THE STATUS TODAY...

Do such laws have any effect on violent criminals? Yes. They provide the violent criminal with a government guarantee that his law-abiding victim will be unable to protect herself or himself while the violent crime is being committed. The victim either has no firearm, or has the firearm in secure storage where it is not available to protect human life from criminal violence. That guarantee is a disaster for women, because women are the preferred targets of violent criminals.

Is that important? Yes, it is. As Cindy Lightheart, in "Women in Danger," said, " The police do not come to a woman before or during a violent crime. They come after the crime has been completed and the violent criminal has left the scene. It is extremely rare for a police officer to arrive in time to prevent or even interrupt a violent crime when a woman is the victim. How could he? She could not call the police before her attacker left."

Ms. Lightheart is correct. If a woman is unable to protect the lives of herself and her children when she is attacked by a violent criminal, she becomes just another bad statistic. While the Lioness is not a perfect answer to this problem, it is a serious, useful, and practical advance on screaming. A woman actually can defeat an attacker, and, if he is a rapist, it is usually not very difficult to do that. If she has a firearm, she can often arrest him (American women often do that) and end his career as a predator.

"Police protection" is a myth, because police do not provide a protective service to anyone other than the occasional visiting dignitary or high government official. For an ordinary Canadian woman, a call for police protection will get a response only if she can and does state that she is under active attack by a violent criminal. On the rare occasions when such a call can be made before the criminal has completed the crime and left the scene, it is very rare for police to be able to arrive before the criminal has departed.

Our nation is changing. In earlier years, the police and the citizens acted as a team, with both taking active roles in dealing with violent criminals. Today, every Canadian woman is being advised to allow the criminal to do anything he wants to do, cooperate with the criminal, and hope that he does not murder her before he leaves. The team has been broken, and that is wrong. Our laws still provide an active role for the citizen, but bureaucrats and politicians try to prevent women from realizing that.

The possibility that a violent criminal will murder his victim before he leaves is becoming more and more a description of what actually happens. That is, apparently, a result of lenient sentencing, easy parole, and the government's desire to get violent criminals out of prison as quickly as possible because it is expensive to keep them inside prisons.

Now Paul Martin is copying the British mistake again. He proposes to ban all legally owned handguns and confiscate them. His plan will have no way to take even a single illegal firearm away from any violent criminal. His plan is unclear, because the legislation has apparently not been written yet--but we already know what the result will be. Violent crime rates will go up--very quickly, very strongly. If a government gives violent criminals a guarantee of their personal safety, what else can one expect?

Paul Martin's plan is particularly a disaster for women. Women are generally smaller and weaker than men, and therefore can be killed by a violent criminal armed with nothing but his bare hands. Unless the woman has some way to equalize the difference in strength, she is going to be just another bad statistic.

It is not generally known that the Liberal government's gun control laws are specifically designed to prevent women from being able to protect human life from criminal violence. For example, when a woman leaves an abusive partner, experience proves that he is likely to stalk her, attack her, and even kill her. There is no doubt whatever that such behaviour is a very real problem in our society today.

Let us consider a typical case. He is nearly twice her size. He has threatened to kill her. The police refuse to arrest him, because they have no "confirmation" of his threats. They offer no protection beyond giving her a phone number to call. The courts have issued restraint orders--which he regularly ignores.

If she wants to acquire a firearm to protect her own life and those of her children from his criminal violence, she must first get a firearms licence. If she tries to do that, a government bureaucrat will notify her abuser that she has done so. Then he will refuse to issue the licence she needs for 28 days. He has to do those things, because the law says that he must. And so she must sit for an absolute minimum of 28 days, helpless and afraid, because the procedure is what is important to a bureaucrat--not her terror. Our government is providing every abusive man with a window of opportunity to terrorize, beat, or murder her. And that is wrong.

The National Firearms Association has studied this problem in depth. We have taken note of the utter failure of severe gun control laws as demonstrated in Britain, Australia, Canada, and other nations. We have taken note of the dangerous "reverse effect" as the gun control laws cause violent crime levels to increase. We are surprised by the fact that the government does not understand what is happening.

There can be no security or safety in a country that has adopted severe gun control laws. We all live in a smuggler's paradise, where the required speed of international shipments has resulted in masses of containers full of merchandise--some legal and some contraband--crossing our borders every day. Under two per cent of the containers are opened by Customs, and even fewer are examined carefully and fully.

That means that the loss rate for shipments of illegal drugs, illegal guns, and other contraband is well under two per cent. The loss rate is merely a minor cost of doing business. Therefore, violent criminals are not now, and probably not ever, going to have difficulty in acquiring the firearm of their choice.

The National Firearms Association is now warning Canadians that the rising violent crime rates are going to get much worse before they can possibly get any better. Unless the incorrect policy of imposing severe gun laws on the law-abiding victims and thereby providing the criminals with a guarantee of their personal safety is reversed, there is no hope for improvement--particularly for women.

The National Firearms Association is doing what it can to protect Canadian women, because women are the people who are most in danger as a result of the foolish policies and laws imposed on Canadians by their Liberal government. We are providing a free course for women that covers simple but effective unarmed protection of human life from criminal violence. We allow anyone to publish, print, distribute, teach, and use our course in any way they see fit, free of charge. We call it the Lioness Method, and you can find it on our web site.

It is not enough. A woman cannot be expected to protect human life--her own and that of others--from any and all forms of criminal violence unless she is allowed to use the tools that equalize the imbalance between male strength and female power. No, the National Firearms Association does not want to arm every woman in the country. We do want a woman to be able to choose if she wants to be armed, if and only if she meets the same standards required of an RCMP constable for proficiency with a firearm and knowledge of relevant law. We regard that as a reasonable proposal in a period of rising crime rates.

If such a policy is ever adopted, the small number of women who will take advantage of it will spread a shield of protection over all Canadian women. Violent criminals are very unlikely to attack an armed woman, and they will not know whether a chosen victim is armed or not. That will make them hesitate to attack any woman. That effect has been well demonstrated in the United States, where the re-establishment of the old partnership between a woman and her local police officer is now dealing with violent criminals in an efficient and practical manner. Violent crime rates in the United States are dropping in every state where gun control laws have been eased in recognition of the usefulness of the private citizen as a deterrent to violent crime. The same can be true in Canada, Australia, and Britain.

This is not a "radical" solution to our violent crime problem. It is merely taking a realistic look at the failed British theories, and comparing their actual results to the actual results of the successful American laws.

In every state that adopted the new style of firearms control laws, anti-firearms people said the result would be a blood bath. Ordinary people would shoot at each other, just because they could.

Well, that didn't happen. Ordinary people are sane, sensible, and law-abiding. They do not commit murder just because they have access to a firearm, any more than they stab each other just because there are knives in the kitchen.

There is no point in continuing to reinforce failure, or in escalating our violent crime rates even farther by preferring theories to facts. It is to be hoped that our next government will start dealing with reality.

The National Firearms Association cannot do everything our government should be doing to protect Canadian women. What we can do, we are doing. It's expensive; if you can help us with a small donation, we will be grateful.