U.S. Police Officer Wanted His Handgun In Calgary: Nose Hill Park Confrontation
Michigan officer blasts Canadian gun laws
A Michigan police officer is in the news following his comments regarding Canadian gun laws recently.
The officer, who works in Kalamazoo, was on vacation in Calgary when he and some supposedly aggressive natives had words in a local park.
The officer, Walt Wawra, wrote a letter to the editor printed in the Calgary Herald slamming Canada’s gun laws, which are known to be some of the toughest in the world. Wawra, a 20 year police veteran, said he, as a tourist, felt unsafe in Canada because he was not able to protect himself and carry his own handgun.
In the letter Wawra said two “menacing” gentleman approached he and his wife in Nose Hill Park totally unprovoked and asked multiple times if they had been to the Stampede. When Wawra ignored the men they asked again, at which time the officer told them to leave.
The men looked “bewildered,” he writes in the letter and likely had bad intentions indicated by their “aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner.”
He concludes his letter by saying:
“Would we not expect a uniformed officer to pull his or her weapon to intercede in a life-or-death encounter to protect self, or another? Why then should the expectation be lower for a citizen of Canada or a visitor? Wait, I know – it’s because in Canada, only the criminals and the police carry handguns.”
Later it was revealed that the men were giving out free tickets on behalf of Calgary Oil.
Excerpts from the letter quickly showed up on Twitter, and the editor of the Calgary paper, who is an American, wrote an editorial that called America’s “gun mania” paranoid and sad.
As The Post points out, while small talk is still legal in Canada, tourists aren’t allowed to bring guns across the border.
The story has sparked the creation of a new Twitter hashtag, #NoseHillGentlemen. Gawker’s headline captured the sentiments of most users: “American Becomes Laughing Stock of Canada.”
As a Canadian living in Miami some years ago I certainly didn’t feel safe. When a friend told me he had pulled a gun on his garbage man to make sure he didn’t rattle the cans in the morning, I realized that, for many Americans, a handgun was the first solution to a problem, not the last resort.