Mr. Toews,
The Canadian Association Of Chiefs Of Police president, Chief William Blair, has sought an invitation from you to participate in the Firearms Advisory Committee, claiming that his organization "would provide you with timely and balanced advice on firearms issues from the leading law enforcement organization in Canada."
I should remind you that the CACP has been anything but balanced. While the CACP was praising Tasers to offset the negative press generated by their use, Taser International was making huge donations to the CACP's lavish annual conferences along with CGI Group, the software company responsible for the gun registry's computerized system.
More to the point, many among these Chiefs have publicly expressed their desire to ban guns and they have also consistently distorted the truth on this issue. At the height of the registry debate, a bogus study was released at a 1997 Chiefs of Police conference in Fredericton overstating the number of long guns "involved" in crime by a factor of 9 - including gun collections found during investigations where charges were never laid (i.e. a domestic complaint against a gun collector) or near but not involved with a crime or suicide.
The CACP claimed that 52% of firearms "found at crime scenes" or "in more than half of the criminal incidents" were rifles and shotguns. They continued to repeat this in press releases even after the RCMP objected to this interpretation of RCMP data, which actually showed that a majority of the long guns "involved" in those incidents were unrelated gun collections recovered during investigations that did not involve guns at all.
As late as January of 2004, CACP vice-president, Ottawa Police Chief Vince Bevan claimed that "these guns are commonly used in crimes" and "place police officers and citizens in danger every day". CACP members Ottawa police Chief Brian Ford and Winnipeg's Chief David Cassels (both known supporters of Canada's anti-gun lobby) have gone so far as to say that the firearms were "used" in those incidents.
At a time when Toronto bureaucrats and their Liberal pals in Ottawa were pushing for a ban on handguns, Blair himself was instrumental in making sport shooters and collectors a pariah in Toronto and we saw some shaky statistics come from his office making it appear as though a majority of handguns used by Toronto thugs were taken from legal owners. To further drive home this message, Blair cooked up a plan called "Project Safe City".
Did this plan target known thugs and convicted criminals? No, they looked up everyone who had expired licenses and searched their homes - eventually finding one miscreant engaged in illegal activities.
The CACP is not a balanced organization that would provide good advice on firearms issues. They are little more than a government funded lobby group that is more focused on political agendas than they are on public safety.
Barry Glasgow
Woodlawn, Ontario
