Canada is well known as a safe country, and Guelph as a safe community. Violence happens somewhere else.

Other than big city gangs going after each other, and domestic situations — no less tragic, but not usually seen as affecting public safety as a whole — Canadians can walk the streets with little fear.

Well, apparently not. Lately, we seem to hear more and more stories here about the use of guns. Maybe we need to be a little less complacent about this.

We may not have the same number of warped people this side of the border, given our size and history, but when ordinary situations can get out of hand, we really do not want guns lying around.

And our police should know where other weapons might be located if they need to get involved — as Canadian police chiefs have pointed out in the past, only to be ignored by a federal government that knows better.

While the issue of gun control invariably gets passions raised on both sides of the individual rights-versus-public safety argument, it generally remains an academic exercise for most. This allows lots of folks to play politics without any responsibility.

I have always wondered how one political party can make such an issue about public safety when it comes to threats from others, but actively work to make sure those who want to keep guns private can do so — even to the extent of subverting the law.

Last month's revelation about the pressure placed on the RCMP to destroy the long gun registry data, even in the face of court rulings to the contrary, is unbelievable for a party with law and order as one of its main platforms.

And the move to fast-track a law making such actions retroactively not illegal sounds like something from a bad movie. But it happened.

What next, a law retroactively making all the bad stuff we did to First Nations people all right? That would save a bunch of money on treaty settlement and compensation payments.

Of all the recent news of local violence, the murder of a man on Tiffany Street a couple of weeks ago is particularly scary.

We won't know the details for a while, but this doesn't sound like the kind of thing we can dismiss as something that couldn't possibly happen to us.

It's time to stop the political pandering. If someone is going to have a lethal weapon in their house, they better have a good reason. And they can damn well fill out a form and pay a licence fee.

Let's make this an election issue this fall, because now it is in our backyard.

Ben Bennett’s past columns can be found at www.bbc.guelph.org.