As 2012 comes to a close people in the U.S. and Canada can look back on 12 months marked by many highlights, including a gradual return to economic health following the recession.
Sadly, the past year has also been marked by horrific mass shootings of children, youths and adults in both countries.
The Dec. 14 killing of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn. shocked and saddened people around the world. Who will easily forget the images of those young children being hurried away from the classrooms where their fellow students lay dead?
The Connecticut killings brought the number of people killed in mass shootings in the U.S. over the past year to more than 80.
And of course Alberta was not spared the spectre of mass shootings either. Twelve months ago Derek Jenson gunned down Tanner Craswell, Mitch Maclean and Tabitha Stepple, and seriously wounded a second woman, before turning the gun on himself on the side of a highway south of Calgary.
Although smaller in scale, the Alberta killings were just as tragic as those in the States, with young lives lost in pointless incidents of violence.
Since the shootings in Connecticut, the calls for much stricter gun laws, and even for outright bans on gun ownership, have been renewed with great vigour by those who believe that doing away with firearms is the solution to gun violence.
The anti-gun lobby cannot, of course, be faulted for trying to find solutions to the killings that have become all too common in Canada and the U.S.
Yet as the proponents of safe gun use have argued time and time again, law-abiding firearm owners are not, and never have been, a danger to anyone.
In fact, the vast majority of gun owners, including hunters and sportsmen right here in West Central Alberta, remain among the greatest champions of safe and secure firearms use.
As the case of illegal drugs has shown all too well, banning a substance or thing does not guarantee answers. In fact, it can make things worse and harder to address.
Like it or not, and despite the best wishes of both sides of the gun ownership debate, it is unlikely that the answer to gun violence will be found in turning the issue into a political battleground.
So where will solutions be found to end the gun violence that has made 2012 yet another year marked by far, far too many innocent lives lost? It remains a very tough question, but one certainly worth trying to answer.
