Poll would be more constructive than Motz; petition

By Letter to the Editor on January 28, 2020.

Re: “Liberals’ take on guns just ‘hype’ and ‘rhetoric’: Motz,” Jan. 10

Petitions are one-sided polls. We may know how many signed in favour of the issue but never how many are against it. It would be more instructive to conduct a poll to get some idea of how an entire population views an issue but polls are tricky to design so that they produce accurate results.

In the last federal election there were 27.1 million electors on the list of whom 17.9 million voted. There are only 0.08 million signatures on petition e-2341. 17.8 million Canadians who made the effort to vote had no input into this petition, unless of course it is reasoned that they had input by not signing the petition.

A survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute in April 2019, found 64% of those polled supported limiting access to handguns, while 27% did not. For assault weapons, support for additional limits was even stronger, at 77%, with 17% opposed. The Angus Reid Institute is a professional pollster with an excellent reputation.

In 1993 a Supreme Court of Canada decision concluded Canadians have no constitutional right to bear arms. Owning firearms in Canada is a privilege, not a right.

If the Liberals spend $250 million on a gun buy back, that will cost about $6.60 for every man, woman and child in the country. Peanuts.

There is only one person here who is guilty of hype and rhetoric.

Fred Lewis

Medicine Hat

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