Re: “Weapons sellers get new market,” Jan. 3.

It seems our federal government has recently seen fit to improve the finances of our country’s gun merchants by making it legal to export fully automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines to Colombia.

I visited the country many years ago and it was a spectacularly beautiful place, but even then, unemployment was 30 per cent and we tourists were warned to keep our arms inside the tour-bus windows so as not to have our fingers cut off by thieves after our rings.

This is a country consumed over the past 50 years by drug-related violence, organized crime and conflicts with neighbouring Ecuador and Venezuela, resulting in the loss of 50,000 lives, likely mostly innocent people.

According to a government website, Canada keeps an “export control list” to ensure that weapons such as this “will not be made available to any destination where their use might be detrimental to the security of Canada.” It is a tragedy that our great country is being led by politicians who will use any means possible to protect the security and wealth of this country without any regard for the damage it can cause to other countries.

Exporting automatic weapons to Colombia is, in essence, supplying arms to drug lords, thus supporting terrorism which the government claims to abhor. There seems to be no limit to the steps Stephen Harper will take to try to improve our economy. How sad.

Gwen Isaacs

Victoria

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