A response to a gratuitous insult to gun owners.
I am disappointed by R. Blake Brown’s gratuitous insult of millions of gun owners. It was uncalled for. In his article he claimed that, “members of the firearms community seek to ‘other’ the gunman — to distinguish him from other gun owners, and to intimate that he was not a ‘real’ Canadian firearms owner.” The “gunman” being Marc Lépine, whose birth name was Gamil Gharbi, who murdered 14 women in 1989.
Brown smears Canadian firearms owners as racist or anti-immigrant because they prefer to use the murderer’s birth name, Gamil Gharbi, rather than the name he later assumed, Marc Lépine. It’s hard to see how merely referring to the origins of the killer implies racism. Does calling the killer Marc Lépine imply prejudice against Québécois?
Occam’s Razor suggests a much simpler explanation: Lépine (or Gharbi) was aberrant. The facts show that Gharbi/Lépine differs from most Canadians. Not only is he not a typical firearms owner, he is not a typical Canadian immigrant either. It’s not difficult to see Gharbi/Lépine as deviant.
First, very few people are murderers; according to Statistics Canada murderers are not typical people. Second, exceptionally few firearms owners are murderers. Third, Gharbi’s upbringing was hardly normal. He was raised by a single mother who was abandoned by her abusive husband. Gamil Gharbi changed his name to Marc Lépine in a vain effort to fit into Canadian society.
Statistics Canada statistics show that Canadian gun owners are less likely to commit murder than other Canadians. Millions of Canadians are licensed to own firearms legally. Most (75 per cent) own firearms to hunt wild animals or to engage in sport shooting (20 per cent). Gharbi was neither a sport shooter nor a hunter. Almost all firearms owners use their firearms legally.
Firearms owners are exemplary middle-class Canadians: they are employed, tax-paying, law-abiding, contributing citizens. Demographically, civilian gun owners include women as well as men, and immigrants as well as native-born Canadians.
Blake Brown’s gratuitous insult to gun owners
Firearms safety is a necessary part of responsible firearms ownership
I am not surprised by the R. “Flake” Brown attitude, typed only by looking out of the left side of his left eye and using the pudgy fingers of his left hand. Such labelling(libelling) of firearm owners is to be expected from snakes in the grass and if I ever meet this clown in the back forty, he will be instructed in what a hoplophobic hooligan he really is. If he wishes to be physically intrusive, that is his call and I will happily respond. We are too polite to these morons.
I dislike GAMIL GHARBI (his real name) because he murdered 14 innocent women. I DO NOT LIKE how anti gun slobbering left went into overtime trying to paint honest hardworking middle class CANADIANSJUST LIKE ME as being the SAME as sick, twisted, GAMIL! WHO DOESTHAT? What about, INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY? Lefty quiffs love to denigrate the middle class. They cant seem to help themselves. because only deranged persons punish the innocent because of their belief systems. Just LIKE GAMIL.