The Hits Keep Coming

Yesterday, a man picked up a gun and killed 18 students in an elementary school in Texas. 

This morning a candidate for the leadership of the CPC promised to burn Canada’s gun control laws. 

Wow - talk about not reading the room - at all. Possibly the worst hot take to publish the day after yet another mass shooting takes place in the United States.  

Oddly, I do agree with the Canadian firearms lobby on one thing:  The regulatory framework around firearms is a shambles - decades of fiddling and tweaking has resulted in a mess of seemingly arbitrary rules - banning some firearms and allowing others that are seemingly very similar in function and capability. 

I don’t think the gun lobby would particularly like my approach though - because as far as I’m concerned, pretty much anything that isn’t a single shot firearm should be banned outright, and after that we can talk about what is allowed in terms of ammunition sizes. 

However, I don’t particularly want to argue about the particulars of firearms regulation today.  I’ve written other posts on the subject in the past. Today’s subject is about the culture associated with firearms. 

Dear Canadian National Firearms Association

How Dare You?

It is clear that Canada's excessive firearms control system has failed again. The excessive rules in place do not in any way increase pu blic safety, but merely contribute to an expensive and unnecessary regime which harms only those of lawful intent. Resources wasted on this fundamentally flawed firearms control regime could be better placed to support a health care system which could be better enabled to diagnose and treat conditions that put people's lives at risk.

Three RCMP officers lie dead today, two more seriously wounded and you try to use this tragedy to argue for less gun control?

At no time has the solution to gun violence ever been more guns.  We've seen that experiment tried in the US already, with its tragic price.

Fuck Off.

Sincerely,

A Canadian Who Likes Being Able To Walk The Streets Without Fear Of Being Shot

A Modest Proposal On Firearms

For years the argument has been made that regulations related to firearms are just a means for the government to subjugate the populace.

However, I have never heard any of these same people object to the reality that the same government insists that they register their car, carry insurance on the vehicle and pay taxes on the fuel that we use to run our vehicles.

Let's take a look at this for a few minutes, shall we?

In principle, a car is a mode of transportation.  It is purely civilian in its use.  In fact, using gun lobby logic, there is exactly no reason that we should have to register it to have it on the roads.  After all, cars don't commit crimes, people do, right?  Well, yes.

But, and there is a big but.  Accidents happen, people lose control of their vehicles and crash them.  Pedestrians crossing the roads get hit and injured all the time.  Being able to identify the owners of said vehicles goes a long ways to figuring out who did what in such circumstances.  Is this a bad thing?  Not at all.

Which leads me to the next point - insurance.  We are obliged to carry insurance on the vehicles we drive as a matter of course.  The reason for this is not that anyone is planning to kill others with the car (remarkably easy to do), or do damage to other people's property with said car (also remarkably easy to do), but because there is a likelihood that those accidents will happen and reparations will need to be made.  Most of us don't have a spare million dollars sitting in the bank to self-insure against the costs of long term injuries.

Licensing is a necessity.  We are required to demonstrate that we are competent to operate a motor vehicle safely.  That costs money too.

Gas taxes...we all hate them, but they are a fact of life.  We don't manage to escape them.  They are there, and in principle are used to in part to pay for the infrastructure we drive on.

So, let's turn briefly to the question of guns.  Guns are weapons.  They come out of a desire/need to kill things.  There is no other use for them beyond target practice.  You are either shooting to kill something or someone, or you are shooting at targets.  I can drive a car safely and not hurt anyone or anything else (save for a few bugs on the windshield), and similarly one can operate a gun in a safe manner.  There are inherent risks with both.

Registering a gun.  Why is this a bad thing?

The gun lobby would have you believe that the government will be at your door taking it away as soon as you register it.  To a certain degree, they have a concern here.  Governments have had a track record of arbitrarily changing the rules around what types of guns are legal or not.  Then again, they do the same thing with cars.  There are rules around what is a "street legal" car and what isn't.  Don't be fooled into thinking that you won't find yourself with a heap of trouble if your vehicle doesn't comply with the rules.

However, this doesn't change the reality that a legal obligation to register the fact you own firearms is really little different from having to register a vehicle.  Yes, there are rules.  You may disagree with the rules about what is legal or not, but those rules still exist.  I don't see where that's a bad thing.

Licensing.  Should you have to demonstrate basic competence with the maintenance, operation and storage of firearms?  I don't see why this is even remotely unreasonable.  Of all things, a mishandled firearm is far more likely to result in serious injury or even death than even a car.  As far as I am concerned, the notion of being able to own firearms without demonstrating basic competency with safety and operation of them is ridiculous.  The current "Firearms Acquisition Certificate" or whatever it's called in Canada these days is far too lax in this regard.

Insurance.  This one will no doubt get a whole lot of people riled up.  As far as I am concerned, if you own firearms it should be mandatory to carry personal liability insurance.  The simple fact is that just like a car, it is incredibly easy to injure another party with a firearm even in accidental circumstances.

As far as I am concerned, we need to treat firearms with the same kind of approach that we do cars.  Yes, there will be regulations on them.  That's a fact of life.  If you are going to own them, registration, licensing and insurance should all be mandatory.

Will this stop criminals from committing crimes?  No.  That isn't the objective.  The objective here is to ensure that those who do choose to own firearms do so responsibly in a manner that is generally safe.  Just as we cannot stop a criminal from stealing a car and driving it dangerously, we cannot stop a criminal from acquiring firearms illegally.  That is not, and never will be the objective.  Ensuring that those who choose to own guns legally do so with an eye to public safety and the liability that comes with owning a weapon of violence is another thing altogether.  If that happens to reduce the supply of firearms available to criminals on the way by, that would be an unexpected bonus.

Bill C-391 Is A Government Bill

With all of the shenanigans going on around the "Private Member's Bill" C-391 An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (repeal of long-gun registry), I think it's time to examine the government's actions more carefully.

Theoretically, as a Private Member's Bill, C-391 doesn't represent the government's official policy or direction. However, there's an old saying about actions speaking louder than words.

This article is a veritable compendium of how Harper has mobilized his front bench to garner support for this bill. (I'd put good odds that the upcoming vote will be a whipped vote on Conservative benches - and we all know what happens to MPs who defy Dear Leader's orders ...) The amount of money the HarperCon$ are spending on attack ads to slag MPs that they want to bully into voting for C-391 is also telling.

If this is "just a private member's bill", then we might just want to ask Mr. Harper and his goons why they are acting as if it is in fact a government bill?

The point here is not just that this is a government bill, but that Harper is throwing the entire weight of the government front benches behind it. This is not new for Harper. Every time there's an issue that is in the least bit controversial, he has his back bench MPs introduce it through the Private Member's bill. Then, mysteriously, the vast majority of Harper's caucus votes for it ... in particular the front benches. This has happened with other private member's bills, and I'll put money that a careful review of Hansard votes will show that every time a TheoCon "private member's" bill is tabled, the front benches of Harper's team voted for it.

Back bench bills, like prorogation, are part of Harper's bag of tricks - because he knows damn good and well that if he tabled this legislation as government bills, he'd find himself losing a confidence vote rather quickly.

As for the opposition parties - if you haven't figured this out yet, it's time that you got the message and start kicking the HarperCon$ out of Ottawa.

[Update 17/09/10]
Just how much are the HarperCon$ wasting on a supposedly "private members bill"?

Oh yes, as Ms. Taber points out Harper hails from Toronto himself in the first place ... a good point to consider when parsing Baird's asinine comment about "Toronto elites". I wonder what he'd make of the fact that this writer is blogging from the CPoC stronghold of Alberta (and is mysteriously opposed to Bill C-391)?
[/Update]

The Whining Illogic About Registering Long Guns

It makes no sense. Listen to people who oppose the long gun registry, and you get all of these brainless platitudes about "lifestyle" and "heritage" ... or how farmers need to have guns to deal with wildlife like coyotes raiding their livestock.

The gun registry changes none of those things. Not one.

Yet, none of these vocal opponents will answer one simple question: "How is registering a gun any different than registering your car?"

Think about it for a moment. Our cars are every bit as much a part of our culture these days. We all register our cars willingly - acknowledging the validity of the government's claim to regulate our use of motor vehicles.

Yet, when you point this out to opponents of the gun registry, they ignore the underlying point entirely. Somewhere, somehow, it gets twisted into an argument about "their right" to have firearms, as if it's any different from registering a car.

The criminals still steal cars and use them for crimes. How is this different from criminal use of firearms? It isn't.

What differentiates long guns from cars? Not much ... except their use in domestic violence:

In 2008, in Ontario the RCMP’s Annual Report on the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee (DVDRC) stated there were 165 women and children were killed in domestic violence. The figure increases to 230 when you add male victims of domestic violence – the majority of which were suicides by the domestic violence perpetrator.

To what purpose is registering a firearm? It serves the same purpose as registering a car. If one gets stolen, it can be traced when it turns up; if one gets used in a crime, it becomes easier to link the registered firearm's disappearance.

But, above all, it's about accountability. Just as I am obliged as a car owner to keep my vehicle in reasonable repair and to operate it as safely as possible - so is a gun owner obliged to store their guns safely, and to use them only when safe to do so.

In truth, it is my opinion that gun owners should be required not only to register the guns, but also to carry liability insurance. This isn't about "big brother" government, it's about personal responsibility and accountability. Plain and simple.