From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #281 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 Monday, August 1 2005 Volume 08 : Number 281 In this issue: Interesting example of our CJS [COLUMN] Guns, lethality and the Big Lie [COLUMN] Get rid of the guns, become less lethal My letter to the Toronto Star Re: The Ultimate Authority ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 21:39:47 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Lowe Subject: Interesting example of our CJS Just got back from four days down in Montana. My experience at the border was an interesting example, even if not pleasureable. It is approximately a two hour drive between our current home in BC and our new home in Montana. I just spent two and a half hours in a lineup at the border, waiting my turn to clear Customs. Along with a whole bunch of other people, of course. When I got to the Customs booths (where there are VERY large signs, one saying you must declare all weapons and another saying you must declare all money and financial instruments exceeding $10,000 Cdn, incidentally), I saw that there was exactly ONE Customs Inspector working i.e. one lane only working. After one of the fastest primary's I've ever experienced, prior to driving away I politely asked him why only the one lane was working. He, equally politely, informed me that Customs management had seen fit to only put normal staffing on for a Monday - meaning there were exactly two Inspectors on duty. He looked a little harassed - no surprise there. Now Roosville is pretty quiet most of the time. But on holidays like this one, Albertans and British Columbians alike flood across the border there to go to Glacier National Park, Flathead Lake, Lake Pend d'Oreille, etc. Many have vacation cabins down there. This flood of people through the border at this crossing on weekends and long weekends is not unusual; its been going on for years. But somewhere, there's a senior Customs manager who probably got himself a very nice performance bonus last year for efficiently keeping his salary budget down. Aside from the massive annoyance to people of waiting for two and a half hours for their turn at Customs - in temperatures over 30 degrees - a few things come to mind. 1. We are told by Anne MacLellan and the rest of this government that there is "increased vigilence" at our borders. So just how is this possible with all of two officers responsible for handling thousands of travellers who have all been sitting and steaming for over two hours. What breaks? With one in the booth and one inside doing secondaries, collecting duties and taxes (damned few people being sent inside to pay duties and taxes I'll bet), process commercial entries for truckers... when do they get a few minutes to catch their breath, get a drink, refresh their minds, etc? 12 hours of going nonstop talking to one carload of people after another dulls your senses pretty fast. 2. How much revenue didn't get collected at the border today on major purchases because two guys simply can't shut down a line of cars over a mile long for five or ten minutes to collect revenue. Think it might have paid for having extra staff working? Uhhh... probably. 3. Who pays the losses of all the commercial drivers who lose money while they sit idling in a lineup for hours so the Port Manager or Regional Collector can improve his appearance of keeping his salary budget under control? That manager got a performance budget from the feds because of crap like this, but did the owner/operator financing that bonus with his tax dollars and lost revenues get a bonus? Not likely. 4. How are Customs officers supposed to pick off drunk drivers, travelling criminals, abducted kids, and all the other stuff aside from terrorists they're responsible for when they're going that fast? 5. I watched American vehicle after American vehicle make a u-turn out of the lineup and head back to the US. Probably coming up for supper in one of the local communities, drop some money in the local businesses or resorts, etc before heading home that night or the next day. Who compensates the local community businesses for their losses while some Customs manager made himself look good for his next bonus? 6. Were other Customs ports equally short staffed - like Pacific Highway and Douglas down in the Lower Mainland for example? Or is that too dangerous because of the outcry it would cause in those places, so this is treatment strictly reserved for the yokels in the hills who have no real political clout. Anyways, that's enough for the short list. I'll be seeing my MP and MLA about this sometime this week, probably advice the chamber of commerce about it, etc. But will it make a difference? Will the manager responsible get his ass kicked - or even be deprived of that performance bonus this was all about? Hardly. The same rules apply when it comes to delegating policing resources. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 22:27:58 -0600 (CST) From: "Bruce Mills" Subject: [COLUMN] Guns, lethality and the Big Lie http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout /Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1122673810933&DP L=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes Guns, lethality and the Big Lie The world keeps producing more guns and bombs. Isn't that where our problems begin? RON CHARACH SPECIAL TO THE STAR After the Live 8 concerts this month, staged under the utopian motto "Make Poverty History," many hard-nosed realists poured water on the event's idealism, insisting that the "real" problem in Africa is not a lack of awareness by the world at large but, rather, government corruption that prevents aid money from reaching the people who need it most. These realists insist that what these countries need in order to obtain peace and prosperity is democracy and decent infrastructure. Neither the realists nor the utopians pointed the finger at the super-abundance of weapons available to the scores of fanatical young men who are at the heart of the continent's many conflicts, not to mention those of the rest of the planet. This is in spite of the fact that a U.N.-commissioned study reported this month that small-arms fire kills as many as three times more people than previously thought. The study found that worldwide deaths from pistols, rifles, machine guns, mortars and hand-held rocket launchers likely totalled 80,000 to 108,000 in 2003. This "lethality," the concept at the core of this essay, is missing from discussions about the world's growing number of failed states and war-torn countries. Weapons manufacturers in the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, Russia and China have made the world a far more lethal place than ever before in its history. As a direct result, a variety of long-standing conflicts once localized in the developing world now threaten the most cherished institutions of the developed world: democracy, public safety, mass transit, and financial markets. Lethality is a concept unhampered by the pie-in-the-sky ring of terms like "global disarmament." Politically neutral, it follows from common sense. The world has periodically been made aware of lethality, and thousands of lives have been saved as a result. In the 1960s, Ralph Nader exposed flaws in the design of automobiles like the Corvair and the Pinto that were putting people's lives at risk. More recently, a focus on the dangers of passive smoking and on the reckless use of Taser guns have opened up new avenues for saving human lives. Paradoxically, the inherently lethal nature of weapons has made them immune to serious discussion about the extent to which they are manufactured and disseminated. Introducing the concept of lethality on the world stage and using it to inform our foreign policies would make Canada clearer about its alliances with the U.S., NATO and Europe, and its role in world peace. Simply put, it is not just the legality of military ventures that is open to question, but also their potential lethality. When we focus on lethality, we are less likely to fall under the sway of the Big Lie of militarism - the canard that it makes strategic sense to ship more and more arms to the "good guys" of a region in conflict. This logic was invoked in the past to justify the overthrow of a popular socialist leader in Iran, the subsequent propping up of the Shah, and the arming of Contras and death squads in Central and South America. Those who pieced together the destined-to-fail Oslo Accord were thinking about peace, but not about lethality. They stipulated that the Israelis provide the Palestinian Authority with some 40,000 high-powered rifles. Through other means, the Palestinians illegally obtained some 60,000 more. Most of those weapons came back to haunt the Israeli military and civilian population inestimably as part of Arafat's about-face known as the Second Intifada. Currently, the Americans are in the process of arming some 175,000 Iraqi regulars. How little they have learned from their massive arming of such poorly contained figures as the Shah, Saddam Hussein and, indeed, Osama bin Laden. I am indebted to a fellow psychiatrist, an American suicidologist named Edwin Schneidman, for clarifying the difference between mere distress, of which there is plenty in the world, and lethality. In estimating suicidal risk, Schneidman advocated the use of a binary scale to evaluate both the distress of potential suicides and their degree of lethality. An example he gave was that of a troubled teenager with a history of cutting her forearms who had recently broken up with her boyfriend. Such a young woman rates very high on the distress scale but low on the lethality scale, in that her cutting is not likely to result in death. Where are the men and women of conscience who would shut down weapons plants for a day, or a week, if only out of respect for the maimed and the dead? By contrast, he offered the example of a thrill-seeking sailor who occasionally played the deadly game of Russian roulette. Such a man may not be highly distressed but nevertheless is very lethal and at considerable risk of completed suicide. To be avoided at all costs is a combination of high distress and high lethality. This very combination is now threatening the world because of the ubiquity of explosive agents and the willingness of fanatical people to turn themselves and their vehicles into bombs. One has but to turn on the nightly news for footage of crowds of mostly unemployed young men in pre-industrial countries brandishing high-tech weaponry. TV viewers have come to accept this as natural. Such acceptance is part of the Big Lie that no one in the West is willing to confront. The enormous build-up of conventional weapons by the United States, Europe, Russia and China, and the sale or gifting of these weapons to curry favour among the resource-rich developing world is a global tragedy, of which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are but recent manifestations. These wars reverberate back onto the local scene; as Britain's Home and Foreign Office recently admitted, the war in Iraq is a key cause of young British Muslims turning towards radicalism.We have but to ask ourselves this question to expose the Big Lie: since Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are de-stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, why is the United States not reading the riot act to the Eastern European nations who are flooding the world with such weapons? Cannot the world's most powerful nation subsidize the closing down of conventional weapons factories in these countries? The motivation is not there, because 1) America's gun fetish renders it myopic on the subject of militarism; and 2) wealthy industrialists who own defence stocks and security technology stocks would feel the pinch if America herself closed down firms that make handguns or assault weapons for distribution to civilian populations both at home and abroad. Similarly, in Europe, a firm like Norway's Dyna ASA would be financially hurt if it were obliged to scale back on the HMX and RDX weapons-grade plastic explosives it manufactures in 100 different varieties and sells in 40 countries around the world. Recall that tonnes of this same type of explosive went missing from the munitions stockpiles in Iraq, only to wind up in the hands of Zarqawi and other insurgents. These military-grade explosives turn cars and trucks into giant grenades that almost always result in double- or triple-digit casualties. When I was a child growing up in Winnipeg, our family often drove over the Salter Bridge past two huge words spray-painted on the side of a large cold-storage building. The slogan struck me then as that of an idealistic kook: DISARM NOW. No doubt some readers will dub me a dreamer for suggesting that the first step on the road to peace is to scale back the production and distribution of conventional weapons and explosive agents. Some will argue that it is all too easy to produce homemade explosives and that the closing of commercial explosives factories will serve no purpose. The July 21 bombing attempt in London that failed because the bombers' homemade explosives didn't work puts the lie to that. As well, the home manufacture of explosives is a dangerous business, one that often leads to unintended explosions. The commonly used chemical cocktail TATP, made out of drain cleaner, bleach and acetone, has been nicknamed "Mother of Satan" for the number of bomb-makers it has maimed. This homemade explosive is highly unstable and sensitive to friction and heat, which is why it is increasingly being mixed with military-grade explosives. Still, should it prove necessary to make drain cleaner, bleach and acetone tightly controlled products in areas beset by bombings, most citizens would breathe a sigh of relief. And at any rate, most bomb-makers depend on an infrastructure of conventional weapons to safeguard their activities. The endless array of explosives out there might seem bewildering, but most explosive agents contain substances in common that are easy to chemically detect, such as nitrates. Repeatedly, concerned American scientists have pushed to have explosives manufacturers "tag" their lethal products with easily identifiable chemicals that would provide a "source code" for the factories that made them. However, the industry has balked at this, citing the increased liability that could result from explosives detonating prematurely or being misused in some way. American explosives makers also point out, understandably, that the need to source-identify explosive agents would have to be applied to producers in Europe, Russia and China, as well. Where are the whistle-blowers at all the plastic-based explosive factories around the world? Why do our newspapers not provide us a map of the communities that give tax breaks and domicile to such industries? Where are the men and women of conscience who would shut down those plants for a day, or a week, if only out of respect for the maimed and the dead, if only to give their governments a chance to pause for thought? If we cannot shut down, or at least slow down, these death mills, whose only purpose is to kill people, are we not as complicit as IBM exporting its punch cards to the Nazis to help them track their victims' identities and possessions? Ron Charach is a practising psychiatrist and the author of seven books of poetry. He regularly contributes to Toronto's newspapers and is a member of Physicians for Global Survival and The Coalition for Gun Control. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 22:28:11 -0600 (CST) From: "Bruce Mills" Subject: [COLUMN] Get rid of the guns, become less lethal http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render &c=Page&cid=968256290204 Jul. 31, 2005. 01:00 AM Get rid of the guns, become less lethal Here is a policy wish list that flows from embracing an awareness of lethality and the consequent refusal to buy into the Big Lie: At the local level, we should encourage any legislation aimed at cutting down on lethality factors in our society. This would include supporting bills aimed at banning handguns and semi-automatic weapons from urban areas. The move recently to declare the Hells Angels a criminal organization is entirely sound when one considers its long role in perpetuating fear and violence in our society. At the international level, Canada must call for action by the U.N. Security Council to decrease the flow of assault rifles, RPGs and explosives into the unstable, non-democratic nations of the world. Such a stance would inform our response to Britain's recent decision to lift an arms embargo justifiably imposed on Libyan leader Gaddafi. In exchange for his co-operation on nuclear matters, why should such a volatile leader be rewarded with British fighter planes? Canada should admit that it cannot keep pace with the masses of American weaponry now pouring into foreign arenas of war. The effort to secure stability in Afghanistan was in itself something of a windmill-tilt, albeit a necessary one. To widen the battlefront to include Iraq now seems as rash as the past efforts by the United States to widen the arena of the Vietnam War to include other nations in that region. Accordingly, Canada should dedicate its military mainly to homeland defence and safeguarding our border with the United States. We should undertake only viable and sustainable peacekeeping missions, such as those in Haiti and Darfur. Canada should propose clear consequences against nations, such as the Czech Republic, whose explosives keep finding their way into the Middle East and other world hot spots. The manufacture of the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) should go the way of the flame-thrower. This weapon has made ragtag militias the equal of conventional armed forces in urban warfare. Continuing pressure needs to be exerted on the Americans to ban land mines; they can then justifiably argue for a ban on production of RPGs. Canada should avoid the oversimplified view that the Cold War is over, a central tenet of the Big Lie. Televisions reverberate with images of Eastern European Kalashnikovs and RPGs battling American Apache attack helicopters and Stinger missiles. Indeed, U.N. arms inspectors recently announced that some 4,000 shoulder-fired missiles are among the weaponry in Iraq to go missing since the fall of Saddam. For efforts at disarming the world's most dangerous trouble spots to have demonstrable results, the United States, Russia and China must work together with that specific goal in mind. An expanded Security Council might well be a beneficial influence here, if only because it would bring into the circle of accountability other major non-aligned arms producers, such as Brazil. A decommissioning of weapons, comparable to that which took place in Northern Ireland and Sadr City, is a prerequisite for establishing a viable peace in areas of poverty and high unemployment, where extremist leaders seduce the younger generation with the hope of military solutions to complex social problems. - - Ron Charach ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 22:35:58 -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: Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 12:27 AM Subject: Re: Get rid of the guns, become less lethal Make no mistake - Ron Charach isn't talking about Afghanistan or Iraq or the Congo or other areas in the world that are in conflict. He's talking about Toronto. This is just the soft-pedal of that socialist's wet dream, the "Gun Free Zone". Unfortunately, we have seen what happens when such "Gun Free Zones" are created: only the criminals have guns, and they turn the law-abiding citizens into cowering victims, without any means with which to protect themselves. Washington, DC is pretty much one such zone, and they, along with other urban centers that have the strictest "gun control" laws like NYC, LA, Chicago, routinely vie for the title of "Murder City, USA". Conversely, those States that have passed "Shall Issue" Concealed Carry Permit laws have seen a drop in confrontational crime on an average of 24%. This puts the lie to your headline to Charach's superfical and sophomoric argument, too: more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens means less crime, because criminals fear an amred citizenry, capable of fighting back. Liberty is wasted on you, Bruce Hamilton Ontario ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 23:24:52 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Lowe Subject: Re: The Ultimate Authority "Bruce Mills" wrote: > No, Rick, it's an admission that there is no longer any point trying > to argue with you, because you absolutely refuse to see any of the > merits of my arguments. > > You have this bizarre mind-set that is completely at odds with my way > of thinking. You're right Bruce. I can't understand anyone who believes a bear breaking into a cabin with people in it is no different than a deer knibbling the tops off the beets out in the fields. That's a bizarre mind-set in my mind, and an argument entirely without merit. But to each his own, I suppose. I also have to say I don't think you really make arguments to support your views of rights; mostly you make pronouncements. I do try and make arguments and explain my rational, at the risk of frequently being told I'm long winded, but at least I try. I'll also suggest that if your pronouncements and rational can't win me over, as long as I've been in this fight, then you don't have a hope in hell in succeeding with the majority of Canadians > Your catchy new sign off speaks volumes "Yours in reality and the rule of law". Perhaps you would prefer a signoff such as "Yours in Liberty - but MY interpretation of Liberty"? It is a fact we have to live in and deal with reality - not an existance of what should be. If we can't recognize reality rather than thinking we're living in The World As It Should Be, in my mind you're going to have a damned hard time effectively working to change reality. > You've made many other similarly outrageous statements, too: "The Crown may choose to give you > permits"; "Most residents appear to think that's how it should > operate". Rights and the interpretation of rights should be in the hands of a minority rather than being the concensus of the majority? The citizens of a country, through their regularly elected representatives, shouldn 't be able to give their government the right to decide what is licensed or permited and then issue those documents accordingly? If rights should instead be left to the hands of a dissenting minority, then I guess all that's left to do is decide which particular individual or faction within that minority gets to say what our rights are. Now THAT's my definition of outrageous. > You also try to falsely conflate some "tyranny of the minority" with the "rights of the individual". Your opinion. Mine is that it is an accurate representation of what you propose. It seems we will have to disagree. > Your "two choices" is fallacious as well: it is based on a straw man > theory that neither I nor anyone else I know has espoused. It > doesn't allow for the supremacy of individual rights, supported by > the "rule of law". The law is supposed to *serve*, not be our > master. It does indeed allow for the supremacy of individual rights supported by the rule of law. It isn't fallacious - it just annoys the hell out of you. What chokes you so badly is that the interpretation of individual rights and majority concensus on what those rights are just happens to conflict with YOUR opinion of what those individual rights are. It still comes down to this: rights are going to be decided by somebody, and somebody who disagrees is going to feel violated by those decisions. It seems entirely and absolutely rational to me that the interpretation of rights be consistent with concensus of the majority and have the consent of the majority. Will that lead to abuses? Of course. Which is why we are fortunate that constitutions are generally dynamic. On the other hand, your alternative of going with the opinion of one of the small minorities - or one individual who presumes to be the ultimate authority on what rights and laws really are or should be - is beyond scary. Having a small faction or one person dictate what rights shall be to a dissenting majority which does not support that interpretation is a much greater violation and much more likely to lead to abuses. Finally, the law is supposed to serve the greatest majority of citizens with the greatest support for that law possible. It is not intended to be used as a bludgeon by a minority or one person whose view of rights and law differs from the vast majority of people who he shares that society with. The minority always have the perogative to convince the majority who disagree with them that their view of rights and law is in fact the correct one. That works on a fairly regular basis. In those cases where the majority say you're the person who is in error, you also have the perogative to continue to try to change their minds. > Yes, "reality" and the "rule of law" have their places, but if all we > do is accept "reality", as is, unquestioned, then what's "possible", > not to mention what's "right", must necessarily go out the window. > After all, the law is the law, and the majority has spoken - no > matter how wrong they are. See above. I never said - anywhere, at any time - that people must accept reality without question and without attempting to change that reality where they believe it to be wrong. But until you can convince that majority that it is they - rather than you - who are in error, then the rule of law must be respected. Presuming a right of individuals to set their own bill of rights as each individual sees fit is merely a recipe for chaos and anarchy. Been there, seen that, don't need it here. In a society like that, many of us here would be the first to be killed off by dissenters who felt a personal liberty to do away with such terrible thoughts and opinions. > If all you do is assert the total supremacy of the "rule of law" as > being the "reality", I don't see why you have bothered to spend so > much time in opposition to the Firearms Act. I trust you will leave > us to our own, deluded, devices now. Once again, I have never asserted the total supremecy of rule of law. But as long as we have the right to elect our governments on a regular basis, the rule of law must be changed by the governments chosen by people, not individuals who profess to know more than what the majority does. Most people, I suspect, recognize those are my views on that matter even if you don't. As to your invitation to bugger off and quit disagreeing with you, I respectfully decline. I'll leave this list when I'm good and ready and when I choose to do so - or when you choose to ban me from the list for my views, whichever one comes first. > Personally, I prefer Liberty to the Tyranny of the Majority, and even > the Rule of Law, when it infringes upon MY RIGHTS. You may do what > you like. Which brings us back to: whose definition of "my rights" do we use in Canada? Bruce's interpretation? Anne MacLennan's interpretation? Mine? Emile Therion's? Wendy Cukier? Each of us gets to declare and operate on what we claim as "my rights"? Tell you what Bruce, I'll side with you as long as the rights that exist in Canada are what ****I**** think they are. I can live with that - would that be acceptable to you? If it isn't, just why should everyone in Canada be bound by YOUR view of what are and aren't rights? I'll fight like hell to have it remain in the hands of the citizens in this country and decided at the ballot box. It may be imperfect and I probably won't agree with the majority's interpretation of my rights and all their legislation, but at least I have a legitimate means to attempt change by winning the votes of my fellow citizens. When I trust my liberty and rights into the hands of one person's interpretation and pray he is neither a despot or an idiot, then the chances for abuse are tremendous. And letting each individual set their own rights and laws is a guaranteed return to barbaric anarchy. If you want to have a separate discussion of what our rights SHOULD be, then have at it; it would be interesting. Outside of that discussion, I'll continue to deal with life as I believe it currently exists. - -- "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 ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #281 ********************************** 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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