FACTS YOUR GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!
        Judicial and related Professional Opinion of Gun Control
        ___________
      (             )
   (     VANCOUVER     )
 (                       )
(       AUG 21 1986       )
 (                       )                              NO. CC 861283
   (     REGISTRY      )                           VANCOUVER REGISTRY
      (             )
        -----------

                 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION )
BY JAMES LESLIE HURLEY FOR A    )
WRIT OF CERTIORARI OR RELIEF IN )
THE NATURE OF CERTIORARI AND    )          REASONS FOR
JUDGMENT 
FOR A WRIT OF MANDAMUS OR       )
RELIEF IN THE NATURE OF         )
MANDAMUS IN AID AGAINST W.F.    )
DAWSON AND L.M. NEWSON AND      )          OF THE
HONOURABLE 
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF         )
BRITISH COLUMBIA.               )
                                )          MR. JUSTICE GIBBS
THIS IS THE PETITION OF         )
JAMES LESLIE HURLEY             )          IN CHAMBERS
                                )
                  PETITIONER    )

page "- 2 -", lines 11 to 17 contain the following text:

      This is a difficult case.  Not the least of the difficulties is due 
to the tortuous language of the gun control provisions of the
_Criminal_Code_.  In _Regina_v._Neil_ (1985) Kamloops Registry
No. 25175, Gordon, P.C.J., was moved, with some justification, to
refer to those provisions as "one of the most horrifying examples of bad
draftsmanship that I have had the misfortune to consider", as "so
convoluted that even those responsible for enforcing the provisions are
apparently unable to understand it", and as "a challenge to one's sense
of logic".

Clearly, within the confines of their courtrooms, Canadian judges have
expressed dissatisfaction with the current gun control laws and with the
obscure manner of writing this portion of the criminal code. 
       

The Auditor General of Canada's report to the House of Commons in
1993 re:"Gun Control Program" Assistant Auditor General: Richard
B. Fadden; Responsible Auditor: Alan Gilmore said:

      "27.29 Our review of the new regulations indicated that important
data, needed to assess the potential benefits and future effectiveness of
the regulations, were not available at the time the regulations were     
drafted.  The government proceeded with new regulations for reasons
of public policy."

University of Toronto criminologist, Philip Stenning had this to say
about the (1991) changes to gun legislation:

      "The bottom line is we're legislating without knowledge about the
likelihood of things that we're legislating working." "The official
rationale is to reduce firearms abuse of all kinds, whether it be theft of
firearms, crimes with firearms, suicides with firearms. I think the actual
rationale is a more symbolic activity.  It's the need to be seen to be
doing something about these problems.  It serves a political purpose."
(The Burlington Spectator - April 10, 1993)

In his paper, "Gun Control, A Counterproductive Petition", H. Taylor
Buckner, Associate Professor of Sociology at Concordia University
said: 

"A (just completed) scientific survey of undergraduate students at
Concordia demonstrated that the students who signed the petition do
not know what the current law is, vastly over estimate the involvement
of handguns in homicides, and would have been just as willing to sign
a petition that asked for the current law.

Finally Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood, of the West Yorkshire
Constabulary (writing in Police Review, Britain) after he had done a
six-month study, at Cambridge University, of firearms control methods
and their actual (as opposed to theoretical) effects in many countries:

      At first glance, it may seem odd or even perverse to suggest that
statutory controls on the private ownership of firearms are irrelevant
to the problem of armed crime: yet that is precisely what the evidence
shows. Armed crime and violent crime generally are products of ethnic
and social factors unrelated to the availability of a particular type of
weapon. there is no case, either in the history of this country or in
the experience of other countries in which controls can be shown to
have restricted the flow of weapons to criminals, or in any way reduced
crime.

Clearly there is a large body of judicial and related professional opinion
our Gun Control laws are a mess. That they do not positively
contribute to crime control. 
What's needed is a management audit of the Federal Justice
Department followed by a Royal Commission into the effectiveness of
Gun Control to separate reality from Government cultivated
perception.

               GUN CONTROL IS NOT CRIME CONTROL

              THE NEW BRUNSWICK FIREARMS ALLIANCE