[ALW]

CTV News Atlantic ran a piece on this evenings supper time news on the recent gun violence in HRM. As a follow up they have an online poll up for the next day or so, the votes/% are as of the time of making this post:

CTV News Atlantic Web Poll

What is the best way to curb gun violence?

1. Step up police patrols? 16 votes/6%

2. Tougher gun control laws? 20 votes/7%

3. Tougher penalties? 70 votes/26%

4. All of the above? 163 votes/61%

I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with legal gun ownership, use and hunting but the general public certainly won't differentiate in most cases. I have to question why an option wouldn't be "Enforce and prosecute the existing firearms legislation to the fullest extent?", regardless public opinion based on the votes sent so far clearly show a strong anti-gun outlook.

With the general publics opinion seemingly turning further against private gun ownership and hunting, it makes it all the more unfortunate when we turn on each other as hunters & shooters, for whatever reason.

 

[Lurch]

I do the poll every day as I'm interested in how my vote compares to rest of the voters. The problem with this poll is that there are a couple of good answers being "step up police patrols" and "tougher penalties". The "all of the above" answer captures these but groups "tougher gun laws" in with it. Currently 42% for 'all of the above' and only 5% for "tougher gun laws". The obvious answer of "tougher penalties" is 43%.

This is because of drug turf wars plain and simple.

 

[bad knees]

We as hunters and sportsmen using guns in the fields, forests, and gun clubs must do much more to educate those who don't use guns. Don't know for sure how to do this, but gun clubs, hunting organizations, and any other organizations involved with guns must, or should pay into a fund where professionals must mount an education and advertisement campaign giving all the relevant data showing, gun ownership with regards to hunting and target shooting; arrests or infractions by gun owners for poaching, improper handling, storage, and domestic violence. These figures must be accurate and truthful. Also figures need to be shown for criminal acts such as robberies, murders and any other infractions by legal gun owners. All this data must then be compared against the data for criminal acts by criminals and organized crime using guns for robberies, drug violence murders, and retaliation or ordered murders. I'm sure when all the data is shown that legal gun owners will be highlighted as having few infractions such as murders robberies when compared with career criminals and gang or organized crime. When the previous gun laws were implemented, all those against guns were shouting that there would be less robberies , murders and senseless deaths to by standers when caught in the crossfire of gang violence. Off course we knew that would prove to be untrue. But we didn't convey the truth properly that those who use guns for criminal acts do not and would not ever register guns. We will never win over most of the anti gun people, but its the general public; that can be swayed either way, who we must educate with the true facts about the law abiding gun owners that will never do anything unlawful with their guns.