Re: “Gun control is more than a one-off issue,” June 9.
Thank you, Vic News, for your editorial on gun control. You’re right: Canada has a gun problem, and gun control means doing several jobs properly. We need better control over gun sales and smuggling. We must understand the criminal gangs too. Public Safety Canada says 20 per cent of our homicides are linked to organized crime or street gangs.
But this too: we need much better control over our police. Our police shot 36 Canadians to death in 2020, and another 36 last year. That’s more than any of our massacres, more than the 22 gunned down by that Nova Scotia shooter two years ago.
This is shocking: 13 per cent of all gun killings in Canada are by our own police — second only to the gangs.
Britain has 13 times more people than British Columbia. But our B.C. cops kill more people every year than do the cops in the U.K.
So a big thank you to our B.C. legislature’s special committee on reforming the Police Act. Their recommendations should help us get better control over our police.
W.M. Johnstone
Victoria