The Editor,

Shooting is an Olympic sport. Luckily, Canadians are treated as first-class citizens and they can own and practise safe handgun shooting sports at their local shooting ranges.

Is Surrey’s city council going to treat its law-abiding, fully vetted fathers and mothers, electricians, plumbers, engineers, workers, teachers, entrepreneurs as second-class citizens by banning their sports and recreational handguns unilaterally?

If the intent is to reduce crime, then know that illegal handguns are already banned. These are the guns that criminals use.

Do criminals go to RCMP and apply for a licence to own handguns? No. Their guns are smuggled across the border. Their guns are not registered guns nor are they registered gun owners.

Surrey, please try to take the criminals’ guns away – not the guns of law-abiding citizens.

The proposed handgun ban does not do anything to the criminals but penalizes the lawful owners by restricting them to practise their sport or making it a financial hit on them if rules were made regarding their storage at some third-party place, like lockers in a gun range. Please, the COVID-19 virus has already done enough economic damage.

Banning handguns in Surrey for lawful owners and claiming that it has anything to do with crime reduction is like losing your wallet in Vancouver and searching for it in Surrey – you are not going to find it but you will waste a lot of time.

This will penalize lawful gun owners. The government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. Please do not forget the ‘for’ part.

Amrit Birring, Surrey

Surrey Now Leader