Tag Archives: RCMP

The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. — Josh Sugarmann

The term assault weapon comes up frequently in media reports on guns in society. The term has its origins in the 1980s and is credited to Josh Sugarmann executive director and founder of the Violence Policy Center (VPC) and noted prohibitionist. Before founding the Violence Policy Center in 1988, Sugarmann served as communications director for the National Coalition to Ban Handguns (renamed the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) in 1989). The term assault weapon entered common parlance after Sugarmann authored a publication entitled Assault Weapons and Accessories in America in 1988. Sugarmann and the Violence Policy Center are among those advocates of prohibition who frame the argument that ban is a matter of public health and safety, that this trumps the individual right to own and use guns. In their effort to advance this agenda, prohibitionists resort to the underhanded tactic of framing the debate in a manner that confuses the issue, causing people to quarrel over what is they view as good guns vs bad guns. Continue reading →

Security is the mother of danger and the grandmother of destruction — Thomas Fuller

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The Canadian Firearms Program, a component of the Canadian Firearms Act, a stupid law, drafted by the Liberal government led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien and enacted in 1995, burdens peaceful and law-abiding hunters, sport shooters and gun collectors with oppressive regulations. Moreover, it enables belligerent and defiant bureaucrats in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to arbitrarily order the prohibition and confiscation of legally acquired and owned firearms. The decision to proceed with this policy was rooted in the moral panic that arose following the mass murder of fourteen women at an engineering school in Montreal in 1989. Moral panic is defined as “an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.” (Jones, M, and E. Jones as cited in Wikipedia) Following this tragedy, Canadian gun owners were singled out as a menace to the social order. This was not the first time in Canadian history that a federal government responded to a moral panic in pushing forward with stupid legislation, against the counsel of advisors from within its ranks. A stupid law that resulted in the oppressive regulation and confiscation of property from a segment of the population in Canadian society who were unjustly deemed to threaten the social order. Continue reading →

The bedfellows politics made are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship. — Marcel Achard

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The following comment was posted as a response to my recent post on the current state of firearms laws in Canada.

I think male homosexuality repellent, and therefore do not follow those issues closely. Because I am a genuine (which is to say, 19th century, tolerant, John-Stuart-Mill-type liberal) I believe that things which are none of my business are, you know, none of my business: You do not need, nor would receive, my approval, much less “celebration” for whatever passes for your lifestyle choice. But whatever consenting adults want to do that does not harm or threaten others is NONE OF MY BUSINESS. It is most certainly none of government’s business, and I believed that, and supported homosexual rights, from the times when homosexuality was an imprisonable felony in Canada.
I am heartened to see therefore, that with your lifestyle, you account responsible arms ownership on the list of things that are None Of Government’s Business.
When the government wants to prosecute those who harm or threaten others, they have my entire support. When they want to persecute those whose lifestyle choices are contrary to contemporary fashion, the resistance, subversion, and defiance are called for.

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The Firearms Act is about licensing and registration, not confiscation. — Former Justice Minister Anne McLellan, July 31, 1998.

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I bought my first gun in a private sale, back in 1977 when I was sixteen. As it happens, 1977 was a turning point in the regulatory framework for gun owners in Canada; it was the last of the good old days for gun owners in Canada. The familiar classification system for firearms was in effect (non restricted, restricted and prohibited). This was enacted in 1969 with the passage of Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69 (S.C. 1968-69, c. 38), which, coincidentally, also decriminalized homosexuality. In 1977 it was unlawful to sell guns to individuals of unsound mind or those under prohibition orders, otherwise Canadians were free to own and use guns for hunting, sport shooting and collecting without having the state on their back. As the Minister Justice, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, observed in shepherding the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69 through parliament, “obviously, the state’s responsibility should be to legislate rules for a well-ordered society. It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.” (as cited in Wikipedia) In 1977, just as the state had no business in bedrooms of the nation, neither did the state have any business in the basements and gun cabinets of the nation.

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