Canadians may lend support as I did a month or so ago with short, punchy correspondence. As a member of a family with a distinguished military record, I tried to connect with former fighter pilot and POW McCain.

"Dear Senator McCain:

"As a Canadian with friends in Arizona, of three generations of pilots including combat overseas and my POW father an organizer of The Great Escape, I felt I should tell you of my experience working successfully with our current Defence Minister against gun control. You were with Peter last year in Halifax.

"To keep this short, nothing in our time will stop gun violence. Canada is low in violence with the world's highest suicide rates in our Arctic. A Harvard study of gun violence is empirically clear: "To reiterate, the determinants of murder and suicide are basic social, economic and cultural factors, not the form of deadly mechanism."

"We got rid of the gun registry by appealing to Reason: it was ineffective and wasteful of public money. It made criminals of long-gun owners who did not register their rifles and shotguns. The current US turmoil of assault rifles etc is almost irrelevant. There will be compromises. Take Reason with you against registration.

Kind regards, Kingsley Brown