Gun control: Politics before safety
thestar.com ^ | 8 April, 2011 | NA

Back on the merry-go-round, voters. The assault on Canada’s gun laws has begun again.

That Prime Minister Stephen Harper would pledge to get rid of the federal long-gun registry was inevitable. It works for him on two fronts: it plays to core Conservative supporters and creates divisions in the Liberal and NDP camps by pitting rural Canadians against urban “elites.” Nothing could be better for a politician who has ratcheted up divisive politics to troubling levels.

Since 2006, Harper’s Conservatives have repeatedly tried to get rid of what is a basic and reasonable requirement for gun owners to register all their guns, no matter the length of the barrel. They’ve tried to do it with government legislation, a bill in the Senate and private member’s bills, including one that sought to loosen controls on handguns and automatic weapons as well. Each time, Parliament has wisely put public safety first and refused to axe a registry that the national association of chiefs of police has said is “vitally important.”

The Conservatives rail about the cost and ineffectiveness of the registry but have done their utmost to raise its ongoing costs (by waiving registration fees) and reduce its effectiveness (by delaying other gun regulations).

While most Liberal and NDP MPs have consistently voted to keep the registry, that doesn’t mean their parties haven’t also played wedge politics on this issue. Indeed, the Liberals’ newly released platform offers up a convoluted policy designed to appeal to urban voters by maintaining the registry, while gaining rural support by permanently waiving the fees for gun owners.

“It is not a matter of ideology,” Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said last year. “It’s just a matter of public safety.”

Unfortunately, the Conservatives, in their drive to lock up rural and Western votes, just refuse to acknowledge this.



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TOPICS: Canada; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: banglist; canada; gun; registry; Click to Add Keyword

The most horendus crimes recently commited were with legaly registered guns. The registration did not stop those crimes.The gangs in the large urban areas do not seem to concerned with the registration of their handguns which will remain intact. If you read the Conservative information regarding the gun laws you will find that they intend on keeping the licince portion for gun owners.All legal gun owners who are licinced will be known to police at any time with a routine search of the data base.As for Bill Blair and some of the other chiefs of Police they are puppets of their Police Board. As far as pitting rual canadians against urban elities I am sure there are more than a few urban elities who do not support the registry. The system is only used by honest law abiding Canadians as Criminal DO NOT register their guns.

A few years back there were horrific crimes committed with unregistered machetes. I am concerned they were not even wiped off since their last session beheading chickens.

Even before that, the Hell's Angels in Montreal and some other gang -- Satan's Choice? -- were blowing each other up with unregistered bombs.

Personally, I am a big fan of gun control. Control means being able to hit what you shoot at.

Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem, have never been a part of the problem and will never be the problem.

The same people that want to take away my guns want to let criminals out of prison. A trained chimp could predict the result.

The problem in Canada is threefold (as concerns the registry; and other matters):

1)Our universities: which are mostly left-wing, liberal-socialist.

2)Our teachers, journalists and politicians come from these universities.

3)3/4+ of our population are urbanized, that's where the votes come from. What city in Canada is more liberal/socialist than Vancouver?

I'm not against a good, solid education (whatever that means these days), I have 5+ years post-secondary education myself, and 50+ years experience in my profession, but times have changed, and are changing rapidly.

I'm hopeful that the long gun registry will be buried, and the sooner the funeral the better; but, I'm also realistic. In the light of fast-paced trends toward liberalism in philosophy and morality... and away from God and the Bible... I see little promise for a change of direction apart from Divine intervention.

At this stage, the loss of personal rights for gun ownership should be the least of our concerns over "loss"! Our children and grandchildren will be living a hellish nightmare in an environment of "winner take all"! Or, "Survival of the fittest". While I believe (know) that ultimately God WILL take over the situation, there will be a lot of unbelievable "pain" before that happens! What we've been witnessing in the world over the past few years is just the beginning... get ready for it!

Our politicians are NOT the answer! God IS, through Jesus Christ.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

The VERY LAST social influence we need in ANY aspect of Canadian life is the Bible-clutching, creeping Jesus freaks who spew the "evangelical" fascist garbage such as the last post. I would fight to any extent to keep these "Kristers" out of Canadian politics and wish they would all move to the dark side of the Moon.

...post- secondary education...???? Well, it certainly has not assisted you to THINK clearly and be able to differentiate between your puerile beliefs and factual reality. In short, there is a HUGE difference between an "honours" degree in environmenatal biology and the indoctrination forced upon young minds at these appalling bible schools.

Democracy, NOT religious fanaticism, IS the answer, so, ...don't come your creeping Jesus with me... as Brendan Behan once wrote!

quote:

Originally posted by .458 Only:
The problem in Canada is threefold (as concerns the registry; and other matters):

1)Our universities: which are mostly left-wing, liberal-socialist.

2)Our teachers, journalists and politicians come from these universities.

3)3/4+ of our population are urbanized, that's where the votes come from. What city in Canada is more liberal/socialist than Vancouver?

I'm not against a good, solid education (whatever that means these days), I have 5+ years post-secondary education myself, and 50+ years experience in my profession, but times have changed, and are changing rapidly.

I'm hopeful that the long gun registry will be buried, and the sooner the funeral the better; but, I'm also realistic. In the light of fast-paced trends toward liberalism in philosophy and morality... and away from God and the Bible... I see little promise for a change of direction apart from Divine intervention.

At this stage, the loss of personal rights for gun ownership should be the least of our concerns over "loss"! Our children and grandchildren will be living a hellish nightmare in an environment of "winner take all"! Or, "Survival of the fittest". While I believe (know) that ultimately God WILL take over the situation, there will be a lot of unbelievable "pain" before that happens! What we've been witnessing in the world over the past few years is just the beginning... get ready for it!

Our politicians are NOT the answer! God IS, through Jesus Christ.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

Whatcha Smokin

Well Dewey;

I see you're quite religious, and a zealous one at that...

Since you made mention of Jesus, I'll quote him:

'Jesus called the crowd together again and said, "Listen now, all of you--take this to heart. It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it's what you vomit--that's the real pollution."'

'He went on: "It's what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness--all these are vomit from the heart. THERE is the source of your pollution."'

He seems like a pretty sharp guy to me, and dead on when it comes to the REAL problem! He seemed to know a thing or two about people. My wife and daughter are professional counselors, and I've had to counsel a fare number in my time, where MOST of the problems are capsulized in that paraphrase by Dr. Eugene H. Peterson of the words of Christ found in Mark's Gospel chapter 7. Dr Peterson, BTW, has been a professor at Regent College in B.C.

I think we'd both agree that a great deal of political and economic concerns in Canada, USA and Europe... not to mention African and Asian states... are aptly described in the language of Jesus: greed, deceptive dealings, slander, adultery, meanness, arrogance, etc.

Not a complete list, but at least I hope we would agree. At the very least, we know that the economic trials of the past couple of years have been due to lying and greed, and that didn't begin in 2008.

Best regards,

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

Regent College, is a joke and exactly the sort of closed-minded little biblethumper's institution that I meant in my first response to your rant.

Anyone can make comments that he then states are the words of Joshua Ben Joseph, the mythical Jewish "prophet" that was supposedly crucified by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate long ago. In most cases, they are as empty of any genuine relevance to democratic, representative government as the babble of those obscene "televangelists" that befoul the airwaves on Sundays with the very "greed" that you and they both rail against.

I am not "religious", I do respect truely spiritual people(s) and, I know a fucking fanatic fascist when I see or read one.

Anyway, I have better things to do than banter with some jezuz nutter about various human failings. "The Rapture" ain't here, yet, bucko and I kinda doubt that it ever will be, thank God.

Pdog Shooter,

I wonder how much of this gun registration / anti gun sentiment could have been averted if there was a strong pro firearms group and better dialogue with politicians?

I say this because i am going to use New Zealand as a good case for the above really working. After the Aramoana massacre at the bottom of the South Island in 1994 where David Gray shot 13 innocent people with a Norinco 56 (.223 Chinese copy of the AK47), we had life time licences revoked had to revert to the 10 year licence system, Military Style Semi Auto's were on a totally different licence with stricter controls.

Then in 1996 or thereabouts a retired judge (Justice Thorpe) decided that NZ needed a complete overhaul of the firearms law and proposed some draconian rules including registration of all guns, guns being held in a central armory, licenses being valid for 5 years, a licence needed to buy ammunition and numerous other stupid rules and regulations. This was aided and supported by a NZ anti gun group called Gunsafe, headed by Philip Alpers.

What happened? The Council For Licensed Gun Owners (COLFO) was created. When shooters and the general public were asked to make submissions on the Thorpe Report and turn up to front up to the people on the select committee to bring this into law, huge numbers of firearms owners, hunters and shooters turned up en masse, while an insignificant number of anti gun types were present. A very watered down version of the Thorpe Report was introduced as a result (one of those items being the need for a firearms licence to buy ammunition). However the implementation of gun registration was discarded as being too expensive and not having any effect on criminals obtaining firearms.

COLFO works at the very highest level of the New Zealand Government, advising politicians and even being present at the UN. This has had a very positive influence because it has made politicians very aware that hunting/shooting is an integral part of the New Zealand culture & lifestyle by law abiding citizens and for once it has not fallen on deaf ears.

What is also interesting is that even Phillip Alpers of Gunsafe has acknowledged in public that New Zealand has sensible working firearms laws.


Cheers,

Michael.

Pdog Shooter -- you're kidding - right?

I am in law enforcement and see the use of the gun registry just about every day at work -- it is useless. So someone does a registry check on a person or a residence before attending - so what? If nothing comes back on the registry check do you let down your guard? Does it mean they do not have any weapons in their possession, or access to any weapons? -----B***SH*T

Criminals laugh at the current system. Where the real enforcement tool is effective - to some degree, is the setup of having a P.A.L. (possession and acquisition license) system where your HAVE to have a PAL before you can be in possession of a firearm. That is what should be enforced, with separate fine/ jail time allocated to that alone. Unfortunately our courts fail to uphold that. Lawyers bargain away the charges for a guilty plea and so on.

I sure hope we get a Conservative majority, and the useless long gun registry is buried, once and for all, and the same money is spent on more field officers and jails etc. That would be the real deterrent to illegal possession/misuse of a firearm.

Bob.

The only reason most police chiefs support the registry is it creates more bureaucracy and more jobs but really they are non productive jobs. And firearms not registered are confiscated, that should be done if in possession of a criminal or person prohibited anyway.

Bob.

.

Which northern rural ridings we talking about here. Sure as Hell, not in our province.

Grizz

Northern Ontario ridings tend to vote overwhelmingly NDP. That's why lying assholes like Charlie Angus can get elected.

It boggles my mind. I tend to think of northern folk as self-sufficient and independent. Kinda like rednecks with icicles on their noses. But they vote NDP.

I'm guessing that it's the union influence over the mining and forestry sectors that seems to sway them.