Western Producer staff
If you torture data long enough, it will confess to anything. So it is with the search for Canadian opinion about government’s gun control proposals.
In the House of Commons where the debate rages, both sides claim to be on the side of the people.
Recently, Vancouver Centre Liberal MP and physician Hedy Fry claimed that 86 percent of Canadians support “strong gun-control measures,” including 68 percent of firearms owners.
Earlier, Red Deer Reform MP Bob Mills had a different version of public opinion. Based on a petition, telephone calls and letters, he told the Commons that in his riding, sentiment against the government’s proposal to require registration of all firearms is running 230 to one.
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Ironically, justice minister Allan Rock earlier had told Mills by letter that 67 percent of Mills’ constituents support a “universal gun registration program.”
Mills said Rock’s claims of support are “outlandish” and not supported by the real people.
Who is correct?
There is no question that Canada does not have a “gun culture” of the type that dominates the American television most Canadians watch.
There is no question that many Canadians who hunt or consider guns a part of their heritage are upset at proposals to further restrict their ownership privileges by imposing paperwork and cost on them.
And there is no question that many Canadians on the fence in this debate are offended by the gun-lobby images of a modern-day Canadian government disarming them once their guns are registered, as the Nazis did in Germany.
A slogan at last summer’s pro-gun rally on Parliament Hill captured the paranoid’s mood: “Gun owners are today’s Jews”, said the sign, with a swastika beside it. This is preaching to the extreme of the converted, not to mainstream gun supporters.
But what to make of the wildly divergent claims of support?
Much of it depends on the question asked.
Much of it depends on the listening ability of the partisan. On both sides, advocates hear what they want to hear.
And some of it depends on some well-entrenched stereotypes that color interpretations of that you hear and how the results are interpreted.
There is a view, for example, that Western Canada is up in arms (excuse the image) over gun-control proposals.
Courtesy of Reform and rural Liberal MPs, Saskatchewan New Democrats, newspaper letter writers and gun lobbyists, we have the image of westerners in city and countryside seeing Ottawa as a left-wing Big Brother trying to take away their guns and enslave them.
How, then, to explain Calgarian John Schmal? He is a city alderman and chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities committee on community safety and crime prevention.
“The lawful use of guns will not be compromised by these proposals,” he said last month. “It’s time to get on with the legislation.”
Surely, he doesn’t live in gun-loving Reform Alberta where everyone thinks alike on this issue, does he?
