Cdn-Firearms Digest Friday, May 2 2008 Volume 11 : Number 400 In this issue: U.S. Appeals Court Rejects New York City's lawsuit ... RE: T-shirt purchases Letter to Globe/Post (just sent) ... Missing arsenal accounted for - almost, audit says; [EDITORIAL] Bans don't work; DEATH THREATS Re: Amnesty guns galore Toronto 12(6) Decision, April 2008 death treat spam? Proposal would permit loaded handguns in U.S. national parks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 21:03:14 -0400 From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: U.S. Appeals Court Rejects New York City's lawsuit ... PUBLICATION: The New York Times=20 DATE: 2008.05.01=20 EDITION: Late Edition - Final=20 SECTION: Metropolitan=20 PAGE: 2=20 BYLINE: ALAN FEUER=20 WORD COUNT: 819=20 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Appeals Court Rejects City's Suit to Curb Guns - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A federal appeals court threw out New York City's longstanding lawsuit against the gun industry on Wednesday, ruling that a relatively new federal law protects gun makers against such suits. The appellate ruling killed perhaps the boldest avenue by which the city has sought to stem the flow of illegal guns into New York: a claim that gun makers and distributors have knowingly flooded illicit, underground markets with their weapons. The city's suit, filed in 2000, was upheld in December 2005 by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Judge Weinstein allowed it to move forward, despite protests by gun makers like Beretta U.S.A., Browning Arms, Colt Manufacturing, Glock and Smith & Wesson, all of which cited a federal law that had been passed two months earlier. That law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, banned all suits against the gun industry except those in which a plaintiff could prove that gun makers had violated state or federal statutes in their sales and marketing practices. The city contended that the gun makers did exactly that, by failing to monitor retail dealers closely enough and, therefore, by allowing guns to end up in the hands of criminals. As a result, the city said, the manufacturers had created a "condition that negatively affects the public health or safety" and, thus, had violated New York State's public-nuisance law. It requested an injunction. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, ruling that the nuisance law did not constitute a permissible exception under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It reversed Judge Weinstein's decision and ordered the suit dismissed. One judge on the three-judge panel, Robert A. Katzmann, dissented, arguing that the New York State Court of Appeals should have been asked to decide whether the state law was an exception under the federal law or not. Under the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the city opened a second front in its fight against illegal guns by suing 27 individual gun dealers across the country in 2006. Announcing the first of those suits with great fanfare and emotion and a City Hall news conference, Mr. Bloomberg called the gun shops "rogue dealers" and "the worst of the worst." In a statement released on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg expressed disappointment in the decision but said it would have no effect on the suits still pending against the dealers, which claimed a clear violation of gun- sale laws. "Regardless of this ruling, we will continue our fight against illegal guns full-bore -- in the courtrooms, on the streets, and in Congress," he said. Twenty of the 27 gun dealers named in the city's two related suits in 2006 have already settled with the city, according to one of their lawyers, John Renzulli. Cases against two other defendants were dismissed, and two dealers lost their businesses. Of the three remaining cases, one is scheduled for trial this month and the other two in September -- before, of all people, Judge Weinstein, Mr. Renzulli said. Mr. Renzulli also represents the gun makers in the case decided on Wednesday. He said he doubted that the appellate ruling would have much of an effect on the dealer cases but added that it was too early to be certain. "The reaction is very positive at this point," Mr. Renzulli said. "We're obviously elated that the Second Circuit has seen it our way." Gun makers have been sued dozens of times by city and state officials across the country, but no suit has ever been successful. New York City's suit against the industry, in fact, went further toward a trial than most, said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association. The city of Gary, Ind., has so far been able to pursue its own case against the gun industry in the Indiana state court system. When he was New York State's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer tried to sue gun makers in the New York courts, but the suit was dismissed in 2003 when a state appellate court ruled that there was no reasonable legal claim in his complaint. In July 2003, after a six-week federal trial, Judge Weinstein dismissed a similar suit against the gun industry brought by the N.A.A.C.P. It had claimed that the practices of the industry amounted to a public nuisance because they permitted guns to fall into the hands of criminals. Judge Weinstein rejected the suit for technical reasons but declared that carelessness and a lack of precautions among some in the business fostered an illegal market in handguns. Mr. Bloomberg has made the fight against illegal guns a signature effort of his second term in office. He has gone to Washington to lobby lawmakers and has appeared at fund-raising dinners for the likes of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, calling illegal guns "scourges to our society." Michael A. Cardozo, the city's corporation counsel, said the city was analyzing the decision to see whether it would appeal to the United States Supreme Court. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 19:33:16 -0300 From: Rod Regier Subject: RE: T-shirt purchases Just remember that most US clothing product vendors have a UPS fetish. That is annoying to Canadian residents because UPS is a pathetic *international* service, primarily because Genghis Khan is apparently the cost accountant for the UPS customs brokers in Canada. Unlike any other courier, the UPS customs brokers will charge exorbitant fees to clear your shipment. (Way above and beyond the money due to CCRA for duty and taxes). Past disgruntled UPS Canada customers tried to initiate a=20 Canadian class-action lawsuit based on that fee structure and other UPS Canada business practices. http://www.poynerbaxter.com/UPS.htm Savvy resellers have declined to deal US suppliers who will only ship to Canada via UPS because few products are worth the headaches and costs. There are UPS shipping rates that can prepay the brokerage fees (which will protect the consignee from brokerage fee gouging), but such services are typically not used by a la carte clothing vendors. So unless your prospective vendor will ship via US Postal Service (which flows into Canada Post, who charge $5 to clear "small" orders), you're going to pay serious money to ship or broker your US t-shirt purchase(s). \\ Zazzle does offer USPS Airmail, but that doesn't have a tracking number. CafePress doesn't specify, but it looks like they use UPS for Canadian shipments Spreadshirt uses UPS. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 08:54:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Rob Sciuk Subject: Letter to Globe/Post (just sent) ... Stab suspect charged in earlier crime ... (fwd) Dear Sir/Madame, The needless death of poster couple Rahimullah and Nazifa Shahghaszy is apparently just the latest chapter in the saga of our broken Justice system. By all accounts, their assailant was, as is frequently the case in these tragedies, "out on bail from a previous violent crime", details of which have been kept from the public. While mindless politicians will focus upon the weapon, and calls for a knife registry will resound, the elephant in the room is why a violent and obviously deranged individual's right to walk amoung us trumps the rights of the Shahghaszy family, and indeed the Charter right to "safety of person" of all Canadians? Sincerely, Robert S. Sciuk ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 09:45:29 -0400 From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: Missing arsenal accounted for - almost, audit says; PUBLICATION: Montreal Gazette DATE: 2008.05.02 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: A8 BYLINE: JEFF HEINRICH SOURCE: The Gazette WORD COUNT: 512 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Missing arsenal accounted for - almost, audit says; Kanesatake Mohawk police weapons - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The last time they looked, 15 weapons were missing. Now they're down to five. Almost the entire $61,000 arsenal of assault rifles, submachine guns, pistols and other weapons of the Kanesatake Mohawk Police has been accounted for, a new federal audit says. Of the 107 weapons the KMP bought at taxpayers' expense between April 2003 and April 2005 for use in the tiny Mohawk community west of Montreal, only five Taser electroshock stun guns are still missing. The rest are under lock and key in Drummondville and Listuguj, according to the forensic audit of KMP spending in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 budget years. Ordered a year ago, the audit was released yesterday by Public Safety Canada. An earlier inventory check - done in November 2005 and made public in a draft audit for the department in December 2006 - had revealed that 15 weapons were missing: six Tasers, seven Glock pistols and two Beretta handguns. In a new 108-page report for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, the Ottawa office of Chicago-based Navigant Consulting says five Glock-22 .40-calibre pistols once belonging to the KMP are at the aboriginal police department in Listuguj, a Micmac reserve in the Gasp=E9. The rest of the weapons - all but the five missing Tasers - are at Sporteque, a registered gun shop in Drummondville, northeast of Montreal. They include: 45 Tasers, 16 Glock-22s, 15 Beretta pistols, two Colt AR-15 assault rifles, two Remington-870 12-gauge shotguns, a Ruger Mini-30 range rifle and one Sage gun (it launches plastic baton projectiles for riot control), 10 Armalite M15 assault riles, three HK MP5 submachine guns and one Accuracy International sniper rifle. The arsenal was acquired in the lead-up and aftermath of a botched January 2004 raid on Kanesatake by a special police force of 67 Quebec aboriginal officers and special constables. Led by the KMP but disapproved of by the RCMP as well as the Surete du Quebec and Quebec's public-security department, the raid was financed with an extraordinary $900,000 budget from Public Safety, which at the time was under Liberal government control. The funding came at the special request of James Gabriel, who was then Kanesatake's grand chief and who had vowed to take on organized crime - essentially marijuana runners and contraband cigarette sellers - in his community. The raid ended in failure after local residents rioted, hemming in the police for two days before they left under escort, never to return. The new audit also found spending irregularities such as "questionable expense claims" and overtime bills, as well as questionable upgrades of decrepit police vehicles, that were a minor part of the $4.8 million the KMP got from Public Safety in 2003-04 and 2004-05. But it found no basis to accusations from within Kanesatake that Gabriel and his allies on the community's band council had secretly funnelled money to buy equipment, vehicles and weapons in those years through a registered organization called the Kanesatake Mohawk Coalition. Other taxpayer-funded expenses noted in the audit for the two-year period were $1.5 million in legal bills, $368,000 in public-relations costs for Gabriel and $120,000 in travel expenses for him and three fellow chiefs on the council. elizabeth thompson of the gazette's ottawa bureau contributed to this report jheinrich@thegazette.canwest.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 18:51:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Bruce Mills Subject: [EDITORIAL] Bans don't work; http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=987153 Bans don't work; Stiff penalties, hard police action will cut down on handgun crimes Posted By Hoy, Claire Posted 15 days ago Here's a question: since crime is illegal, why do we still have crime? What's that you say? We have crime because, well, some people are criminals. Dah! Which is why, of course, it would make as much sense for Toronto's left-leaning Mayor David Miller to demand a ban on crime as it does for him to ask Canadians to sign his online petition to ban handguns. It doesn't work. Period. All it does is allow Miller - the mayor of the city with one quarter of all Canada's annual gun victims - to avoid concrete action and to slough off his responsibility by blaming Ottawa and Queen's Park. It also shifts the blame away from criminals onto the backs of millions of law-abiding Canadian gun owners. I do not own a gun. Other than target practice with my high school army cadets - at a time when cadet training was mandatory - I've never even fired a gun. Yet, we need look no further than the United Kingdom to understand that handgun bans don't work. In June 1997, a year after the massacre in Dunblane - a small Scottish town where a man murdered 16 school children plus an adult before turning his guns on himself - British MPs voted 384 to 181 to ban all handguns in Britain. Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw told the Commons, "I recognize there will be law-abiding shooters who will be inconvenienced or worse as a result, and I regret that. But I am in no doubt where the balance should be struck between the right to practice sport and the right to life - particularly the right to life of a child." Absolutely, IF gun bans worked. But, sadly, they don't. Instead of gun crimes falling with the ban, they skyrocketed. On July 16, 2001, the BBC reported that the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 per cent in the two years after the ban. Two years later, BBC reported that gun crime had risen by yet another 35 per cent in the previous year alone. And so it goes. There's more. In Canada, for example, guns of all descriptions accounted for 2.4 per cent of the weaponry used in violent crimes (in Toronto, on Miller's continuing watch, it's 4.1 per cent, still small, but nearly double the national average.) More to the point, however, knives accounted for 6.2 per cent. A knife ban anyone? Even clubs and other blunt objects were the weapon of choice more often than a gun. Statistics Canada reports that registered guns - and all handguns in Canada have had to be registered for the last six decades or so - were used in only 2.27 per cent of Canadian homicides from 1997 to 2005, and legal gun owners were charged in a mere 1.2 per cent of murders committed with a gun. Yes, guns, when they are used, are more deadly than knives and clubs. But the thing is, they're being used by criminals who a) do not have legally registered guns and b) obviously have no intention of registering their guns whatever the law might say. Miller and his fellow travellers ignore the U.K. experience - where a gun ban exacerbated the problem - and point south to the U.S. where Americans love guns, and where the gun-related murder rate is 3.4 per 100,000 people, compared to 0.58 in Canada. That's proof, they say, that gun bans would work. Not exactly. Gun-related crime varies wildly in various parts of the U.S. and - dare we say it? - there is no direct relationship between the number of gun owners and the rate of gun crime. Don't believe it? Well, Washington, D.C., has far and away the highest gun-related murder rates in the U.S. (35.8 per 100,000), yet only 3.8 per cent of its citizens own guns. Contrast this with North Dakota, where the gun-related murder rate is 1.4 per 100,000 (well below Toronto's rate, incidentally) despite the fact that more than half the population owns at least one gun. If Miller really wanted to tackle Toronto's gun problem - and it is a serious problem - he would look to New York City, where the NYPD and the local council introduced radical and aggressive policing tactics in 1993 - using felony arrests and summonses to target gun trafficking, targeting the high crime areas and strictly enforcing all gun laws. New York's gun-related crime and homicide rates plummeted from the worst in the U.S. to among the safest of the big cities. Bans don't work. But stiff penalties and aggressive police actions do, which is essentially what federal Safety Minister Stockwell Day is trying to tell Miller. New York will tell anybody how they did it. If Miller's main interest is reducing gun crime instead of garnering self-serving headlines and blaming other levels of government for his inaction, he should ask them. He might learn something. And some young Toronto lives might be saved. - - Read Claire Hoy every Wednesday in The Sudbury Star. Article ID# 987153 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 22:08:53 -0600 From: "Bob Lickacz" Subject: DEATH THREATS - ----- Original Message ----- > Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 08:36:54 -0700 > From: "Todd Birch" > Subject: Death Threats > > If a gun owner was to make a death threat or threat of violence towards > anyone, we know what the outcome would be - immediate police > (over)reaction > and confiscation of any and all firearms. > > Faceless internet threats probably don't have much ranking on the police > radar screen. Not until such a threat is carried out, like the conundrum > of > the shooting of an abortion Dr. by a 'right-to-lifer'. > > Be vigilant, Bob, but no more than normal. Even if the threat was deemed > real, we know that you'd get the same protection under the law that a > threatened woman gets - a peace bond/no contact order. Sleep well ..... > For everyone's info. The death threat was NOT made on the internet. It was made in person, at a public meeting. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a look at who made the threat. Now one of the nice things about being a firearms owner, is that I know what firearms are used for and what they can do. The funny thing is that I live in a geographically ,politically isolated area. The closest police station is in Devon (an RCMP detachment). It is about 8 kms. away. These guys will not respond because they are on the other side of the North Saskatchewan River, a different county. The second closest police department is the Edmonton City Police Department West End Division. Now they won't respond because I do not live within the confines of the City Of Edmonton. The THIRD closest PD, is Spruce Grove RCMP PD. But...... they won't respond because I do not live within the confines of the City Of Spruce Grove. The police department that WILL respond...... is the Stony Plain RCMP department. These guys are 35 kms. away. I am fully aware that when seconds count...................... The cops are ONLY minutes away......... My head hurts............. Bob Lickacz ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 18:53:38 -0400 From: "mred" Subject: Re: Amnesty guns galore - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Mills" To: Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 4:06 PM Subject: Amnesty guns galore > http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/local/article/46074 > > Amnesty guns galore > Expensive,unique firearms among program's haul > > By TRACEY TONG > April 28, 2008 11:45 > > http://media.metronews.ca/images/08/6b/802bfa4b4e76a51fc800619f96bd.jpeg > > A recent Ottawa Police gun amnesty pulled in a large > variety of rifles, shotguns and handguns - the > majority unregistered and some so rare that firearms > unit members had never seen them before. > > A three-week amnesty, which wrapped up Friday, > collected 365 guns, including an "infamous" AK-47 > shotgun designed to penetrate metal and bulletproof > vests and a collection of a dozen rare Steyr Augs - > Swiss-made military rifles - worth $20,000. IS? there such a thing as an AK-47 shotgun ? or is this so much bafflegab by the media? ed/on ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 09:42:27 -0400 From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: Toronto 12(6) Decision, April 2008 Toronto 12(6) Decision, April 2008: Larry Whitmore et al (Ontario) http://www.cila-ical.com/2008/04/Toronto_case_decision_Apr.pdf Moderator Note: The file is a little large to post directly to the CFD, but it is a worthwhile read. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 07:36:19 +1200 From: "Walter Martindale" Subject: death treat spam? I guess I'm fortunate - I haven't yet received any electronic threats. However - begs the question. Open SPAM? No thanks... In some cases if I get a file attachment from someone I know, but it seems out of character, I send them an e-mail asking if they've recently e-mailed me anything. If they confirm, I'll look at it, otherwise it's "deleted forever". Outlook 2007 has a REALLY good junk e-mail filter as does Gmail. Actual death threats from live humans - well, that must be pretty scary. I remember the fellow who actually introduced me to pistol shooting being under threat - told me that when he got home from work, he'd put his PPC gear on when he got home, and then beside his bed at night. For a while, post surgery, I felt a bit paranoid and kept the Mossberg beside the bed with 5 in the mag and chamber empty (slide release catch released, chamber closed), but that was only because I didn't think I'd be able to fight at the time... (20+ years of martial arts practice). That would be a bit more difficult now - the Mossberg is currently owned by someone else, and I don't have any scatterguns here in NZ... Hope Bob L doesn't have any more problems with this. W ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 09:50:16 -0400 From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: Proposal would permit loaded handguns in U.S. national parks PUBLICATION: Vancouver Sun DATE: 2008.05.02 EDITION: Final SECTION: Westcoast News PAGE: B2 DATELINE: PORTLAND BYLINE: Scott Learn SOURCE: The Oregonian WORD COUNT: 204 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Proposal would permit loaded guns in national parks - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- PORTLAND -- Visitors to Crater Lake National Park with proper permits could carry loaded, concealed handguns along with their binoculars and granola bars under a Bush administration proposal unveiled this week. The department of the interior's plan would partially lift a nationwide ban on loaded weapons in national parks and wildlife refuges, altering a rule that last changed in the Reagan administration. Campers, hikers and other visitors with concealed weapons permits would be allowed to carry loaded weapons if the state hosting the park or refuge allows it in similar state lands, such as state parks. Both Oregon and Washington allow legal holders of guns, concealed and otherwise, to carry them loaded in state parks. The National Rifle Association led the effort to amend the federal policy. Since December, 51 U.S. senators, including Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon, signed letters backing the change. The change would "respect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners," the senators said. It would also make the gun rules more consistent with those on U.S.-owned forest lands, which allow visitors to carry loaded guns if that's consistent with the host state's laws. "You can certainly make a case that you're safer in a national park than you are in Detroit," said Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Federation. ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V11 #400 *********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:d.jordan@sasktel.net List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.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 and http://www.canfirearms.ca CFDigest Archives: http://www.canfirearms.ca/archives To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next four lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".)