BETTER LATE THAN NEVER FOR MANDATORY SENTENCES SAYS AREA MP

Crying doesn't come easily for most men. That's not a sign of
weakness or dysfunction as some pop psychologists might suggest. It's
just the way we're wired.

That's why the sight of dozens of men standing at attention with
tears rolling down to their faces hit me with such impact.

Special Const. John Atkinson had finished his shift last Friday at 2 p.m.

He was fueling up at the local gas station before going home to be
with his wife and two kids. He could have ignored what looked like a
drug deal going down in the near empty lot.

He could have said, "Hey, it's not my problem, I'm off duty."

But Const. Atkinson wasn't wired that way.

Just in his 30s, he'd already seen too many young lives ravaged by
merciless drug dealers who care little for the destruction they cause.

Atkinson approached the two teenagers with his smile and his badge
both gleaming. How could he have known he was smiling for the last
time in his life? How could he have known that one of those teens was
carrying an illegal hand gun?

As I sat at his funeral with thousands of citizens and police
officers, I wondered what his last thoughts were as he lay groaning
on the pavement as the pair of thugs ran off.

As I sat there looking at his little daughter clinging to her teddy
bear and his tussle-haired son clinging to his newly widowed mom, I
thought I knew what his last thoughts were.

As I looked down the row at the brave men and women with whom he
patrolled every day, I wondered which ones had been chosen for the
awful task of going to his home that Friday afternoon to bring the
news that families of police officers never want to think about, but
always think about.

I found myself wondering what thoughts would have been racing through
his wife's mind that Friday afternoon as she opened the front door
expecting to see her husband's mile-wide grin and instead staring
into the ashen faces of two trembling comrades.

As I stood by my chair waiting for the ceremony to begin, a
six-foot-three, crisply uniformed, thirty-something officer
introduced himself to me and thanked me for coming.

"We enrolled in the Police Academy on the same day 15 years ago" he
said quietly.

"We became fast friends..."

Then his voice sort of cracked and he looked away. I put my hand on
his crisply uniformed arm and looked away too. I guess that's what
men do when we force back tears.

So that's why I stood in the House of Commons this week to be counted
as supporting a new law which will bring in mandatory jail terms for
anyone using a firearm in the commission of a crime.

Whether somebody gets shot or not, you pack a gun for nasty purposes,
you're going away for a long time.

"Not fair", shouted some who oppose us. "Too harsh", exclaimed some
criminologists. Too late for Const. Atkinson, I thought as I stood and voted.

And I guarantee there's a little girl and a tussle-haired boy
clinging to a young widow tonight who might be wishing we'd done it sooner too.

Stockwell Day is the MP for Okanagan-Coquihalla.