Mr. Speaker, I would like to read a few sentences from a speech given by Mrs. Deborah L. Ure whose 19-year old son Wes and his friend Santo were shot and killed in 1992:
Wes and Santo are dead. It doesn't matter to me that they were killed by a gunshot wound. They could just as easily have been stabbed, beaten or mutilated. The end result is the same. Our children are dead. The gun didn't kill them. Two poor excuses for human beings did. Now, when these men came into possession of this gun, the murder weapon, did they have an FAC? Did they register it? Did they store it safely? Of course not. Criminals or wanna-be criminals don't respect our country's gun laws. Safe storage to them is having the gun stuck down the back of their pants or inside a boot until they need to use it. This is the problem that our justice minister should be addressing. We need criminal control, not gun control.
In response to the pleas of this mother of a murdered teenager, Reform does not support the registration of rifles and shotguns unless it can be shown to be an effective control for reducing the criminal-