Madam Speaker, on March 24 the member of Parliament for Saint-Hubert and I presented a petition in Parliament with over 200,000 signatures asking that handguns be banned for private use.
This petition was sponsored by Concordia University following the murders with a handgun of four professors at the university in 1992. The murderer, who was also a professor, was able to acquire three handguns legally without much difficulty, indicating a serious weakness in the law. Later on March 24, I asked the Minister of Justice if he would give serious attention to the demands in the petitions. I asked that same question again today.
Handguns are not used for hunting and have no other legitimate use by ordinary citizens. Some members of the House and some Canadians allege that the present gun laws are not effective because we still have crimes with guns.
No laws are 100 per cent effective. On the other hand, there is no doubt that without our present laws the situation would be much worse. It has been proven over and over again that where guns are less available and more difficult to obtain, there is less crime with guns. That is an indisputable fact.
The simplistic slogan spread about by the gun lobby that if one bans guns only criminals will have guns is total nonsense. The professor murderer at Concordia University was not a criminal until he easily and legally acquired his guns and carried out his killings.
Marc Lépine, who killed 14 women at the École Polytechnique, had no criminal record before he easily and legally acquired his automatic rifle and carried out his massacre. When guns are easily and legally available some, perhaps the majority, will obtain them and use them legally. Unfortunately some will obtain them and use them criminally.
The only logical action if we are truly interested in reducing crime with guns is to make them and ammunition more difficult to obtain. This means a total ban on handguns for private use.