WFSA Current News - June, 2004

June 15, 2004

Police Chiefs surveyed on guns
            USA runs a yearly survey of Police Chiefs and Sheriffs. Insightmag.com has run an article about the latest one at http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/06/11/National/New-Poll.Says.Police.Chiefs.Expect.Trouble-687719.shtml .
            As would be expected, considerable attention was paid in the survey to terrorism and drugs. (Only 17 per cent believe the measures taken against illegal drugs have been successful.) However, there were also questions about firearms. In years past, Police Chiefs have on occasion issued statements warning against the right-to-carry legislation that has been perceived before the event to be dangerous to the peace. Police are often perceived by the media to be automatically against gun ownership.
            In the survey, 94 per cent of survey respondents supported the civilian right to gun ownership. 96 per cent stated their belief that criminals use illegal sources to obtain firearms. When asked if they believed ordinary citizens should be prevented from having permits to carry concealed firearms, almost seven in ten indicated their belief that this should be allowed.

June 14, 2004

Dove season allowed
            The mourning dove has recently been placed on the quarry list in Minnesota, USA, after many years. The species has long been shot for the table in the majority of American states.
            As usual wherever seasonal hunting is correctly managed, the move has been made on sound conservation grounds. As is equally usual, the complaints made about it are based on emotion.
            There is a population of about 400 million of the birds in North America, and roughly six per cent or some 25 million are taken annually by hunters to eat. This is a completely safe harvest. The principle of sustainable use is maintained very steadily in the United States. It has a longstanding record of maintaining healthy small game populations by ensuring science works hand in hand with hunting organizations.
            In response to the dove being declared legal game, in an article published in the Detroit Free Press, Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the United States (http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/epace11_20040611.htm) has drawn attention in the usual way to the preservationist line. Hunters, he says, like to argue that the species they shoot are harmful to man – dirty, or pests, or prone to spread disease. The dove, he says, merely calls harmlessly on the roofs of houses, and therefore cannot be argued by hunters to be worthy of hunting. The truth is different. The central argument for hunting is that the fees gleaned for licences are poured back into management of the species, with a net gain to the health and size of the populations.
            Then, two days later, the president of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk, issued a statement offering to refund the cost of a hunting licence to any hunter who decides “not to shoot or harass” any wildlife from that point on. In the Shreveport Times (LA) of June 13, Newkirk’s statement refers to hunting: “Violence against those who are defenceless is indefensible”, she says.
            Emotion aside, the fact is that some fifty thousand hunters in the state of Minnesota will be supporting active conservation programs with their licence fees, and sustainably harvesting a portion of a quarry species which will in no way affect its overall numbers. A spokesman for Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division said, "Years of population monitoring and study have shown that regulated hunting does not harm dove populations."  


June 2, 2004

Canadian registry criticism spreads
            Criticism of the Canadian gun registry is intensifying as the country prepares for an election. With costs now totalling over one billion dollars, the value of attempting to register guns is being challenged by increasingly wide community groups.
            Historically, chiefs of police have supported the principle of gun registration, at least in its formative stages. This is still fairly common among high police officials in Canada now, despite the growing number of people found in polls to consider the registry is ineffective, and despite a lack of evidence to show any improvement whatever in crime figures since it became law.
            However, in an article in the Calgary Herald today, Al Koenig, the president of the 1,400-strong Calgary Police Association, made unusually pointed criticisms. The money spent on the registry would have provided fully 5,000 additional police officers, he said. In addition, he went on to be specific about the nature of its failure. He said the officers investigating drug caches find guns on the scene that are not registered, and each time this happens the registry is shown to have done nothing that can effectively warn police of firearms present in dangerous conditions where they are sent to attend.
            Over three-quarters of offences involving firearms in 2002 were carried out with guns that are either prohibited or restricted, and which could not be subject to registration even if their owners were willing to present them.
             www.calgaryherald.com carries this as well as other articles on the issue.