While I had long believed in gun control, its importance hit home for me after losing my mother at the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. Like many Canadians, I took some comfort in the strong Canadian laws and the seeming lack of comparable influence of the Canadian gun lobby compared to their NRA cousins in the US. However, the changes to Canadian gun laws over the past year show that this sense of comfort was naive.
Friday's monstrous, senseless killing spree in Colorado obviously sucked the whimsy out of the news cycle this weekend, and even a cynic like me must concede that the Canadian press has largely responded with a rarely-seen abundance of dignity and restraint. There have been no obnoxious editorials about gun control, no ill-timed rants about Canadian superiority in the face of "yet another" symptom of American dysfunction.
Ezra Levant's weekend column in the Sun comparing Nazi suppression to Canada's gun control laws showed a lack of journalistic professionalism that harms both his own cause and the advancement of civil discourse in Canada. An author of six books and a holder of a law degree should hold himself to a higher standard.