BORDER GUARDS VS. CROSSING GUARDS

If gun control is your cause celebe, consider this.

I don't expect my fellow Canadians to get down with the NRA any day soon, but at some point, we should probably take a reasonable look at guns and their place in our culture.

We live a gun-a-phobic society, that much is clear. Recent tragedies have again confirmed for us the presence of guns in our midst, and the mortal peril the represent. And the last year had too many headlines involving those charged with our public security paying the ultimate price in their service.

So, it strikes me as perfectly natural that Canadians don't much care for an agenda that would expand the number of legal guns in our country. In fact, over the recent election campaign, a certain former Prime Minister promised to ban handguns, even though they were already largely prohibited.

I don't wish to speak to the specifics as to why the handgun promise was silly, the link above provides a 'Reality Check' that more or less explains the virtue of such a policy ( that is, if demagoguery is a Canadian virtue, which it increasingly appears to be).

The Liberal handgun ban was innefectual policy. ButI think it wasn't meant to be useful. Like other Liberal policies regarding socially unpopular touchstones (the long gun registry, choice in childcare, private health clinics, Shiela Copps, etc.), the policy existed not just to grab a headline in the Globe, but it operated as a kind of group therapy for the Tofu and organic edemame set. It doesn't matter to these people that such policies don't work, only that we make a national public statement condemning the existence of handguns in this little corner of time and space.

What will be interesting will be seeing how the Prime Minister-elect's respods to Tuesday's news. A quick but decisive move that may be seen as somewhat contentious would go a long way to distinguishing his stewardship from his predecessor's and avoid the dithering labels that Paul Martin bore and put a little more authority behind his slim mandate.