Cdn-Firearms Digest Thursday, November 19 2009 Volume 13 : Number 565 In this issue: Re: More facts and figures OP-ED: MP MISGUIDED IN GUN REGISTRY SUPPORT MACLEANS: Does regulating guns result in fewer murders? Violence conference arms girls with knowledge Re: Obama revives talk of U.N. gun control Sudbury Star - Leteter - Come clean with cost of gun registry Re: Some thoughts on December 6th TorStar - Letter - Gun owners face a similar plight "...awake all night while clutching a shotgun..." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:58:52 -0500 From: Lee Jasper Subject: Re: More facts and figures Has anyone verified this info? > THE MID-NORTH MONITOR - NOVEMBER 17, 2009 > Bev Akerman and C391 By Dave Lanting > >> http://www.midnorthmonitor.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2179556 > >> Only 2% of homicides are committed by licensed owners using registered >> firearms. > > There's no one who beats the bushes for 'sound, verifiable and useful' > statistical evidence which might lend credence to both sides of the > argument - than this writer. > > I've never seen this statistic before. Anyone else? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, November 19, 2009 9:27 am From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: OP-ED: MP MISGUIDED IN GUN REGISTRY SUPPORT THE CASTLEGAR SOURCE - NOVEMBER 18, 2009 OP-ED: MP MISGUIDED IN GUN REGISTRY SUPPORT by Rob Leggett http://castlegarsource.com/node/3832 On Nov.4, our MP, Alex Atamanenko, voted against Bill C-391, which would scrap the long gun registry, throwing his support behind what has become known as the "$2 billion boondoggle". Why would our MP vote in favour of keeping the colossal waste of money? He states that, "I believe the registry may be working. Between 1991 and 2007, the murder rate of women by firearms dropped by 67-per-cent total and the murder rate by rifles and shotguns has declined by 76 per cent." While I do not believe that Atamanenko intentionally set out to give misleading information, he did not give the full truth. According to Statistics Canada, the overall rate of homicides committed with a firearm has gradually declined between the mid-1970s and 2002. Since then, this rate has generally been increasing. Of the 200 firearm homicides in 2008, 121 or (61 per cent) were committed with a handgun, 34 with a rifle/shotgun and 17 with a sawed-off rifle/shotgun. Over the past 30 years, the use of handguns to commit homicide has generally been increasing, while the use of rifles or shotguns has generally declined ... clearly showing that the homicide rate had been dropping 20 years prior to the long gun registry and that the only reason the murder rate by rifles and shotguns appears to be decreasing so significantly is because the use of handguns has been increasing. It also appears that Atamanenko believes the exaggerations made about the reliance of law enforcement on the registry, knowing full well that every search of the Canadian Police Information Centre, for any reason generates an automatic search of the firearms registry. As Simon Fraser University professor emeritus Gary Mauser confirmed, "While some police associations claim the registry works, it should be noted that these organizations are partially funded by groups that advocate greater gun control. Front line police officers do not trust the registry as an anti-crime tool." This sentiment was echoed by MP Candice Hoeppner in her first hour of debate for Second Reading, where she said, "In fact, 93 per cent of gun crimes in the last eight years have been committed with illegal guns and unregistered guns. That is a staggering statistic and one that flies in the face of any argument supporting the long gun registry. That is also why so many front-line police officers support ending the long gun registry. They recognize that this registry goes after the wrong group of people." As for the bureaucratic nightmare that gun owners face when they would have to register their guns, Atamanenko had this to say, "I didn't find it to be any real hassle. It took me about half an hour to register my last one." But then he also said this, "There have been lots of examples in our riding where people have been hitting their heads against a stone wall and running into bureaucracy when they go to register. I see waste in the system and I see people getting frustrated." Which is it, are people getting frustrated by the bureaucracy or is it no real hassle? Even though I would never want to believe that there is special treatment, and I am sure Atamanenko would never condone such treatment, but I would like to suggest that his registration may have been easier than most because the words 'Member of Parliament' accompany his name. Atamanenko was also eager to point out that the Conservatives were withholding two reports in favour of the long gun registry, but at the same time neglected to mention that a legitimate fear of registered gun owners was realized; that in September 2009, the Canadian Firearms Center released gun owners' names and addresses to a pollster for use in a survey, without their permission or the permission of the minister. Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has asked the federal privacy commissioner to investigate, saying, "Contrary to policy, the Ministry of Public Safety was not asked to approve the polling. The government expressly disapproves of what occurred." It goes without saying that the long gun registry is a dismal failure and I am grateful to see that it's on its way to being thrown onto the pile of bad ideas. It hasn't kept guns out of criminals' hands as was promised; it hasn't lowered the rate of firearm-related homicide as was promised, in fact, said homicide rates have been increasing since 2002 and the registry has cost billions more than was promised. I can see this, millions of Canadians can see this. so why can't our MP see this? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, November 19, 2009 9:37 am From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: MACLEANS: Does regulating guns result in fewer murders? MACLEANS - NOVEMBER 17, 2009 Does regulating guns result in fewer murders? by John Geddes http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/11/17/does-regulating-guns-result-in-fewer-murders/ In the debate over the federal registry for rifles and shotguns, the strongest argument on the side of those in favour of scrapping it has always been that imposing rules on law-abiding gun owners doesn't work and isn't fair. After all, criminals are not about to register their guns, so why inconvenience good citizens? Although my instinct is to defer to police who say the registry is useful to them, I have always thought there was something to the case against, as the Prime Minister has said, "attacking farmers or duck hunters." I grew up in a small town where rifles and shotguns were everyday items and I can see why a hunter might feel slighted by having to register. Still, when you think it through, if gun regulations that only peaceful citizens comply with don't actually work, then the inherent uselessness of these rules should be evident by now in the historical data on gun offences. In other words, decades of laws that by definition only the lawful obey should have had no measurable impact on violent crime. But that's not what the record suggests. Statistics Canada data for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s tracks a long-term decline in homicides committed with rifles and shotguns (the firearms we regulate), against a stable rate of murders involving handguns (which police say are mostly unregulated black-market weapons). Between 1975 and 2006, the rate of homicide involving rifles or shotguns decreased by 86 per cent, while the rate of handgun murders didn't change much. You have to wonder, why the big difference? One possibility is that new layers of regulation on rifles and shotguns steadily made it more cumbersome to buy one on impulse and imposed more discipline on those who own and sell them. As well, police got new enforcement tools with respect to legally owned guns. In 1969, for example, police gained the power to seize legally owned firearms, with a warrant, if they suspected somebody was going to misuse a gun. A law passed in 1977 imposed some registration requirements on buyers and sellers of guns. Safety courses for buyers were required starting in 1979. More background information and references from would-be gun owners were demanded starting in the early 1990s. As of January 1, 2001, Canadians needed a licence to buy and own guns. And then came the explosively controversial 2003 law forcing owners to register all of their long guns. (There's a handy RCMP history of firearms control here.) If the complaint that regulations do nothing but penalize peaceful hunters were true, then none of this would have made any dent at all in crime. Yet during this long stretch of regulatory reform, murders committed with long guns declined precipitously, while killings with handguns held steady. (This is a key point: if handgun homicide were climbing as long-gun murders fell, then we might suspect that murderers were just switching.) It's possible, of course, that there's some other explanation for the steep drop in rifle and shotgun murders. In fact, I suspect there must be other important contributing factors-there usually are many for any socially complex change in behaviour. Maybe somebody can put forward a plausible theory or, much better, point to some evidence-based research. However, it's at least worth pausing to seriously consider that Canada has experienced a long stretch of declining murder perpetrated with the very guns that were, over that same period, subjected to increasing regulation. The onus of proof, then, surely falls on those who would now remove some of those rules. - ---------------------------------------------------------- THE STRATHMORE STANDARD - NOVEMBER 18, 2009 EDITORIAL: Long gun troubles http://www.strathmorestandard.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2181801 The long gun owners of Canada are no longer required to register those firearms. Although the reasons for eliminating these weapons from the registry are constantly up for debate amongst politicians, it would seem newspapers, news casts and other media outlets have also weighed in on what they believe was the right thing to do. Most of those media outlets are located in large, urban centres. They don't seem to understand why people, outside of those urban centres, own long guns. In urban areas, 90 per cent of gun crimes are committed with illegal hand guns, by those with existing criminal records. That is the gun crime splashed across front pages, and blasting through speakers at the news hour. Long guns aren't the threat urbanites have been taught to believe. Although some crimes are in fact committed by these weapons, it isn't statistically proportionate to the amount of concern removing them from the registry has created. It seems almost every major paper from Vancouver to Halifax has weighed in, and those being published in the major centres aren't in favor of rural residents owning unregistered, long guns. Some have painted urban Canadians as uneducated, others have just clarified stereotypes that are beyond inaccurate. It seems the image of someone dressed in overalls, a piece of hay dangling out of their mouth, with a cowboy hat on and wielding a long gun irresponsibly is just too easy to paint. Or too easy to believe. Although I could be missing it, I haven't heard a story lately about the poor gopher, who was shot after destroying one too many canola fields. There are hundreds of reasons rural residents own guns, and shooting a person isn't likely to ever rank amongst those. Regardless if you own a gun, you understand they pose a threat when in the wrong hands. It is also fair to say if you do own a gun, have taken the proper course to own that gun, and understand how it works, that you aren't a threat. Presuming rural Canadians aren't smart enough to grasp the full effects of a gun isn't going with the common view, it's ignorant. Hopefully they'll soon see that those against the registry may have a point, and the ignorance isn't quiet as rampant in the less-populated areas. - ------------------------------------------------ NORTHUMBERLAND NEWS - NOVEMBER 18, 2009 Letter: Long-gun registry provides safety for Canadians http://www.northumberlandnews.com/opinion/article/140424 To the Editor: Re: "It's time to shelve the Canadian long-gun registry', (Nov. 13). Here are two more interesting and significant facts for your information. First of all, since gun owners were required to register long-guns, spousal death by guns has been reduced by 50 per cent. In addition, the daily rate of police enquiries to the Canadian firearms online registry number over 10,000. The long-gun registry is about safety for victims of violence, for police and the general public. If you don't agree this to be the case, then simply ask the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. For me, any legislation which has reduced spousal deaths by 50 per cent is good legislation so I continue to support it and feel the government should too. Linda MacKenzie-Nicholas Port Hope - ----------------------------------------------------- THE PEMBROKE DAILY OBSERVER - NOVEMBER 18, 2009 Letter: The gun registry explained By Mark Goddard http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2182007 There seems to be some confusion between the gun registry and gun licensing.Those who argue to keep the gun registry are actually making arguements to keep gun licensing,not the gun registry.The two entities are seperate. Those who are in favour of the gun registry also seem to think that it is the be-all to end-all in gun control. This is simply not true. There is only one official reason why the gun registry was created. To try and prevent people with a gun license from selling or lending a gun to someone without a gun license. It was not meant to be a tool for the police to know what guns they may or may not encounter or any other superfluous reason. It was meant to act as a deterrent so that each licensed gun owner is accountable for each and every gun they own. This reasoning however presumes that the licensed owner, who went through hell to get his gun license, is going to commit a criminal act and sell or lend a gun and ammunition to an unlicensed person. It also presumes that an unlicensed person, will also commit a criminal act and buy a gun from the registered owner. The registry reasoning also presumes that a person with registered guns will NOT sell or lend a registered gun to someone else if the guns are registered. So in the first two situations, we have two people colluding to commit a criminal act and in the other situation we are still having to trust the licensed owner that he won`t lend or sell one of his guns to someone else who is not licensed. If that unlicensed person buys a registered gun and holds onto that gun and it is rarely taken out in public, who would ever know? Gun audits are not done on gun owners. If he uses it in a crime and it is recovered, the licensed person who it was registered to could claim that it was stolen or claim he had no idea it was to be used maliciously. The registered owner might have his other guns seized but really, what else will happen to him? Probably not much. So we as taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on something that in reality still comes down to just trusting a law-abiding Canadian gun owning citizen to obey the law and not sell or lend a gun to an unlicensed person. The registry is redundant, and is based on false and negative reasoning. It has been a total waste of money, of time and effort because when it all comes down to it, it is simply a matter of trusting good people to do the right thing, something we all do on a daily basis. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, November 19, 2009 9:42 am From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: Violence conference arms girls with knowledge ST. CATHARINES STANDARD - NOVEMBER 19, 2009 Violence conference arms girls with knowledge By KARENA WALTER STANDARD STAFF http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2183323 Sitting on a park bench, Alyssa White felt uncomfortable by the approaching stranger. He came too close to her, encroaching her space, so she stood, turned and walked away. Suddenly, "the stranger" stepped out of his role-playing character. "What did you do wrong?" asked Paul Henry Danylewich, the creator of a workshop teaching teen girls how to protect themselves. "I looked away," said White, a Grade 10 student from Orchard Park Secondary School in Stoney Creek. The pair tries the scenario again as about 60 teen girls from five Niagara and area schools watch during the White Tiger's Girl Conference in St. Catharines. This time, White looked Danylewich in the eye as she left, without turning her back to him. Danylewich, the director of a Montreal self-defence consulting group, said a lot of women and teenage girls stay put when they feel uncomfortable to show a potential attacker they're not frightened. That's the wrong way to go. "He's not perceiving you're a strong woman. He's perceiving that you are unaware," he said at the Quality Hotel Parkway Convention Centre. "He perceives it as an opportunity." Danylewich said his job Wednesday was to help girls remove that opportunity. He conceived the White Tiger's Girl Conference five years ago in Montreal to commemorate Dec. 6, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. Beyond lighting candles to commemorate the day when 14 women were killed by a lone gunman at L'Ecole polytechnique, he said the date is an opportunity to teach young women self-defence, prevention and safety plans. The daylong conference for girls aged 15 to 19 featured Danylewich's workshops on self-defence, entertainers and a speaker from St. Catharines women's shelter Gillian's Place who gave a talk on teen dating violence. Danylewich told the girls that being targeted for assault has nothing to do with how they are dressed or how attractive they are. Rather, it has everything to do with opportunity. He demonstrated this by moving close enough to pull White's hair, because she didn't kept him at arm's length. "This kind of stuff needs to be in the schools. It needs to be talked about," he said later. "I can almost guarantee nobody will grab that girl's hair again." White said afterwards she was surprised by the gentle hair pulling. Her school friend, April Venne, said the conference had useful information. "I think guys should hear it too, not just girls," Venne said. The most common type of abuse is between people who claim to care about each other, said Jennifer Daubney of Gillian's Place. She said a lot of abuse starts at the beginning of a relationship, so it's important to see the early warning signs, such as jealously and over-protectiveness. Females between 16 and 24 are three times more likely to experience intimate partner violence than any other group, she said. And while physical abuse is the most obvious, emotional abuse is not as readily identifiable. "The scare of emotional abuse last forever and you take it everywhere," Daubney said. She shared some warning signs with the teens, such as when their boyfriends don't want them hanging out with other people or they demand to know where their girlfriend is at all times. kwalter@stcatharinesstandard.ca ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:49:25 -0700 From: 10x@telus.net Subject: Re: Obama revives talk of U.N. gun control The government has the ability to appoint the judges who hear the issue, and those deep pockets they have to fight the case - those pockets just happent to be YOUR POCKETS. >Your post is accurate and truthful and I cannot dispute your words . > >The bottom line is "money" as we all know and I and many others just dont >have the "resources" to retain this right and the #$%^&*()government KNOWS >this...............ed/on > >----- Original Message ----- >From: <10x@telus.net> >To: >Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 9:04 AM >Subject: Re: Obama revives talk of U.N. gun control > > >> At 01:58 AM 11/16/2009 -0500, you wrote: >>> >>>If the Americans are concerned about the possibility that the U.N. gun >>>control treaty may impact their historic 2nd. Amendment Rights, how >>>negatively are we Canadians going to be affected by this treaty since we >>>don't even enjoy the most basic legal 'right' to bear arms? >> >> Canadians have the same rights to bear arms as do the Citizens of the >> U.S.A. The second amendment is an affirmation of an existing right that >> was >> confired by English Common law. In Canada bill C68 amended Sections 91 >> and >> 92 of the criminal code to prohibit possession of firearmss. Parliament >> extinguished the right to carry firearms with C68(1995). Whether or not >> they had to power to do so is in question - how ever no one has deep >> enough pockets to ask the courts that question. ANd the courts are not >> known to be reliable in upholding the law. (Do a google search on >> wrongful >> convictions). ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:05:44 -0800 (PST) From: Bruce Mills Subject: Sudbury Star - Leteter - Come clean with cost of gun registry http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2181401 Come clean with cost of gun registry Posted 1 hour ago The Conservative party now has began to live up to its promise of years ago to get rid of the long-gun registry and the billion-plus dollar cost that the auditor general identified as a bottomless pit. Now taxpayers deserve to know the final cost to rid us of this debt from its inception to the closure with the number of employees that will no longer be needed to mismanage this bound-to-fail program as it was implemented. As well, we should know the the cost to terminate the positions. Many people do not understand how much a billion dollars really is and what our billion plus could have been used for to realize some value in areas like health care and education. I ask my members of Parliament to tell us -- their bosses (the taxpayers) - -- the total amount of dollars wasted on this since its inception years ago to the day they shut the department down. That money could have been put to better use, or not added to our huge deficit. I also want it made clear who the authors of this fiasco were. As if we don't already know. Barrie Therrien Sudbury ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:35:40 -0800 (PST) From: Bruce Mills Subject: Re: Some thoughts on December 6th - --- On Wed, 11/18/09, Larry James Fillo wrote: > From: Larry James Fillo > Subject: Some thoughts on December 6th > To: cdn-firearms-digest@scorpion.bogend.ca > Received: Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 5:28 PM > As the 20th anniversary of the > Montreal Massacre is approaching keep > in mind the following: > > 1. Gamel Gharbi being the name of Mark Lepine is beginning Lepine was born Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi... Yours in TYRANNY! Bruce ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:17:48 -0800 (PST) From: Bruce Mills Subject: TorStar - Letter - Gun owners face a similar plight http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/726505 Gun owners face a similar plight Published On Tue Nov 17 2009 Re:Police search a step toward a police state, Letters Nov. 14 Readers expressed concern and outrage that random door-to-door police searches are the first step toward a police state. Funny, nobody seems to care when that kind of thing quietly only happens to a small segment of the population. Gun owners have been warning about the start of a slippery slope for years. For anyone unlucky enough to have a firearms licence, having the police knock on your door to demand a search of your home is an unpleasant reality. The only justification they need is to suspect that you may have done something wrong. Pretty scary considering that the police at least need a court-issued search warrant to enter the homes of drug dealers, rapists and potential murderers. Now, 6,000 more people know what it is like to be a law abiding gun owner, since the Firearms Act became law. Jeff Gardiner, Wellesley ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:18:42 -0600 From: Larry James Fillo Subject: "...awake all night while clutching a shotgun..." Due to lack of police protection the family is suing the O.P.P. for $7 million. Now if only the rest of the forsaken community could turn that into a class action suit for $7 million each. Is there anyone who wants to move to Ontario and place their families security into the hands of the O.P.P.? Why isn't the MSM holding Dalton McGinty responsible for this? (A citizen spent all night holding a gun out of justified fear of violent Mohawks, not since Madeleine de Vercherers fired her musket?) http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2238547 ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V13 #565 *********************************** 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".)