Owning firearms is a privilege, not a right
By Letter to the Editor on February 11, 2020.
“Liberals’ take on guns just ‘hype’ and ‘rhetoric’: Motz” (Medicine Hat News, Jan. 10)
Petitions are one-sided polls. We may know how many signed in favour of the issue but never how many are against it. It would be more instructive to conduct a poll to get some idea of how an entire population views an issue but polls are tricky to design so that they produce accurate results.
In the last federal election there were 27.1 million electors on the list, of whom 17.9 million voted. There are only 0.08 million signatures on petition e-2341. 17.8 million Canadians who made the effort to vote had no input into this petition, unless of course it is reasoned that they had input by not signing the petition.
A survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute in April 2019 found 64 per cent of those polled supported limiting access to handguns, while 27 per cent did not. For assault weapons, support for additional limits was even stronger, at 77 per cent, with 17 per cent opposed.
In 1993 a Supreme Court of Canada decision concluded Canadians have no constitutional right to bear arms. Owning firearms in Canada is a privilege, not a right.
If the Liberals spend $250 million on a gun buyback, that will cost about $6.60 for every man, woman and child in the country. Peanuts.
There is only one person here who is guilty of hype and rhetoric.
Fred Lewis
Medicine Hat
11-10
Owning a weapon is a basic human right that goes back before cavemen, predating our governments’ attempts to own the right to define our rights. One could say grandfathering it (is that politically correct now?) or superseding it. Guns are a lifesaving tool and a sports device as well as a weapon. Real data shows the danger is not the vast majority owned by responsible people but the ones illegally obtained by dangerous people. Gun control takes guns away from responsible citizens because they are visible and law abiding and may prevent a few unfortunate accidents. But history shows it does not remove guns from the criminals who are then free to act out their evil unimpeded. Which is why most recent gun-related tragedies in the US have been in cities with extreme gun control measures. Maybe cities should be banned next?
I suspect the Angus Reid poll numbers would be quite different if those polled actually knew how strict our gun laws already are. I would be interested in such a poll being conducted; educate participants on how to acquire a gun in Canada, the registration process for handguns, the safe storage laws, the magazine capacity limits, the constant 24/7 eligibility screening of gun license holders, etc. Then ask the same poll questions.
Nope.
It IS a Right, regardless that the government refuses to recognize it.
It springs directly from our Right to life. That most basic and essential Right is rendered meaningless unless each individual has the means of effective and immediate personal defense available to them at all times.
This is because it is the assailant who gets to choose the time, manner and place of the assault, and they will do it in such a way as to minimize the chances of intervention by police.
Without training and tools, their intended victim’s only other option is to wait for someone in authority to come to their aid, and this is very unlikely to happen soon enough to change the outcome.
Each of us is our own, only first responder.
Fred Lewis,
You must have missed the fact that was a petition
against, going for longer and receiving a small fraction of
this petition. You must have missed the charter rights of
freedom of life, liberty and security. Before you attempt to
“Enlighten” the general public with you ignorant attempts of
education you should do simply a small amount of research
and you will find this has nothing to do with crime.
No firearm ban has had any significant effect on crime,
If you truly believe that removing firearms from law abiding
citizens will reduce crime then wouldn’t the police and military
be a criminal organization by now? I would challenge you to
look into the criminal code, the firearms act, as well as the
charter rights of Canada. I could explain this quite briefly though
it seems you’ll need more, anyone with a criminal record is
prohibited from owning firearms. If you look at any of the criminal
behaviour and recent charges, almost all were persons prohibited
from owning/ handling firearms.
While your court may be right about the constitution, it’s wrong about the right. Every man and woman on Earth has a human right to self-defense – and the tools to ensure it. Just because your government has infringed on that right and converted it to a privilege doesn’t mean the right doesn’t exist. Only criminals, statists, and thugs are afraid of legally citizens.