Gun Control I
We are starting to get gun crime problem here in Canada, specifically in Toronto. I know gun crimes are committed across this great land of ours, but last year they bloomed out of control in Toronto. And what have we done so far to address the problem? Nothing worthwhile.
With a new prime minister waiting to take the reins, perhaps we will see some common sense applied to this issue.
The Liberals gave us a less than useless gun registry. What was supposed to have cost $2 million to implement and run, has now grown to over $2 billion and keeps on sucking our tax dollars. It made criminals out of law abiding gun owners and did nothing to curtail the antics of those who chose to use illegal firearms in the commission of their crimes. The Liberals just couldn’t get their heads around the fact that criminals don’t register their guns and if they can’t get them legally, they will resort to smuggling them in from foreign countries or steal them.
The registry laughingly targeted long guns. You know, shot guns, rifles, AK-47’s, submachine and machine guns, bazookas and blunderbusses. They are weapons of choice of any self respecting home invader. While I see no value in owning a machine or submachine gun, bazooka, AK-47 or blunderbuss other than as a collector’s item for conversation purposes, the rifles and shot guns can be necessarily used. A farmer watching his herd disappear down the throats of wolves or coyotes has, I think, every right to protect that herd by using a gun to remove the offender. A hunter, whether going after ducks, rabbits, geese, bears, moose and deer has every right to go out and freeze his butt off on the off chance he might bag some game and feed his family and friends.
Yet it is these two groups who immediately became criminals when the feds decided that if their guns were not registered, they would be subject to prosecution. Never mind that way back when, when they first acquired their firearms, they were subject to police checks, forced to demonstrate that they knew how to use a gun and store it safely, acquire various forms and certificates, spend untold dollars on gun safes and trigger locks and have the gun number registered beside their name so it could be traced if ever it got lost or fell into the wrong hands. Government bungling led many of these people to lose sleep as they could not fill in the necessary paperwork on time due to the fact that the feds couldn’t get the forms out before the deadline for registration they had imposed passed.
It is interesting to note that the provinces looked at the whole mess, decided it was a federal problem and promptly washed their hands of the whole idea of prosecuting anyone under the new guidelines. And the feds just don’t have the manpower to go after John Q. Farmer or Jane M. Hunter and haul them into court. The danger though is that the police can now enter your home, without a warrant, seize your guns and arrest you if they so much as think you are up to something nefarious. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened yet, at least not to my knowledge.
In response to the Toronto shootings, ex-PM Paul Martin called for a ban on handguns. On the surface this seems to make sense as the guy mugging you would more likely have a Glock 9 mm than a 30-03 rifle. However, once again it got lost in the shuffle that criminals are not going to register that gun before they head out to cap the guy running the local Mac’s Milk. Strange as it may sound, some of these people even actually file the numbers off guns so they become untraceable. So if someone broke into your home, stole your gun, filed off the numbers and popped someone, you would be on the hook if you reported the break-in and couldn’t find the gun thereafter, while Joe Scum is counting the money he heisted and planning his next caper knowing full well he is in the clear.
