Don Plett on Guns, Bill C-71 With Mark Towhey on NewsTalk 1010

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TheGunBlog.ca — Canadian Senator Don Plett spoke today on Toronto’s NewsTalk 1010 radio with Mark Towhey about guns and Bill C-71, the government’s planned law against hunters, farmers and sport shooters. The government is also considering banning more firearms from federally licensed owners.

Plett is a member of the opposition Conservative Party and has spoken against Bill C-71.

Following are excerpts of Plett’s replies to Towhey, as transcribed by TheGunBlog.ca. (Audio replay.)

On Bill C-71

“This is another registry, a gun registry by the back door, Mark. In fact, violent crimes in Canada has not been increasing, it has been decreasing …”

“Clearly, Mark, this is not an effort to decrease violent crimes, but a gun registry by the back door.”

“Violent crimes have been increasing only with gang violence. And it certainly is a problem for us in the country.

“But Bill C-71 does nothing to touch gun violence. It touches only legal gun owners, duck hunters, farmers. It does nothing to address the real problem that we have, and that is gang violence.”

“The gun violence, or the deaths in Toronto, were with handguns, Mark. Handguns have been registered weapons since 1934. This bill does nothing to address that problem. It does nothing to address the problem of people using illegally purchased handguns.”

 

On Crime

“We’re having more and more murders committed by other weapons than guns. Use of knives has gone up considerably, whereas use of guns has gone down.”

“The legal guns are not the issue. It doesn’t matter whether we have a ban or not on handguns. Criminals are still going to have access to handguns. They are the ones that are a problem, not people that buy legally purchased handguns, register them and go to the shooting range to shoot these guns. They are not the people out there killing anybody, and we are targeting the wrong people.”

 

On How Gun Laws Disarm Honest Citizens

“I do not own any guns. I used to own guns, and I got rid of my guns during the previous botched gun registry because I just simply didn’t want to bother with it and I wasn’t using them, so I got rid of my guns.”

 

On Lawful Gun Owners

“There is absolutely no statistics that show that if I go and legally purchase a gun that I am going to illegally sell that gun. That just simply isn’t there. We have laws in place already that dictate the transfer of gun ownership and how that can and will be done. Those laws have been in place for quite some time.”

 

On Crime Rates, 2013 as Base Year

“The gun-crime rate has done nothing but gone down since the 1990s. It has gone down and not gone up. The fact of the matter is that the Liberals chose the year of 2013 because that happened to be a year that it went from the very lowest that it had been in 60 some years. There was a short spike, and you have these spikes all the time. That’s why they used that particular year.”

 

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