Charlton Heston's gun role flops in Canada

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By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2000

As an Oscar-winning actor, Charlton Heston dazzled moviegoers with his epic portrayals of Ben Hur and Moses.

But the 76-year-old Heston is getting some bad reviews for his latest role: trying to convince Canadians that their tough new gun control law is an "unenforceable fraud."

Heston, president of the National Rifle Association, recently crossed the border to blast the law requiring that all firearms in Canada be registered by Jan. 1, 2003. And he chided Canadians for letting successive governments erode what he called their "God-given" right to own guns without interference.

"Our countries mirror each other in so many ways," Heston told the British Columbia Wildlife Federation. "But now, while we still fight to protect this most basic freedom, your government finds it convenient to run roughshod over your gun rights. . . . My friends, how did this happen?"

Heston is correct that the United States and Canada have much in common. But one thing Canadians have no desire to share is our sky-high rate of gun-related murders: 15 times the Canadian level. So Heston's appearance, just two weeks before the anniversary of Colorado's terrible Columbine massacre, prompted cries of "Go home, Moses."

"Who does Mr. Heston think he is to read Canadians the riot act?" asked one letter writer to the National Post, a Toronto newspaper. "President or no president of the NRA, let Americans stick to their own guns (no pun intended)."

Although it too has a frontier heritage, Canada has always had stricter gun control laws than the United States. Handgun ownership is restricted to police, collectors and gun club members, and licensing and registration of handguns have been required since the 1930s.

As a result, Canada has only 1-million handguns compared with our 77-million. The social toll is vastly different too: One study estimated the cost of death and injury from firearms to be $495 per capita in the United States versus $195 in Canada.

The impetus for even tougher measures was the 1989 "Montreal Massacre" of 14 young women at a technical school. Six years later, Parliament passed the Firearms Act tightening handgun regulations and extending the registration requirements to rifles and shotguns. Several provinces, led by Alberta, are challenging the law on the grounds the federal government is intruding on a matter that should be left to them.

Heston is right when he says the law will be expensive to administer: The start-up cost of the new federal registry has ballooned from $85-million to $300-million. And while the act enjoys great public support, it has drawn opposition from some ranchers and hunt clubs.

But critics charge the NRA has grossly distorted gun control efforts in Canada and other countries in an attempt to scare Americans into thinking further U.S. regulation will lead to a ban on privately owned firearms.

Here are a few examples of what Heston said in Canada, and the critics' response:

Heston: "Even your law enforcement officers call this latest Canadian gun sham a financial, unenforceable fraud."

Response: In fact, the law is supported by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian police chiefs association and the police departments of Canada's two largest cities, Toronto and Montreal.

Heston: "We've seen what transpired in England, when police . . . called in all privately owned guns. It's not a pretty sight, if fine firearms stir fond memories. Beautifully crafted shotguns, World War I heirlooms, family keepsakes. All went into the pile to be pulverized like rubbish."

Response: Britain banned large-caliber handguns after a man with four guns killed 16 children, two teachers and himself at a school in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996. But the law exempts antique firearms and those "held as curiosities or for ornamental purposes," according to the British Home Office.

Heston: "In Australia, the gun bans came as a knee-jerk reaction to one isolated tragedy. But in the aftermath, crime with guns went up, not down."

Response: This claim so outraged the Australian government that it has demanded a retraction from the NRA. Since Australia tightened its gun laws after the 1996 slaying of 35 people in Port Arthur, the number of murders and armed robberies involving guns has dropped. Moreover, in 1998 Australia's gun-related homicide rate was just 0.28 per 100,000 people compared with four per 100,000 in the United States. "There are many things that Australia can learn from the United States," Australia's attorney general wrote the NRA. "How to manage firearm ownership is not one of them."

Wendy Cukier, one of Canada's leading gun control advocates, thinks Heston's speech in British Columbia was part of the NRA's attempt to raise the specter of a "great international gun-banning conspiracy."

But, she added, the NRA might also be running a bit scared, even though it has so far managed to quash most attempts at gun registration in the United States.

"Perhaps they're concerned that we might export the seditious notion that gun control works," says Cukier, a professor at Toronto's Ryerson Polytechnic University. "If Americans did start looking more closely at the experience of other countries, they'd see that most industrialized nations have strict controls on guns and much lower death rates than you do in the United States."

- Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

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