From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V7 #659 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 Saturday, December 25 2004 Volume 07 : Number 659 In this issue: Response to Peterborough Examiner Excellent 'twist' by Jim Hill My letter to the Toronto Star Christmas Wish for all Letter to the Editor Re: SOFT LAWS FRUSTRATE PUBLIC Re: Knocking back a cold one. CFD style. CFD, BNMs Link to Maclean's Play-Fighting Story Re: Christmas Wish for all Re: Military Prisons [COLUMN] Taking liberties ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 19:24:08 -0600 (CST) From: "Marg Fair" Subject: Response to Peterborough Examiner Submitted but not yet published. In response to Peter Adams letter to the Examiner of 23 Dec 04 It should be noted that the cost of the firearms registry that Peter Adams, MP, is so proud of is really unknown. It has taken over 600 Access to Information requests and a year-long search by the Auditor General of Canada to establish the 1 billion dollar cost figure. Sheila Fraser and her staff eventually gave up not having the time and resources to find all of the costs hidden in other government departments. The separate deal with Quebec (go figure) is still unknown as far as cost is concerned. Mr Adams also comments that "someone said that the cost would be $2 million (government documents did not say this)". Well Mr Adams, that someone was the Minister of Justice of the day, that Liberal luminary, Allan Rock. I do agree with Mr Adams' contention that the $2 million cost allegation was a lie; we don't expect a lot more than that from the Federal Liberal party. Don Fair Langley BC (Born in Peterborough) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:31:08 -0600 (CST) From: Lee Jasper Subject: Excellent 'twist' by Jim Hill Article: Bullet narrowly missed; no charges expected (no "mental intent) (Cops avoided every avenue to lay charges of female involved in motel shooting). >The Liberals, pushed by some feminist groups and gun haters that tried to >lay the blame for the 14 deaths at L'Ecole Polytechnique at the feet of >hunters and target shooters instead of the twisted mind of Gamil Gharbi, >aka, Marc Lepine, a Muslim man brought up to treat women with disrespect. The psycho wasn't your 'typical' Canadian sports shooter or hunter. And the misogynist never had the 'advantages' of us endrogynized folk. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 23:45:31 -0600 (CST) From: "Bruce Mills" Subject: My letter to the Toronto Star Just submitted, not yet printed. Have you written a letter today? - ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruce Mills To: Cc: Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2004 12:42 AM Subject: Re: A gift to rival the Magi: Knowledge I see that James Travers of the Toronto Star has taken to writing comedy these days. Nestled in the middle of his column there lies this jovial litte gem: that the federal gun registry was "soundly conceived"! That's a good one! The Firearms Act was so badly conceived that 10 years later whole regulations are *still* not in force! It took 5 years for Bill C-10A that ammends the Firearms Act to make it more "efficient" to wend its way through Parliament. The vast majority of this new and improved Firearms Act hasn't even been proclaimed in force yet. Canadian Firearms Center officials announced recently that the whole thing will not be fully implemented until 2007! And the notion that the cost overruns "escaped detection" is pure, unadulterated fiction! Knowledgable people in the field predicted that the whole thing would cost a BILLION dollars back when this was just a gleam in Alan Rock's gun grabbing eye. Garry Brietkreuz, CPC MP, has ridden herd on this file for the entire 10 years of its existence, and has tried to bring the ballooning costs to the attention of the public - with little help from the media. It wasn't until the Auditor General reported the horrific "cost overruns" did the media and the public take notice. This is typical of the tactics of the Federal Liberal Government. Mr. Travers' hopes that democracy will return to Parliament and Canada are laudable, but it is ludicrous to look to Paul Martin to effect any meaningful change. But at least I got a good laugh out of it. Yours in Liberty, Bruce Hamilton Ontario ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 23:58:34 -0600 (CST) From: "Peter Wilson" Subject: Christmas Wish for all To all the members of the chat/digest. My wife and I would like to extend to each and everyone of you and your = families our deepest and warmest wishes for Christmas and the New Year. We are all different and unique in our own special way. Young, old, = urban, rural, easterner or westerner. But no matter if we should disagree from time to time, it's our own diversity and = strength of character that defines who we are. We are all noble men and women who are connected together across this = beautiful nation in a common goal. We are all striving for the truth = and the responsibility inherent in our freedom. We are a family of = Canadians determined to ensure that our children will continue to share = in our values and courage in maintaining our heritage of every = discipline of sport shooting. We must continue, in the new year ahead, to support the courageous men = and women of our family who are challenging the flagitious and corrupt = legistlation that is usurping the fundamental freedoms we so dearly = love. God bless you all. Peter & Nancy Wilson ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:23:42 -0600 (CST) From: Christopher di Armani Subject: Letter to the Editor Peterborough Examiner - Letter to the Editor Re: "Registry Cost Not $1 Billion" MP Peter Adams slammed The Examiner's editorial staff for daring to speak the truth about the Firearms Act. Yes, the truth. Instead of spouting off Annie's mantra "[L]icencing ensures that only individuals who have undergone a thorough background check may legally possess or acquire firearms." he should check the facts. You know, those pesky things Liberals are so fond of ignoring on a daily basis. The FACTS, as reported by the Ottawa Citizen on June7, 2003 show a vastly different picture than what Adams claims. "The federal government disclosed Friday background checks have not been done on all the 589,200 individuals who have been granted firearms possession and acquisition licences since 1998." And when Mr. Adams spouts off about how "I deeply regret the cost overruns in the early stages of the gun registry.", he obviously hopes readers (and his constituents) are ignorant of the fact he voted FOR an additional $82 Million dollars for this disgusting sinkhole of Taxpayer Dollars on December 9, 2004. And that's just to get the CFC through to the end of THIS fiscal year. Apparently Mr. Adams can't add any better than Paul Martin or Anne McLellan, who during the last election spouted off about how they would hold the costs of the Firearms Registry to $25 Million per year. Mr. Adams, look in the mirror next time you want to call someone a liar. (Source: http://www.parl.gc.ca/38/1/parlbus/chambus/house/journals/042_ 2004-12-09/042Votes-E.html Division No 28 - Canadian Firearms Centre - Operating Expenditures) - --30-- Christopher di Armani P.O. Box 507 Lytton, BC VOK 1Z0 Phone: 250-455-2332 Email: christopher@diArmani.com Address and phone number provided for verification only ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:14:02 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Lowe Subject: Re: SOFT LAWS FRUSTRATE PUBLIC "Jim Hill" wrote: > Would this not have more to do with the fact that most military prisoners > are discharged from the service upon completion of their sentence and as a > result are civilians when they re-offend and as such no longer subject to > military justice. Just a thought. Most people in military prisons are in for relatively minor offenses, just like civilian prisons. Most military personnel sent to military prisons, both in Canada and the US, are not released from the service at the end of sentence, but instead are returned to their units. In Canada, serious sentences result in serving time in federal pens, not in the old Club Ed of my days (which is now gone, I see in my last trip to Edmonton). Records from that kind of time will follow you outside of the military. Over the years I knew five or six guys who were sent to Edmonton Detention Barracks. They were well behaved - and for the most part productive - soldiers when they returned, and I don't recall any ever doing the hatless dance a second time. - -- "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." George Orwell ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:16:26 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Lowe Subject: Re: Knocking back a cold one. CFD style. Jason Hayes wrote: > Tom; > > This one scared me at first. I didn't see the "Rob wrote" on an initial > scan of the e-mail. I was thinking you had lost it. > > Wow! Those cops just won't leave poor old Bob alone will they? > > http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html Is it too late to get him one for Christmas? - -- "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." George Orwell ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:17:01 -0600 (CST) From: tcbfalls@canada.com Subject: CFD, BNMs Link to Maclean's Play-Fighting Story Following up Bruce's link, here is the link to the CACAP article on combatting youth crime. Notice the Macleans article removed the politically sensitive stuff about how what a mother eats, drinks, smokes and stresses over determines the baby's brain development. "So many risk factors for youth agression stem from the mother..." www.medicalpost.com/mpcontent/article.jsp?content=20041108_181415_5924 Tom Falls p.s. Merry Christmas! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 02:39:16 -0600 (CST) From: "Murray" Subject: Re: Christmas Wish for all Well said indeed, Peter & Nancy, and the same good wishes to you. Murray Bell ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 03:04:39 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Lowe Subject: Re: Military Prisons "jim davies" wrote: > As we all know, having some balls and enforcing some rules works, > however, there is a culture of gutlessness and several generations > of bureaucrats selected for their belief in appeasement in place to > enforce it in Canadian jails. What has a lot more to do with what "works" about military prisons is that prisoners do not get simply hid from view and warehoused in them, as we do in our civilian jails. Military jails have ratios of personnel to inmates that civilian jails can only dream of. I have met a fair number of correctional officers - many were military reservists or former military personnel, incidentally. Nearly all were very professional in how they conducted themselves and I would cast questioning glances at anyone who called them "gutless". Like parole officers who have a ridiculous number of offenders to supervise, in reality the best they can do is go through the motions of doing their job the way it is supposed to be done. We (the taxpaying voters of the country) pretend to provide them with what they need to effectively manage and treat criminals, so they pretend they are doing the job we asked them to do without the logistic support to do it. In the end, criminals suffer, CJS staff suffer, and we suffer because of ridiculous recidivism rates. No winners there. But when you do little more than warehouse offenders without any real guidance or treatment, just what the hell do you expect you are going to release? Anyone who thinks military corrections is just about 100% discipline is simply and absolutely wrong. The USDB at Leavenworth Kansas has a sign above the door that says it best: "Our Mission - Your Future". The focus is very much on giving an offender every opportunity to correct their ways and have a successful future. Military prisons to the best of my knowledge are all based on the correctional model, not the penal model, and that says something in itself. To the best of my knowledge almost all believe in treatment of an offender and provide a variety of inmate self-help and structured rehabilitation programs. If someone knows I am in error on that, by all means correct me. For those curious about this but not quite willing to read a bunch of criminology research papers, an overview of the military corrections system with a look into numerous military prisons was very well presented in the February '92 issue of Corrections Today. Ask your library to bring in a copy for you. > If I was empowered to change, really change the Canadian bureaucracy > I would take all input in hiring away from them. Perhaps it would be more effective if we hired people to run the CJS bureaucracy on the condition if their plan didn't work, we'd throw them in jail with the inmates... > From: Phil Cottrell > Subject: Military Prison > > Don't forget that the Forces weed out all the worst cases and punt them to > Federal or Provincial Corrections with the rest of the cons :) > > So their good results depend largely on selection... The most common crimes are also the same as those with the highest recidivism rates - property crimes, minor assaults and minor drug offenses. These offenses rarely attract sentences of more than two years. Sentences no longer than two years less a day almost without exception get served in Detention Barracks, not in Federal pens. In the US - a much larger population sample - ALL military sentences, including soldiers sentenced to be executed, are served in military prisons. Claiming that the lower recidivism rates of military prisons is because they shuffle their worst cases off to civilian prisons is simply not correct. - -- "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." George Orwell ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 03:31:44 -0600 (CST) From: "Bruce Mills" Subject: [COLUMN] Taking liberties Jan 1, 2005 The Spectator (London) Taking liberties Mark Steyn Wired magazine ran an interesting featurette last month about a fellow called Hans Monderman, who's been a highway engineer in northern Holland for the last three decades. A year or two back, he had an epiphany. As Wired's Tom McNichol puts it, 'Build roads that seem dangerous, and they'll be safer.' In other words, all the junk on the streets - signs for everything every five yards, yellow lines, pedestrian crossings, stop lights, crash barriers, bike lanes - by giving the illusion of security actually makes driving more dangerous. The town of Christianfield in Denmark embraced the Monderman philosophy, removed all the traffic signs and signals from its most dangerous intersection, and thereby cut the number of serious accidents down to zero. These days, when you tootle towards the junction, there are no instructions from the transport department to tell you what to do; you have to figure it out for yourself, so you approach it cautiously and with an eye on what the other chaps in the vicinity are up to. I'm no civil engineer, but I am a small-government guy and when I'm asked 'How small?' I usually reply that I like to find a road when I get down to the end of my driveway in the morning. My assistant's husband works for the town road crew and they do an excellent job. But, alas, on the state highways New Hampshire is going in the opposite direction to Mr Monderman. On formerly scenic Interstate 89, the discreet mile markers have been augmented by eye-level markers every fifth of a mile reminding you what road you're on and that it's been 0.2 miles since the last reminder. Until this summer, if you were on a bendy road following a river, you'd take the curves carefully lest you plunged over the edge and died in a gasoline fireball at the foot of the ravine. That happened to some poor fellow every 93 years or so, so now they've put up metal barriers along the picture-postcard river roads punctuated every couple of hundred yards by ugly-ass shock-absorbers that look like trash cans. So now you don't have to worry about plunging into the river because the barrier will bounce you back into the road to be sliced in two by the logging truck. The uglification of New Hampshire's highways is a good example of how, even in a small-government state, the preferred solution to any problem real or imaginary is more government. Mr Monderman's thesis feels right to me - that by creating the illusion of security you relieve the citizen of the need to make his own judgments. That 's really the story of September 11. If 19 punks with box-cutters had tried to pull some stunt in the parking lot of a sports bar, they'd have been beaten to a pulp. But, as I wrote at the time, the airline cabin is the most advanced model of the modern social-democratic state, the sky-high version of the wildest dreams of big government. Up there where the air is rarefied, all your rights have been regulated away: there's no smoking; there's 100 per cent gun control; you're obliged by law to do everything the cabin crew tell you; if the trolley dolly's rude to you, tough; if you're rude back, you'll be arrested on landing. For 30 years passengers surrendered more and more rights for the illusion of security. So on September 11, on those first three flights, the cabin crews followed all those Federal Aviation Administration guidelines from the Seventies, and the passengers did everything they were told, and thousands of people died. By the time the fourth plane got into trouble, the passengers knew big government wasn't up there with them and used their own wits to prevent the hijackers from reaching their target. That's been my basic rule of thumb these last three years: anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing, not just for the war on terror but for the national character in a more general sense. But, just as the failure of the post-Dunblane 'total gun ban' only demonstrates the need for even more totally total gun bans, so the failure of big government on September 11 only demonstrates the need for even bigger government. So now Britain will have a national ID card, and the best you can hope for is that it will be merely useless rather than actively harmful. It's in the grand tradition of Home Office thinking: the best way to deal with a specific problem is to universalise it. The advantage from the lazy policeman's point of view is that it makes the general public the target rather than the ne'er-do-wells - like the totally totalised gun ban, which makes it easier for Her Majesty's constabulary to spend their time hassling farmers with rusty shotguns rather than engaging in the somewhat more stressful pursuit of Yardies with Uzis. Given that 'visitors' to the United Kingdom will not be required to have ID cards, there will be every incentive for terrorists to remain, for official purposes, in the visitors' category. So the ID card seems likely to move the bad guys deeper into the shadows, while shining the spotlight on your absent-minded granny instead. Charles Clarke gave an interesting glimpse of New Labour Britain in a column in the Times. I don't know anything about Mr Clarke - he hasn't been at the Home Office long enough for any of us at The Spectator to start having an affair with him - but I found this passage revealing: 'ID cards will potentially make a difference to any area of everyday life where you already have to prove your identity - such as opening a bank account, going abroad on holiday, claiming a benefit, buying goods on credit and renting a video.' 'Renting a video'? That sounds about right. When you go to Blockbuster, you' ll need your national ID card. But if you're an Algerian terrorist cell coming in on the Eurostar to blow up Canary Wharf, you won't. And its requirement for the routine transactions of daily life - 'opening a bank account ... buying goods on credit' - will have the same impact as all those street signs and traffic lights at that Danish intersection: it will relieve bank managers and store clerks of the need to use their own judgment in assessing the situation. You'd have to have an awful lot of faith in government to think that's a good thing. Earlier this year, the showboating hacks on the 9/11 commission in Washington were making a big hoo-ha about the Clinton administration's heightened millennium security measures, as an example of what the Bush folks should have done to combat terrorism. You may recall that a fellow called Ahmed Rassam was stopped at the Washington State/British Columbia border en route to blow up Los Angeles airport. This was apparently a great success for the Clinton anti-terror team. In fact, Diana Dean, the Customs agent who caught Ressam, didn't know there was a heightened security alert. She never got the memo. Instead, she noticed the guy seemed a bit shifty and nervous, and decided to search the car. There was no 'plan', no 'system' - just one sharp-eyed official exercising her judgment. Mr Ressam, incidentally, is a very instructive case of how easy it is to proceed through modern Western 'security' systems. He was travelling under a false name on a genuine Canadian passport which he obtained by forging a Quebec baptismal certificate: the passport is high-tech, computer-readable, hard(ish) to fake, but the document you need to produce in order to get the hard-to-fake document is much easier to fake. Mr Ressam was originally from Algeria and when he landed at Montreal he was admirably straightforward. He told officials he'd spent five months in jail back home for being an Islamic terrorist. But Immigration Canada declined to take him at his word. According to spokesperson Huguette Shouldice, many asylum-seekers try to pass themselves off as terrorists to 'exaggerate the persecution they fear in their homeland in order to impress Canadian immigration officials'. Read that again slowly: according to Mme Shouldice, claiming to be a terrorist increases your chances of being admitted to Canada, so immigration officials have learnt to disregard it as no more than a little light resumé-padding. Yawn: here's someone trying to slip in on the mad-bomber fast-track admission quota again. Given the ethnic squeamishness built into Western governmental bureaucracies these days, who's more likely to fall foul of the mandatory ID regime? The Ahmed Ressams or your Auntie Beryl? The principal political requirement of the scheme will be to demonstrate that it's not 'Islamophobic', so if your auntie's new NHS glass eye finally comes through and she fails to re-register her biometric data promptly, she'll be hauled into court to demonstrate the 'fairness' of the new legislation. Michael Howard and his awful Me-Too Tory party may believe it's a vital tool in the war on terror, but in practice it will prove a grand diversion from it. Meanwhile, the dodgier imams will be enjoying the great benefit of new 'hate crimes' legislation. As we've seen this week with the Sikhs and the poor old Birmingham Rep, the more robust religions are already very effective at silencing debate. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, who's spoken out against radical Islam, now shows his face in public only for parliamentary appearances and even then has to be accompanied by armed guards. I'm sure he was relieved to hear that the Muslim who put out a video on the Internet threatening to behead Wilders for the 'sin' of 'mocking Islam' was sentenced to 120 days of community service. The religious 'hate crimes' law is another example of excessive street signage applied to the broader byways of society. It attempts to supplant human judgment with government management. The multicultural state is working out so well that we can no longer be trusted to regulate our own interactions with our neighbours. Islam, unlike Anglicanism, is an explicitly political project: sharia is a legal system but, unlike English common law or the Napoleonic code, for the purposes of public debate it will henceforth enjoy the special protection of Her Majesty's government. Given that the emerging Muslim lobby groups are the Robert Maxwells of ethno-cultural grievance-mongers, you can bet that they'll make full use of any new law. Political debate in Europe is already hedged in by excessive squeamishness: Holland's 'immigration problem' is a Muslim problem, France's 'youth problem' is a Muslim problem, the 'terrorism threat' that necessitated the ID cards is in reality an Islamic threat. How is preventing honest discussion of the issue going to make Britain any safer? The term 'nanny state' hardly covers a society where you need retinal-scan ID in order to rent Mary Poppins and you're liable to be prosecuted if you express your feelings too strongly after the next Beslan or Bali. In his last book, published a few months ago, the late Anthony Sampson claimed that after September 11 'the fear of terrorism strengthened the hands of all governments'. It certainly shouldn't have. In America, I don't believe it did. And, if my correspondence these last three years is anything to go by, the British on the whole decline to accept the basic premise of the brave new world - that this is the primal threat, the central challenge of the times. Given that you've yet to have London or Birmingham or Newcastle hit by the Islamists, that seems fair enough. But why then are you going along with laws that would be ill-advised even after they'd nuked Glasgow? In Hans Monderman's Holland, they're finally realising that the multiculti pieties of the last 30 years were a dangerous fantasy; in Britain, you're still larding it on. The road ahead will be difficult enough; cluttering it up with 'no parking' signs isn't going to make it any safer. ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V7 #659 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:akimoya@cogeco.ca 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".) 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