18th birthday
when the shooter opened fire. McLeod rushed
to the scene and found his daughter and some
of her friends locked in the basement
washroom of a nearby restaurant as they tried
to escape a killer randomly shooting people.
Not so lucky was their daughter’s friend, Reese
Fallon, who had been killed.
Later, when a neighbourhood meeting was
held and a gun enthusiast accused Bill Blair,
Minister of Border Security and Organized
Crime Reduction, of persecuting lawful gun
owners, McLeod said he “blew my gasket”. He
got to his feet and pointed out a gun legally
brought to Canada had been used. “It’s time
Canada got rid of handguns and assault rifles,”
he said. “We don’t need them.”
It’s hard to argue against his conclusion that
dangerous weapons aren’t playthings.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk
Living in a world full of bullies