From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V6 #811 Reply-To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Sender: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Errors-To: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Precedence: normal Cdn-Firearms Digest Friday, January 9 2004 Volume 06 : Number 811 In this issue: Re: Lorne Gunter Column: Globe provides cover for Martin: Column: GUN CONTROL? OUT OF CONTROL! Editorial: Here we go again Column: MAYBE OUR PROBLEM'S NOT ENOUGH GUNS re: Licensing Gun Owners Firearms ban OK, rules Court of Appeal No weapons wanted at museum's military memorabilia open house Letter to Globe (unpub). Why Britain Needs more Gun From Tracey Kliem ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:26:40 -0600 (CST) From: Jim Powlesland Subject: Re: Lorne Gunter Column: Globe provides cover for Martin: On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Lorne Gunter wrote: > The review of the registry by Albina Guarnieri is exactly what its > detractors claim: a stall, a dodge, a delaying tactic designed to > take a contentious, potentially damaging issue off the government's > shoulders before it calls the election it wants in May or June. Exactly. Nothing will change if the Liberals get re-elected. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:27:00 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Column: GUN CONTROL? OUT OF CONTROL! NOTE: Linda Williamson's column also appeared in The Ottawa Sun today. PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2004.01.09 EDITION: Final SECTION: Editorial/Opinion PAGE: 16 BYLINE: LINDA WILLIAMSON COLUMN: Second Thoughts - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- GUN CONTROL? OUT OF CONTROL! MARTIN ADMITS THE REGISTRY NEEDS REVIEW, BUT HE WON'T SCRAP IT - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- That grinding sound you hear is the Paul Martin juggernaut shifting and stalling on the issue of guns and crime. We all know the Martin machine ... er, government ... is going to spend the next few pre-election months combing through the books for waste - a feel-good exercise designed to enhance the new PM's old reputation as a good fiscal manager. And we all know, thanks to Auditor General Sheila Fraser and tireless Opposition MPs like Garry Breitkreuz, the single biggest waste in government right now is the gun registry, whose costs will soon hit $1 billion - nearly 500 times the original estimate of $2 million. Hence Martin's acknowledgement Wednesday, in announcing his priorities for Parliament's return on Feb. 2, that "there have been a number of problems (with the registry) and these problems have got to be looked at and have got to be dealt with." Well, duh. Most Canadians would likely say the best way those "problems" could be "dealt with" is by scrapping the registry. But Martin won't do that, oh no. "We are committed to gun control and we are committed to the registration of weapons," he insisted, establishing once again his credentials as The Man Who is All Things to All People. There, in one prime ministerial statement, you have an eloquent summation of both the gun problem and the political problem in this country. So Martin is "committed to gun control." Big deal - who isn't? ESCAPED NOTICE? What seems to have escaped his notice is that guns are out of control (just like the registry's costs) - and no nice list of registered gun owners is going to fix that. Martin need only pick up a Toronto Sun at random, say, from last week, to see what I mean. As we closed out 2003, the city's murder total had reached 64, nearly half of those gun murders. Most of these shootings remain unsolved; almost all are believed to be gang-related. Those two facts are no coincidence - witnesses to such crimes are either criminals themselves or gang-terrorized neighbourhood residents, who understandably have little confidence that our justice system will protect them if they rat the gangsters out. Gun crimes overall were up sharply - 35%. Needless to say, most if not all of the weapons used in those crimes were illegally obtained, unregistered handguns. Meawhile, in Acton on Dec. 31, far from Toronto's mean streets, a 15-year-old boy was shot dead in his father's home and a 17-year-old friend charged. Two rifles were seized from the home - both of them legally registered (though police are still investigating whether they were legally stored). The point is clear - the registry had no bearing on any of these murders. Cops across Canada could give Martin an earful on how that $1 billion could be better spent. (So could Customs officers - who, as the Sun's Maria McClintock revealed this week, are powerless to stop a flood of guns and drugs coming through the mail.) So, what will Martin do? I have a theory. As with the other hot-button issues du jour - like same-sex marriage - he'll make enough noise to signal his deep concern, then work like crazy to avoid doing anything concrete about it before the spring election. PLATFORM PLANK That way, he'll placate millions of gun registry critics without offending all those who still naively believe it's a useful tool in restricting gun crime. And if he does it right, he might even succeed in swiping one of the Conservative party's strongest potential platform planks - just as he did right before the 2000 campaign, when he announced huge tax cuts, a shameless steal from the Alliance playbook. I can see the 2004 Grit campaign now: "Vote Liberal and we'll make sensible, safe reforms to the gun laws; vote Conservative and those gun nuts will have us all packing heat." Meanwhile, the illegal guns will keep coming and the shooters will go on laughing at our cops and courts. If Martin was truly "committed" to stopping gun crime, of course, he could make one simple change, with relatively little cost or fuss: Impose a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years on anyone who commits a crime with a gun, and a mandatory five years on anyone caught with an illegally obtained gun. No plea-bargains, no deals. It would be bold, it would offend all those intellectuals who tell us crime is down and jails don't work, but it would finally be effective "gun control." Alas, he won't dare do it. Will he? C'mon Paul, prove me wrong. Make my day. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:34:11 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Editorial: Here we go again PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen DATE: 2004.01.09 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PNAME: The Editorial Page PAGE: A12 SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Here we go again - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Reg Alcock, the man who ran George Radwanski out of town, seems to fancy himself the sheriff of Ottawa. As the new Treasury Board president, he promises to bring order to the federal public service. Extravagant spending and poor bookkeeping will be punished. To begin, he's capping the size of the bureaucracy, along with a freeze on capital projects and job reclassifications (the latter too often misused by bureaucrats as a way to raise salaries). The public service needs discipline and accountability. After all, it's tax dollars that bureaucrats are spending. Canadians rightly object when huge sums of money disappear into black holes, be they dubious native drug-treatment centres or suspect sponsorship programs. But Mr. Alcock is misguided if he thinks every boondoggle is the fault of rogue bureaucrats. If the public service spends money unwisely, often it is the consequence of political pressure. The gun registry is a good example. For Jean Chretien, the registry was largely ideological. What poor bureaucrat was going to tell him it was a terrible idea? And even if 100 bureaucrats had done so, would it have made a difference? One hopes Mr. Alcock was not so jaded by his confrontation with Mr. Radwanski that he now thinks all senior managers can't be trusted. By all means, create more oversight, but don't talk to bureaucrats as though they were children in need of a grounding. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:36:47 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Column: MAYBE OUR PROBLEM'S NOT ENOUGH GUNS PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2004.01.09 EDITION: Final SECTION: Editorial/Opinion PAGE: 16 BYLINE: PETER WORTHINGTON COLUMN: Write Stuff - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- MAYBE OUR PROBLEM'S NOT ENOUGH GUNS - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Arguably, the most useless boondoggle ever implemented by a Canadian government is gun registration - a step towards confiscation. It's not the horrendous cost of nearly $1 billion (so far) that's the scandal - shucks, governments waste that all the time, witness our submarines that leak. It's that gun control may actually increase violent crime. The feds already fudge figures to pretend it works. A new book in the U.S. by Richard Poe, The Seven Myths of Gun Control - is concise and powerful and should be required reading. Poe has amassed impressive evidence that lack of guns among the public - in any country - increases burglaries and the criminal use of guns. Britain and Australia have already experienced this. In the U.S., "hot burglaries" (when the house is occupied) account for 13% of all burglaries, while in Britain hot burglaries are 50% because criminals know there will be no gun in the home. In the U.S., states that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons have cut down random gun crimes and shootings - which is the goal of states with stringent gun-control laws. A problem with gun registration is that it applies only to people who don't plan to use guns for illegal purposes. Criminals break the law, and are unlikely to register guns before using them. That's a reality firearm abolitionists discount. Another disquieting aspect of Poe's book - widely suspected but uncomfortable to mention - is that overwhelmingly, violent crime in the U.S. is blacks versus blacks. In 1999 Kweisi Mfume, national president of the NAACP, noted: "Firearms homicide has been the leading cause of death among young African-American males for nearly 30 years." Mfume blamed guns, and said he intended to sue gun manufacturers for "negligent marketing." Of course, this would do nothing to solve the question of why young black males kill one another. It's like banning cars because 50,000 people die on the roads every year. According to FBI crime reports, blacks, who comprise 13% of the population, commit 42% of all violent crimes in the U.S. Young black males between 14 and 24 years old, who comprise 1% of the population, annually commit 30% of murders. These figures indicate a major social crisis. As for murders, the U.S. Justice Department reported in 1992 that white Americans committed murder at a rate of 5.1 per 100,000 (roughly twice Canada's homicide rate) while black Americans killed at a rate of 43.4 per 100,000 - eight times that of whites. Over 90% of homicides against blacks are committed by other blacks. In other words, blacks are the greatest victims of violent crime as well. To blame murders on guns is a copout. People do the killing - a point ignored by the Canadian government in its dementia to register and someday perhaps remove all firearms from the public. Right now, law-abiding Canadians who have not complied with a law that cannot succeed in its goal, are deemed criminals. As Poe points out, when only governments are armed, only people whom the government favours are protected. A two-page foreword by David Horowitz to this provocative book says it all, and illustrates the essential folly of gun control legislation in Canada, and proposed legislation in the U.S., as favoured by the lib-left, the media, and academics. Horowitz tells of a six-year-old in 1999 who walked into a Michigan classroom with a loaded handgun and shot and killed five-year-old Kayla Robbins. In the ensuing public outcry against "gun violence," President Clinton held a press conference deploring the tragedy and called for mandatory trigger-locks on all handguns. "In the fantasy world of liberal gun-control advocates, Kayla Robbins might be alive today if a trigger-lock requirement had been added to the 20,000-plus gun laws already on the books," wrote Horowitz. "In the real world, the little boy who shot Kayla Robbins lived in a crack house run by his uncle who was a career criminal with three outstanding warrants for his arrest. He was living with his criminal uncle because his father was in jail and his drug-addicted mother was out of the picture. Is there any law the government can design that this 'family' would feel compelled to obey?" This six-year-old did not buy the murder weapon at a gun show to avoid loopholes in existing laws. He did not buy the gun at all. He picked it up, already loaded, from a bed in the crack house where he lived. These realities refute the idea that a trigger-lock would have saved Kayla Robbins' life. Adds Horowitz: "In the fantasy world, guns cause violence and laws are obeyed. In the real world, individuals pull the triggers and it's they who cause violence ... Gun control is really about controlling law-abiding citizens ... (of) disarming law-abiding citizens in the face of those who would do them harm." Need any more be said? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:40:35 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Gingrich Subject: re: Licensing Gun Owners From: John Howat Subject: Licensing Gun Owners Licensing is not in any way related to the registration of firearms - which exists for confiscation purposes, is the inefficient and costly segment of 'gun control', and has no positive effect on firearms misuse. Kind regards John Howat. - ------------------------------------- John, Your licensing system is no different than any kind of licensing system. When you really scrutinize the thing is really a registry of citizens who own firearms. 1. Criminals will not license themselves. So licensing does not control crime. 2. In a frees society one must not require permission for self protection. 3. It does provide the government with a list of instant "suspects" for any purpose the government wishes. Historically we saw how the governments of China, Nazi Germany, USSR, USA, Cambodia, Rwanda, Uganda, Ottoman Turkey, Zimbabwe,and Guatemala have used licensing procedures to help kill over 170 million defenseless people (Zelman, "Death by Gun Control" and film "Innocents Betrayed"). This was possible because these governments "only" wanted to know where the guns were and took extreme advantage of this knowledge. John, history has a tendency to repeat itself on a regular basis.. 4. I feel your licensing system has potential to inflict extreme pain and suffering upon its citizens if ever a rogue government comes to power in your country. By licensing you have voluntarily given up your rights of self defense (a fundamental right), the right to property (Magna Carte 1215), and the right to keep and bear arms (English Bill of Rights of 1689). Many old white folks died to gain and protect those rights for you and me. Rights are so easy to give away but once they are gone they are most difficult to regain. 5. My advice, work very hard to get rid of your licensing system. Yours in tyranny, Joe Gingrich White Fox, Sask., Soviet Kanukistan (formerly Canada) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 19:53:04 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Firearms ban OK, rules Court of Appeal PUBLICATION: The Daily News (Halifax) DATE: 2004.01.09 SECTION: Local News PAGE: 6 COLUMN: Court BYLINE: MacDonald, Andrea - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Firearms ban OK, rules Court of Appeal - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Convicted pot grower Philip Neil Wiles claimed a firearms ban would have been cruel and unusual punishment for his crime. The judge agreed. But the province's top court has rejected that ruling, saying police officers' lives are at stake during drug raids. Police charged Wiles in May 2001 with growing marijuana and possessing the drug for the purpose of trafficking. While on release, he was caught with another marijuana operation and charged with further drug offences. He pleaded guilty, and the Crown sought the firearms ban, along with a fine and an intermittent jail term. Jean-Louis Batiot, then the chief justice of Nova Scotia's provincial courts, concluded a ban would breach Wiles's Charter right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. Such bans are usually reserved for violent crimes, he noted. Batiot said a fine plus forfeiture of Wiles's six guns would total about $3,500, a substantial financial penalty for the 46-year-old labourer and his family. Ironically, it was Wiles's own family that inadvertently turned him in. Police arrived at their door April 16, 2001 after one of Wiles's daughters accidentally dialled 911. In a unanimous Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decision released yesterday, Justice Nancy Bateman agreed that the weapons found in Wiles's home were properly secured and licenced. There was no evidence they were used for protection or otherwise in the operation, she wrote. But it was clear from a police sergeant who testified at the court proceedings that guns are a big concern for officers conducting drug raids, she says. They approach every such raids expecting firearms, writes Bateman. amacdonald@hfxnews.ca ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 20:01:44 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: No weapons wanted at museum's military memorabilia open house PUBLICATION: Vancouver Sun DATE: 2004.01.09 EDITION: Final SECTION: West Coast News PAGE: B2 SOURCE: Vancouver Sun DATELINE: LANGLEY ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo: (A man with a weapon.) - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- No weapons wanted at museum's military memorabilia open house - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- LANGLEY - Langley Centennial Museum is asking the public not to bring weapons or explosives to a military memorabilia open house. On Jan. 24 the museum will throw open its doors to the public, inviting them to bring in army equipment and souvenirs they may have inherited or found in the attic. The Military Memorabilia Roadshow will feature military specialists who can identify a number of unique items. Because of their possibly dangerous nature, firearms, bombs, explosives and ammunition should not be taken to the open house. The event is running in tandem with the sketches and paintings of local First World War soldier Fred Strickland. The event will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and there is a $5 charge per item assessed. The museum is at 9135 King Street in Fort Langley ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 20:25:14 -0600 (CST) From: "Robert S. Sciuk" Subject: Letter to Globe (unpub). Gun Hypocrites (fwd) Dear Sir, Letter writer Mr. Roy Lee's asessment of blame for the failed gun registry is a little off the mark. While the provinces did take the federal government to court over a jurisdiction issue, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the feds. The reasons for the law being continually delayed are multi-fold, and not at all the fault of either the Provinces or police as Mr. Lee contends. The Canadian Firearms Centre (CFC) has continually indicated that the registration process is a wild success, and issues statistic after statistic to support same. It seems that their self serving numbers have under-estimated both the number of firearms owners, firearms and compliance levels. Further, aspects of the law not directly related to the registry itself contravene the Charter of Rights and Common Law, and will likely not stand up to a court challenge. Having the Supreme Court strike down the law would be far more embarrassing to the government than they themselves replacing it. Either way this law will prove to be embarrassing in the extreme. The final result is that this law is continually extended by amnesty periods, initiated by the Justice Ministry by orders in council, the latest only announced in November to extend by two years until December 31st 2005 the deadline by which firearms must be registered. Yes the Canadian Firearms Act is fraught with hypocracy, but not at the Provincial level and not the Law Enforcement level. Like many who support the Firearms Act, Mr. Lee seems to be ill-informed. One can only wonder what use is a law which the government is either unable or unwilling to enforce? Sincerely, Robert S. Sciuk Oshawa, Ont. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 21:14:09 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: Why Britain Needs more Gun From Tracey Kliem Would break-ins fall for fear of armed resistance? By Joyce L Malcolm Author and academic As gun crime leaps by 35% in a year, plans are afoot for a further crack down on firearms. Yet what we need is more guns, not fewer, says a US academic. "If guns are outlawed," an American bumper sticker warns, "only outlaws will have guns." With gun crime in Britain soaring in the face of the strictest gun control laws of any democracy, the UK seems about to prove that warning prophetic. For 80 years the safety of the British people has been staked on the premise that fewer private guns means less crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger. JOYCE L MALCOLM Professor of history, Bentley College, US Author of Guns & Violence: the English Experience Senior Advisor, MIT Security Studies Program Click here to have you say on this story Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is. The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for "very serious" offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed. But would allowing law-abiding people to "have arms for their defence", as the 1689 English Bill of Rights promised, increase violence? Would Britain be following America's bad example? The 'wild west' image is out of date Old stereotypes die hard and the vision of Britain as a peaceable kingdom, America as "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic" is out of date. It is true that in contrast to Britain's tight gun restrictions, half of American households have firearms, and 33 states now permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. But despite, or because, of this, violent crime in America has been plummeting for 10 consecutive years, even as British violence has been rising. By 1995 English rates of violent crime were already far higher than America's for every major violent crime except murder and rape. You are now six times more likely to be mugged in London than New York. Why? Because as common law appreciated, not only does an armed individual have the ability to protect himself or herself but criminals are less likely to attack them. They help keep the peace. A study found American burglars fear armed home-owners more than the police. As a result burglaries are much rarer and only 13% occur when people are at home, in contrast to 53% in England. Concealed weapon can be carried in 33 states Much is made of the higher American rate for murder. That is true and has been for some time. But as the Office of Health Economics in London found, not weapons availability, but "particular cultural factors" are to blame. A study comparing New York and London over 200 years found the New York homicide rate consistently five times the London rate, although for most of that period residents of both cities had unrestricted access to firearms. When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million. But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as "in startling free-fall" and British rates as of October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two are on a path to converge. Gun crime rates between UK and US are narrowing The price of British government insistence upon a monopoly of force comes at a high social cost. First, it is unrealistic. No police force, however large, can protect everyone. Further, hundreds of thousands of police hours are spent monitoring firearms restrictions, rather than patrolling the streets. And changes in the law of self-defence have left ordinary people at the mercy of thugs. According to Glanville Williams in his Textbook of Criminal Law, self-defence is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law". Nearly a century before that American bumper sticker was slapped on the first bumper, the great English jurist, AV Dicey cautioned: "Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians." He knew public safety is not enhanced by depriving people of their right to personal safety. Joyce Lee Malcolm, professor of history, is author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience, published in June 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2656875.stm - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Tracey Kleim Canadian Director Women Against Gun Control www.wagc.com "Women helped take away guns. Now women must help get them back." _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/bcomm&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn .com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca end of message To unsubscribe from this list, do _not_ reply to this message. Instead, e-mail only the following two lines to majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat end ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V6 #811 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:moderator@hitchen.org List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca FAQ list: http://www.magma.ca/~asd/cfd-faq1.html and http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/homepage.html FTP Site: ftp://teapot.usask.ca/pub/cdn-firearms/ CFDigest Archives: http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~ab133/ or put the next command in an e-mail message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca get cdn-firearms-digest v04.n192 end (192 is the digest issue number and 04 is the volume) To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next five lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-alert unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".) If you find this service valuable, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the freenet we use: Saskatoon Free-Net Assoc., P.O. Box 1342, Saskatoon SK S7K 3N9 Phone: (306) 382-7070 Home page: http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/ These e-mail digests are free to everyone, and are made possible by the efforts of countless volunteers. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this digest as long as it not altered in any way.