Common sense needed in gun laws
By Letter to the Editor on June 20, 2020.
Some truths regarding the new firearms regulation by our government: Fully automatic firearms have been banned since the 1970s and are prohibited in Canada. The AR-15 semi automatic, that Trudeau calls a gun not needed to take down a deer, is outright lie. This firearm is a restricted firearm that can only be used only at a licensed firearms range with proper permits to even transport it. This firearm is simply not legal in Canada for hunting.
Banning large-capacity magazines is another lie. Current laws allow a maximum five-shot magazine. A 10-22 is a small-calibre .22 and banning a magazine for a .22 rifle. Foolish.
The aim of these regulations is political. Most non-gun owners do not know the existing laws or know it takes months to obtain a firearms licence. Close to 80 per cent of illegal firearm activities are gang-related and involve smuggled illegal firearms. Targeting legal owners will not hinder criminals.
Did you know that hundreds of semi-automatic rifles are unaffected and still legal? Did you know current owners can keep these banned firearms at least to age 70?
Why bother banning? A two-year amnesty and a buyback plan that will cost taxpayers millions. Typical nonsense. Liberals wasted billions on gun registry that did nothing to reduce gun crime, and now this ill-conceived plan.
Why not crack down on firearms smuggling and gangs. Criminals do not wish to register their firearms, do not comply with the law, do not care who they harm.
When criminals commit a firearms offence and are released on parole days later so they may commit more crimes, does that make sense? Catch and release for criminals. Ban and confiscate for legal law-abiding citizens.
Will we ever see common sense again? Maybe when Liberals are gone.
Dale Brooks
Lethbridge
12-11
Sorry, not buying it. Quite simply our society has no need for these types of weapons, period. They should be left in the hands of the military and out of the hands of civilians. As for the same old lame arguments about how this doesn’t cover every gun, and we need to tighten border controls, and how tight our gun laws are, it’s a good start and we have to start somewhere. And, don’t play the “loss of basic freedoms” card, there are lots of laws placed on society built to protect us. And BTW, quit blame my Liberals. I dislike Trudeau as much as any Westerner but using him is a smokescreen for the real complaints of pro-gun owners. You are just mad because someone wants to take your dangerous toys away. Give me one single good reason anyone NEEDS a semi-automatic or automatic rifle. Or for that matter a hand-gun.
Bill ,I do not own a handgun or so called assault rifle but I do hunt wild organic game which I prefer to eat.My concern is that our government is now putting laws into place without following any democratic process.If they can do this with no debate from the other political parties what does it say about Canada.Bill Blair announced that some semi automatic and only semi automatic firearms were banned.Why then did he ban single shot shotguns,shotguns,2 shot ,2 trigger rifles,hunting rifles and extra capacity magazines.Legal firearm owners have always complied but now they are not only making criminals out of legal firearm owners and they are putting small business into bankruptcy and thousands of jobs at stake.70 percent of illegal firearms seized by the Toronto Police Service were found to have been illegally smuggled into Canada.The military do not use these firearms they are not capable enough.A semi automatic and handgun are used at controlled rifle ranges for competitions,target practise and by Olympic shooters,interprovincial events etc.and I think that is okay.Their is an argument about theft of firearms.Probably going to happen people will steal anything these days.Safe storage,gun safes,gun locks and disabled firearms with locked handgun cases are law now.Police and military have lost or reported stolen 1159 firearms from 2008-2019.Sub machine guns,fully automatic C-8,and handguns,grenade launchers,yet we legal firearm owners with our single shot shotguns are targeted simply because it looks good to the non firearms public.
Bill, I agree with you whole heartedly, except for some French history when the French ruler of the day took the swords and daggers away from the serfs, which lead to the French revolutions were the serfs fought back with scythes and scicles.
We need to have these weapons to protect us from our Government in line. An example of Government overreach just occurred in March of 2020 which resulted in huge economic losses to many low income people. There were better ways to handle this but it did result in an experiment on people control which is still ongoing. Maybe I should not have read 1894???
Suggesting that the lockdown is a government over – reach and proceeding to infer we need guns to protect the populace from government is an over-reach in of itself.
THIS COUNTRY WHILST NOT PERFECT IS NOT A DICTATORSHIP OR RUN BY A SELF – CENTRED, EGOTISTICAL, THIN-SKINNED, RACIST, TWIT.
Doubt you ever read “1894” BTW.
Sorry, I think you misunderstood my point. I don’t think we need to protect ourselves from governments or anyone else actually. Referencing history seems as absurd as the Americans using the American revolution as their need to have AK47’s! Big difference between the right to have a musket that takes 2 minutes to reload and an automatic rifle. When we build a society that needs its civilians armed against its governing body trust me, your gun is not going to help you. BTW – Are you suggesting we need to carry a gun because the government decided to invoke safety measures during a pandemic? Maybe I need to be afraid of you!
Just to be clear, if you use a gun to hunt and you eat the meat then go for it. Other than that I don’t see a use for guns.
I don’t see a use for huge pick-up trucks owned by city-dwellers who do not use them for work. They are not NEEDED. So by the “what Bill sees” rationale, the government should ban them.
g&b, I am with you on that one. Also if you want to learn about agressive drivers follow the trucks but never get infront of them.
while we may not be at a point where we will need to react to non-representative govt, to unresponsive govt, to runaway govt…it is not a bad idea to remain prepared to defend against extremism in govt. given elections change very little, and given it is primarily the masters that are served – and, increasingly so, people safely owning arms should not be illegal. it would be nice to be able to count on police and military to support rights and freedoms, but world history shows us that those institutions get co- opted by govt far too readily: that is how totalitarian, autocratic systems are underscored.
moreover, we know that legal owners are rarely an issue, and that it is illegal owners/hardcore criminals that are the issue when it comes to weapons. our biggest difficulty in dealing with crime is corruption. do not be foolish, our system is rife with it. consider the fact that whistle blowers are treated like criminals and/or outcasts. imagine: laws that limit and control and otherwise mute the ability of a person to let the public know of wrong doings. while it is bad enough here, look at that bastion of freedom and opportunity to the south of us: gag laws that make it a crime to show the public the horrid treatment of animals at industrial livestock operations, and at testing facilities. as for those that make the public aware of criminal acts in govt, in the military etc, they are branded as spies and anti-american criminals, and the real criminals and criminal behaviours are rendered just and acceptable. it is not very different here, in the usa north.
the institutions we depend on to uphold our freedoms, to represent our needs, to limit govt intrusion on our complete and utter privacy – without which there is no real freedom – to uphold democracy and the transparency required so as to have a real democracy…we cannot trust govt to any of these tasks because they have been seriously eroding and impinging upon these principles, regardless of the name of the party in power. it is no wonder why almost every type of gun is illegal, and it is not because legal gun owners are irresponsible. making gun possession illegal will not keep guns out of criminal hands; stiffer penalties for using guns illegally might be a little more helpful.
perhaps there is an old saying, that would have gone roughly as: a butterfly emerged from its cocoon is truly free, until a heavy hand pins its fragile wings. 🙂
An interesting post, biff.
It seems that as inequalities increase and the middle class fails to realize their expectations and becomes less secure, that discontent has been shifting to more authoritarian and populist governments – despite the fact that it only exacerbates the problem.
These authoritarian governments will use force, not to protect the interest of the people, but to stifle discontent. It is what they do. And they will continue to serve the privileged class, the 1%.
And so will the police, who are designed to protect the property and interests of the wealthy – not only are they ideologically inclined towards authoritarianism, they are trained to follow the hierarchy of command. It is implausible that they will protect the welfare of people.
So, what I hear, biff, is a call for the progressive and revolutionary class to arm. In the United States, Republicans own firearms 2 to 1 compared to Democrats. This ration is probably much greater if the radical right is isolated from these stats. The paranoia expressed by the radical right of the government trying to disarm the citizenry (in the U.S. and in Canada) is not a credible position, as these people who are inclined to own guns in preparation for civil upheaval are the same people who will vote for and support an authoritarian government. In other words, instead of protecting the people from a totalitarian regime, they will likely bring it in and support it as its citizen’s militia. This is what the left should be preparing for – beginning with an effort to disarm these radicals.
If we want freedom, lets arm your butterflies.
fes, i truly appreciate your thoughtful entries, which come at times with great one-liners and poetic creativity.
i hate to think of guns and violence as a way, let alone the way, to solve social issues. and you do well to consider that those that will wish to use violent weapons to usher change (and, boy, do we need change…it is always campaigned upon, but the change we get is simply more of what we wanted ousted) will likely just bring more authoritarianism once the blood dries. the militia minded in the usa do not trust their govts, and rather than that being unfounded paranoia there is much basis to their concerns. whatever the the progression of events in our socio-political structure, we should be certain by now that the electoral process in the so-called free world is a rigged machine, and it will not deliver the masses from increasing autocracy and the smudging of freedoms. responsibly owning guns is seen by a significant enough contingent as an aspect of freedom.
i do not own guns, but i see the concern of both sides of the issue. ideally, we would disarm societies altogether, save perhaps, hunting rifles (would be great to go meatless altogether); if i were an animal, i would prefer to taken down by a good shot far more than to be tortured via the horrid industrial meat system. perhaps the most significant impediment to disarming the world is the fact that the uppermost of the top 1% rake in massive amounts of cash via the military industrial complex. moreover, they maintain their power and hold on the affairs of the planet by owning the lackey politicians and govts of the planet, who oversee the sowing of chronic fear, insecurity and measured scarcity of the peoples of the planet. if only we could get all to agree never to respond to a call to war, eh. as per joni mitchell and the great hopes of the woodstock generation: “And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies”