Cdn-Firearms Digest Wednesday, February 25 2009 Volume 13 : Number 080 In this issue: RE: German MG42 light machine guns Washington Times - Citizens to get guns to battle militants Re: Toronto Star - 2,000 in biker trial jury pool Red Deer Advocate: Registry bill likely to be shot down; NDP MP Rafferty to back bill to eliminate long gun registry NDP MP Rafferty to back bill to eliminate long gun registry Letter: Firearms Act is real target USA - Suprem Court Justices Uphold Ban On Guns for Abusers; Windsor Star: Town rejects deer hunt ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:16:38 -0500 From: "Mark L Horstead" Subject: RE: German MG42 light machine guns > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca > [mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca] On Behalf Of > RD CESSFORD > Sent: 24-Feb-09 11:41 > To: cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca > Subject: re:German MG42 light machine guns > Later in the website the "more correct" rate of fire is > listed as 1500 RPM ! There are theoretical rates of fire and practical. 1500 RPM is theoretical. Reload times and barrel change times (as appropriate) combined with the theoretical rate determine the practical rate. > Additionally, one should note that the MG42 does NOT use a > magazine, but rather is fed by means of BELTS of metal linked > ammunition of 250 rounds which in turn can be attached > together with no limit. The MG42, and its modern MG3 counterpart, use non-disintegrating link belts. I have too little experience with those to know if they can be linked together to create longer belts as the disintegrating link belts that we use can. Regardless, at least two barrel changes should be made before one minute's worth of sustained theoretical rate of fire has been accomplished, or one barrel change after every two belts (and one more before commencement of the next burst), or the barrel will be ruined. Most machine guns are issued with one spare barrel for this purpose. Even if a hypothetical MG42 had two spare barrels beside it, carrying out two barrel changes in one minute and putting anywhere close to 1500 rounds downrange in that time is not possible. Those barrels need time to cool down enough before going back on, too. Add them to the weight of the ammunition. Ammunition weight is more than just combined bullet weights as well - the belt, disintegrating link or non-disintegrating link, also has a fair amount of weight. If I remember correctly, a 220-round belt of 7.62 mm weighs sixteen pounds (the metal box is additional), so 1500 rounds would weigh about 110 pounds plus container weight. Find somebody else to hump that - I have no such desire. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:33:58 -0800 (PST) From: Bruce Mills Subject: Washington Times - Citizens to get guns to battle militants http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/23/citizens-to-get-guns-to-battle-militants/ Citizens to get guns to battle militants Asif Shahzad ASSOCIATED PRESS Monday, February 23, 2009 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan | Authorities in a Pakistani border province plan to arm villagers with 30,000 rifles and set up an elite police unit to protect a region increasingly besieged by Taliban and al Qaeda militants, an official said Sunday. Stiffer action in the North West Frontier Province could help offset American concern that a peace deal being negotiated in the Swat valley, a Taliban stronghold in the province, could create a haven for Islamist insurgents only 100 miles from the Pakistani capital. Village militias backed by the United States have been credited with reducing violence in Iraq. Washington is paying for a similar initiative in Afghanistan. The United States is already spending millions of dollars to train and equip Pakistani forces in the rugged region near the Afghan border, but there was no sign that it was involved in the militia plan. A U.S. Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment. A Pakistani soldier stands guard during a break in a curfew imposed by authorities after Friday's suicide bombing in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan. A string of sectarian attacks has prompted officials in northwestern Pakistan to consider arming local villagers against Taliban and al Qaeda militants, which have carried out a series of suicide bombings. (Associated Press) Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Saturday that he will try to "remove the apprehensions of the world community" about the Swat deal when he meets U.S. officials in Washington this week, state-run media reported. But it was unclear whether Sunday's announcement had the backing of national leaders or the powerful army =E2=80=94 or whether handing out more guns in an already heavily armed society was wise. Mahmood Shah, a former head of security for Pakistan's tribal regions, said arming civilians could trigger civil war in the northwest, where tribal and political tension is at fever pitch. Mr. Shah said authorities should focus on bolstering existing security forces. "This is Pakistan, not Iraq or Afghanistan. There is complete anarchy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that is not the case here," he said. "It is not going to help." Haider Khan Hoti, chief minister of the provincial government, said authorities would distribute the guns only among "peaceful groups and individuals" so they could help police to guard their villages. Supporters of pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad offer noon prayers in Mingora, the capital of Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley. (Associated Press) Officials would consult with local police chiefs before handing out the arms and would take them back if they were not used against "terrorists and troublemakers," Mr. Hoti's office said in a written statement. Mr. Hoti said the guns had been seized from "terrorists and anti-state elements." He said the province would meet the $40 million bill for the elite provincial police unit of 2,500 officers. "The purpose of setting up this force is to combat terrorism and extremism effectively," he said. The militia plan raises doubts about the coherence of Pakistani efforts to counter Taliban groups that have seized growing pockets of the northwest, forged links with al Qaeda and carried out a blur of suicide bombings. Pakistani officials have encouraged residents to establish militias in the semiautonomous tribal areas along the province's border with Afghanistan. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:31:48 -0800 (PST) From: Bruce Mills Subject: Re: Toronto Star - 2,000 in biker trial jury pool - --- On Wed, 2/25/09, Bruce Mills wrote: > LONDON b Prospective jurors for the trial of the biggest > mass murder in > modern Ontario history were given a pep talk and a civics > lesson yesterday by > a judge. So, why doesn't Wendy and company refer to this when they yammer on about "mass gun shootings"? Yours in LIBERTY! Bruce ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:43:57 -0500 From: Ian Kidston Subject: Red Deer Advocate: Registry bill likely to be shot down; And you wonder why the Registry still flourishes? > Jamie Osmond, manager/owner of Backcountry Sports in Red Deer, said > registering new guns is now quicker due to online registration. He can > also do it by phone. > > But it still requires effort on a product "that you don't make a whole > bunch of money on," Osmond said. > > He believes the registry's intent to cut gun crime hasn't worked and > therefore has been a big waste of time. /Still, he sees some merit in a > registry because it could allow for the return of lost or stolen firearms > to the registered owner./ > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, February 25, 2009 9:44 am From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: NDP MP Rafferty to back bill to eliminate long gun registry Atikokan Progress - February 23, 2009 MP Rafferty to back bill to eliminate long gun registry By Michael McKinnon http://www.atikokanprogress.ca/articles/2647/1/MP-Rafferty-to-back-bill-to-eliminate-long-gun-registry/Page1.html MP John Rafferty expects he will support a Private Member's Bill to eliminate the long gun registry and remove much of the onerous regulations associated with it.The bill (C-301) has been introduced by a member sitting on the government side, Conservative MP Gerry Breitkreuz of Yorkville-Melville, Saskatchewan. It has been endorsed by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH).MP Rafferty has consistently called for the end of the long gun registry, and vowed in several campaigns that if elected he would work to get rid of it. In his address at the Rainy River District Municipal Assoc.'s annual meeting here January 31, MP Rafferty said he was working with the Saskatchewan member on the bill. Private Member's Bills come forward to the House based on a lottery system, and because MP Breitkreuz had the better position (22nd, versus MP Rafferty's 64th), the Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP decided to support his colleague's efforts."There an issue of respect, too. He's been trying for a decade to get this through, and I'm just new," he said last week. "It (C-301) is a little more convoluted than I would have liked, and we're reviewing it to make sure there are still the safeguards we need. I spoke with him last week, and he is open about making some adjustments if necessary." MP Rafferty is going against his party in supporting the bill, and his leader is not happy with his decision to back it. But the NDP caucus did hold a free vote on the issue of the long gun registry, which has split the country pretty much along urban-rural lines."In 2000, when I ran in Thunder Bay-Superior, I promised to do all I could to put an end to the long gun registry," he said January 31. "You elect me, not Jack Layton or anyone else." Last week he added he would be consulting constituents on the issue in his next newsletter, and tracking the feedback he gets.The Private Member's Bill proposes to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act to modify the conditions under which a registration certificate for firearms is required. It also directs the Auditor General to conduct a cost-benefit analysis once every five years to determine whether existing firearms control measures have been effective at improving public safety, reducing violent crime and keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals. The long gun registry was created about a decade ago, and has been expensive proposition (the bill for the full gun registry program is estimated by the Auditor-General at something around $2 billion), whose benefits are debatable. MP Breirkreuz says it has not been an effective tool for law enforcement, and has not saved a single life; but the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police disagrees, as do the NDP and Liberal parties in their official platforms. They all back the registry. That debate about the registry's value is what prompted MP Breitkruz to include the request for a cost-benefit analysis in Bill C-301. He has asked past governments and the civil service for any analysis they have done on the registry's effectiveness, but has been rebuffed - Cabinet secrecy laws shielded what appears to have been the only such analysis to date. "We need hard evidence to guide us in forming cost-effective crime control measures," says Breitkreuz. "This is a non-partisan issue and I hope it will be supported by all federal parties. Certainly there are MPs in all parties who believe hunters, farmers and sport shooters have been forced to comply with an onerous registration process that made no sense. It's high time to switch our focus to the bad guys." MP Rafferty shares that view, and says the government would be far better off investing resources in fighting crime with special programs (anti-gang, handgun control) in larger cities, than in the registry. So does the OFAH. "Over the last few years, public opinion polls have made it clear that a majority of Canadians believe that this badly flawed system needs to be eliminated," said OFAH executive director Mike Reader. "There have been countless examples of police chiefs, police associations and front line officers across the country who have condemned the registry, preferring instead to see the money wasted on the registry spent on more police on the street, better border security and an improved court system. The reality is that criminals, who use illegal firearms to commit crime and create havoc on the streets of our communities, don't register firearms and aren't impacted upon by this expensive white elephant." MP Rafferty expects Bill C-301 will come to the full House for debate before this summer. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, February 25, 2009 9:44 am From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: NDP MP Rafferty to back bill to eliminate long gun registry Atikokan Progress - February 23, 2009 MP Rafferty to back bill to eliminate long gun registry By Michael McKinnon http://www.atikokanprogress.ca/articles/2647/1/MP-Rafferty-to-back-bill-to-eliminate-long-gun-registry/Page1.html MP John Rafferty expects he will support a Private Member's Bill to eliminate the long gun registry and remove much of the onerous regulations associated with it.The bill (C-301) has been introduced by a member sitting on the government side, Conservative MP Gerry Breitkreuz of Yorkville-Melville, Saskatchewan. It has been endorsed by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH).MP Rafferty has consistently called for the end of the long gun registry, and vowed in several campaigns that if elected he would work to get rid of it. In his address at the Rainy River District Municipal Assoc.'s annual meeting here January 31, MP Rafferty said he was working with the Saskatchewan member on the bill. Private Member's Bills come forward to the House based on a lottery system, and because MP Breitkreuz had the better position (22nd, versus MP Rafferty's 64th), the Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP decided to support his colleague's efforts."There an issue of respect, too. He's been trying for a decade to get this through, and I'm just new," he said last week. "It (C-301) is a little more convoluted than I would have liked, and we're reviewing it to make sure there are still the safeguards we need. I spoke with him last week, and he is open about making some adjustments if necessary." MP Rafferty is going against his party in supporting the bill, and his leader is not happy with his decision to back it. But the NDP caucus did hold a free vote on the issue of the long gun registry, which has split the country pretty much along urban-rural lines."In 2000, when I ran in Thunder Bay-Superior, I promised to do all I could to put an end to the long gun registry," he said January 31. "You elect me, not Jack Layton or anyone else." Last week he added he would be consulting constituents on the issue in his next newsletter, and tracking the feedback he gets.The Private Member's Bill proposes to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act to modify the conditions under which a registration certificate for firearms is required. It also directs the Auditor General to conduct a cost-benefit analysis once every five years to determine whether existing firearms control measures have been effective at improving public safety, reducing violent crime and keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals. The long gun registry was created about a decade ago, and has been expensive proposition (the bill for the full gun registry program is estimated by the Auditor-General at something around $2 billion), whose benefits are debatable. MP Breirkreuz says it has not been an effective tool for law enforcement, and has not saved a single life; but the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police disagrees, as do the NDP and Liberal parties in their official platforms. They all back the registry. That debate about the registry's value is what prompted MP Breitkruz to include the request for a cost-benefit analysis in Bill C-301. He has asked past governments and the civil service for any analysis they have done on the registry's effectiveness, but has been rebuffed - Cabinet secrecy laws shielded what appears to have been the only such analysis to date. "We need hard evidence to guide us in forming cost-effective crime control measures," says Breitkreuz. "This is a non-partisan issue and I hope it will be supported by all federal parties. Certainly there are MPs in all parties who believe hunters, farmers and sport shooters have been forced to comply with an onerous registration process that made no sense. It's high time to switch our focus to the bad guys." MP Rafferty shares that view, and says the government would be far better off investing resources in fighting crime with special programs (anti-gang, handgun control) in larger cities, than in the registry. So does the OFAH. "Over the last few years, public opinion polls have made it clear that a majority of Canadians believe that this badly flawed system needs to be eliminated," said OFAH executive director Mike Reader. "There have been countless examples of police chiefs, police associations and front line officers across the country who have condemned the registry, preferring instead to see the money wasted on the registry spent on more police on the street, better border security and an improved court system. The reality is that criminals, who use illegal firearms to commit crime and create havoc on the streets of our communities, don't register firearms and aren't impacted upon by this expensive white elephant." MP Rafferty expects Bill C-301 will come to the full House for debate before this summer. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, February 25, 2009 9:48 am From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: Letter: Firearms Act is real target PUBLICATION: New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal DATE: 2009.02.25 SECTION: Opinion - Letters to the Editor PAGE: A4 Firearms Act is real target A Feb. 20 letter confuses the Firearms Act with long gun registration. The writer's not alone. The federal Conservatives' continuing efforts to lump everything bad about the Firearms Act into the globular Firearms Registry has confused many. The writer stated that "legal gun owners in Canada are already licensed and can be identified via their licenses. Criminals are not licensed." One need look no further than MP Garry Breitkreuz's website and find that the licensing component was the main culprit in the cost overruns, not the registry. However that information has to be ignored if you intend to retain the Firearms Act POL/PAL licensing, which Breitkreuz's Bill C-301 does. POL/PAL licensing is a people registry that tracks only those that are not criminals. C- 301 continues to make criminals out of citizens for nothing more then their "papers" not being in order. The National Coalition of Provincial and Territorial Wildlife Federations (which includes the New Brunswick Wildlife Federation) in a presentation to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, on the Firearms Act, (May 15, 1995) called POL/PAL licensing an "unjustified, expensive, ineffectual intrusion into Canadians' lives." Perhaps this is the reason the Conservatives hid behind a private member's bill, that has little chance of passing, rather than present government legislation that would have a real impact on the Liberals Firearms Act. An impact that's not contained in C-301. The record needs to be set straight on the real target, the Fireams Act, not on the long gun registry. AL MUIR Spokesman Canadian Unlicensed Firearms Owners Association (CUFOA) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, February 25, 2009 10:33 am From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: USA - Suprem Court Justices Uphold Ban On Guns for Abusers; PUBLICATION: The Washington Post DATE: 2009.02.25 SECTION: Asection PAGE: A02 BYLINE: Robert Barnes WORD COUNT: 638 - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justices Uphold Ban On Guns for Abusers; Law's Intent Called Clear, if Language Isn't - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Supreme Court yesterday affirmed federal efforts to bar those convicted of crimes involving domestic violence from owning guns. It was the court's first decision concerning gun rights since last year's landmark decision recognizing an individual's Second Amendment right to own a firearm. But the 7 to 2 decision authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg contained nary a word about Heller v. District of Columbia, which struck down Washington's ban on handguns. Instead, justices wrangled over language and whether Congress's decision to ban firearms to those convicted of "a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence" extended to someone convicted of a generic charge of battery, so long as there was a proven domestic relationship between the offender and the victim. Ginsburg said Congress might have been inartful in drafting the 1996 law, but its intentions and underlying concerns were clear: "Firearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination nationwide." Ginsburg was citing the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in that passage, and its president, Paul Helmke, said the ruling is "the right one for victims of domestic abuse and to protect law enforcement officers who are our first responders to domestic violence incidents." Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who sponsored the 1996 amendment to the federal Gun Control Act, said it had kept 150,000 domestic abusers nationwide from obtaining guns. The question was whether gun ownership was barred because someone had been convicted of a generic law against the use of force, or whether the law in question must specifically have as an element that the victim was in a domestic relationship with the aggressor. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said it was the latter. It threw out the conviction of Randy Edward Hayes, who had been convicted of battery on his then-wife in 1994. Ten years later, police responding to a domestic violence call about Hayes and his girlfriend found firearms in the home and indicted Hayes. Hayes said that the 1994 battery conviction did not trigger the federal ban on firearms, because it was not specifically on the charge of domestic violence. But nine other circuits around the country had read the law the other way, and Ginsburg said they were right. Fewer than half the states have laws that specifically denominate domestic violence as an element of a crime. Excluding domestic abusers convicted under generic battery laws "would frustrate Congress's manifest purpose," Ginsburg said in announcing her decision from the bench. Congress would not have enacted something that "would have been a dead letter in the majority of states from the very moment of its passage." But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, said that the law's ambiguous wording makes it a "textbook case for application of the rule of lenity" and that the case should be decided in Hayes's favor. "Ten years in jail is too much to hinge on the will-o'-the-wisp of statutory meaning pursued by the majority," Roberts complained. Like Ginsburg, he did not mention the Heller ruling in his dissent. The case is United States v. Hayes. In a separate decision, the justices said a state may order cities, counties and school districts to forbid payroll deductions for a union's political activities, something unions had challenged as a violation of their First Amendment rights. "The First Amendment prohibits government from 'abridging the freedom of speech; it does not confer an affirmative right to use government payroll mechanisms for the purpose of obtaining funds for expression," wrote Roberts, who was joined by Scalia, Ginsburg and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter dissented in the case from Idaho. Souter wrote that he thought the state's "legislative objective was not efficient, clean government, but that unions' political viewpoints were its target, selected out of all the politics the state might filter from its public workplaces." Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he would have sent Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association back to lower courts for more fact-finding. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, February 25, 2009 10:43 am From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 2" Subject: Windsor Star: Town rejects deer hunt PUBLICATION: The Windsor Star DATE: 2009.02.25 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: A5 DATELINE: LASALLE BYLINE: Monica Wolfson SOURCE: Windsor Star WORD COUNT: 291 - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Town rejects deer hunt - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the town wants to control its deer population, it needs to allow hunting within the town limits, said a provincial conservation officer. But councillors resisted provincial pressure Tuesday and rejected the idea of hunting in town. The Ministry of Natural Resources is planning to change its hunting regulations to extend the hunting season and allow hunters to kill more deer in the Essex County area. The ministry is also considering letting non-residents hunt in the area, said Kevin Sprague, conservation officer with the Ministry of Natural Resources in Wheatley, in an e-mail to Mayor Gary Baxter. "In my opinion many rural and agricultural areas within the town of LaSalle can certainly support safe and sustainable hunting while significantly reducing problems associated to increasing deer populations," Sprague said. He urged the town to change its bylaws to allow hunting where it is safe. "When we banned hunting, LaSalle was 5,000 people," Coun. Terry Burns said. "Now we are 30,000." He argued that unlike Amherstburg, which allows hunting in rural areas away from homes, LaSalle doesn't have large tracts of agricultural land. While Coun. Ray Renaud was concerned about the apparent increasing deer population, Sprague's recommendation isn't what he expected. "Where the big deer population are you wouldn't have hunting," Renaud said. "There are a huge amount in the Ojibway prairie grass." Deputy Mayor Bill Varga said that years ago LaSalle used to be inundated with hunters roaming backyards and shooting at houses. "We received a lot of criticism when (we banned hunting)," Varga said. "We are now a safe municipality. It's been a benefit." The hunting issue arose when a resident complained to the town about the overpopulation of deer. Renaud, who sits on the Essex Region Conservation Authority, contacted the ministry and asked the police to track how many automobile accidents have occurred over the past three years involving deer. There were 22 in 2006, 26 in 2007 and 22 in 2008. There has been one this year and it involved a police cruiser. "It's consistent," Renaud said. "(Sprague) said it's increasing." ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V13 #80 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@scorpion.bogend.ca Moderator's email: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca FAQ list: http://www.canfirearms/Skeeter/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: 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".)