ABSOLUTE RIGHTS, CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS Three people you know each possess one unregistered handgun, a Criminal Code offence; each is a criminal, committing a crime. John has a souvenir Chinese pistol he picked up during his service in the Korean war. He will not try to register it, because he's afraid the police will confiscate it. Susan has a .22 rimfire target pistol that she occasionally uses to knock over tin cans out on her acreage. Clive has a .38 revolver that he uses to hold up gas stations and milk stores. If you are like most Canadians, you will turn Clive, the criminal, in to the police, but not John or Susan. But why? There is a fundamental perception of justice, based on the correct definition of the word "crime." That word is not defined in the Criminal Code, nor in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms --but most Canadians have an unstated, gut-level definition. You just used it when judging John, Susan and Clive. About 1750, Sir William Blackstone pointed out that if you have what he called the three {Absolute Rights}--the rights to personal security, personal liberty and personal property--you are free. No one can coerce you. If no one can injure, kill, libel or infect you (personal security); detain, kidnap, or imprison you (personal liberty); or take, damage or destroy your property-- how can he coerce you to do anything you do not want to do? A {crime} is the inverse of an {Absolute Right}. If someone threatens, attacks or destroys one of your Absolute Rights, he is committing a crime, and he is a criminal. There are four levels of attack: deliberately acting with wanton and reckless disregard for the fact that the action genuinely threatens one of your Absolute Rights (criminal negligence), or deliberately taking, threatening, injuring, or destroying you or your property. You have called the police, and are about to turn in a criminal. Try to think of any "crime" which does not injure or genuinely threaten an Absolute Right for which you would take that action. {Punishment} for the criminal is simply imposing an appropriate injury to one or more of his Absolute Rights in fair exchange for the injury that he has done to the Absolute Rights of another. There are a few areas where those terms do not fit, such as dealing in narcotics. You will note that narcotics matters are not dealt with by the Criminal Code, but by the Narcotic Control Act or the Food and Drugs Act--because they are not true crimes. Our criminal justice system has fallen into a state of disrepute with the general public, and neither our government nor the government employees working within the criminal justice system understand why. The reasons are quite simple: { {{1. The Criminal Code is riddled with "crimes" which do not meet the standard, and so are not accepted as true crimes by Canadians. 2. The criminal justice system is imposing inappropriate injuries to the rights of those convicted of "crimes."}}} As a #1 example: It is a criminal offence [s. 97(3)] to acquire a .22 rimfire target rifle for biathlon use. The government will sell you a specifically-tailored defence to that particular criminal charge (a Firearms Acquisition Certificate or FAC). An FAC prevents you from being convicted. It is inappropriate that an innocent action is criminalized, and that you are then exempted from conviction and punishment by a certificate you must buy from the government. That is not rational criminal law. Bill C-68, if enacted, provides for a "license" to replace the FAC, which compounds the problem--the government criminalizes the innocent action, then sells you permission to commit the crime. Objectively, Bill C-68 looks like a protection racket. Canadian governments have already taken over many Mafia money-making schemes: the numbers racket (Lotto 6/49), other gambling, the booze racket (Liquor Control Board Outlets). One wonders if the courts will support Bill C-68's interesting extension of that. As an #2 example: A few years ago, in Edmonton, a thug demanded, at knife point, that a courier hand over what he was carrying. The courier refused, and the thug killed him with the knife. The thug's crime was plea-bargained down to manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment: He lost his liberty. 3 Years later, he escaped--from the custody of a female nurse-- while attending the Ice Capades. It is inappropriate that he was considered to be suffering from loss of liberty at the time. 7 years was an inappropriate penalty; the courier lost his life through a deliberate crime, and his killer will be back on the streets far too quickly. It was inappropriate that his loss of Absolute Right penalty was mitigated so early, and in such a silly fashion. It was inappropriate that he was where he was, when he was, with whom he was, at the time of his escape. Every time the government puts things which do not meet the standard for "true crimes" into the Criminal Code, it drives wedges between citizen and lawmaker, between citizen and law enforcement officer, between citizen and criminal justice system, and between the citizen and the law. That is unwise. Enacting Bill C-68 would be unwise. Attempting to disguise what the government is doing by renaming parts of the Criminal Code as "the Firearms Act" does nothing to help alleviate the problem, particularly when the Firearms Act is enacted under the federal government's power to enact criminal law, and Part III of the Criminal Code is so thoroughly entwined into the Firearms Act. 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