Cdn-Firearms Digest Saturday, November 21 2009 Volume 13 : Number 571 In this issue: Letters: Gun registry has nothing to do with safety and control Sudbury Star: Letter: Long-gun registry served a valuable purpose Globe & Mail Column: Layton betrays the faithful by Gerald Caplan LETTER: Most guns are not registered Re: Urgent Calls Needed Against ObamaCare Re: Obama Pushing a "Radical's Radical" to the Federal Bench NDP MP: "the gun registry here has nothing to do with agriculture" Connecting the Dots at Fort Hood Clarification, please .... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, November 21, 2009 10:25 am From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: Letters: Gun registry has nothing to do with safety and control THE OWEN SOUND SUN TIMES - NOVEMBER 21, 2009 Gun registry has nothing to do with safety and control http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2187087 Editor: Two recent articles in the Owen Sound Sun Times supporting the Long Gun Registry (LGR) seem to indicate the confusion regarding gun ownership in Canada. As a landowner I sympathize with Phil McNichol and his problem with trespassing, but the crime of trespass has no relation to the LGR. To own a firearm in Canada you must take a course in safe firearms use and the laws relating to it. You then take a written and practical exam. If you pass you can then apply to the RCMP for a Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC). The application form also includes a section for your wife (or recent ex) to sign, consenting you to purchase a firearm. After police checks you will be issued a photo ID FAC to enable you to purchase a firearm. To hunt, you then take another course in hunting and legal responsibilities that go with hunting, including trespass laws. When you are granted an FAC you are in the RCMP registry as a gun owner. Whether you own a Remington or a Winchester or several firearms is not important. You can only use one at a time, so a police officer has the information if required. As for the large number of hits on the LGR on a daily basis (Ms. Dobbyn's article), every time a police officer requests any check on a person that check includes a gun registry. So Ms. Dobbyn's traffic ticket would have registered a hit on the LGR. The Chiefs of Police Association is just that, an association; which, incidentally, receives large donations from the company responsible for the computers at the LGR. Other antigun groups also receive public funding, so it could be argued that they have a vested interest in keeping the LGR. Any front line police officer I speak to has no confidence in the registry. They treat every situation as if a gun is present, especially in a rural area. Ms. Dobbyn's comments on crime against women really have no relation to the LGR. However, I find it strange that women activists support a legal system that deprives women of the right to protect themselves. A 100- pound slightly built woman is no match for a 250-lb, six foot male. However Canadian women cannot carry any protection to even the odds. The statement that the police will protect you is untrue. The police protect society in general and enforce the law; after you have been raped or murdered they try to find out who did it. They cannot protect you 24/7. The money waster on the LGR would be better spent on more front-line law enforcement. But police must have the backing of the courts and judges to deal with criminals who will not register a gun anyway and spouses who will not obey court trespass orders. Legal firearms owners come from all walks of life: doctors, lawyers, nurses, waitresses, men and women who like to target shoot and hunt and meet with each other. There are no class distinctions and many entire families take part. It is part of our heritage, just like many other sports. It is gender-neutral and many parts are wheelchair accessible. I would invite anyone interested to drop into your local Rod and Gun Club and check us out. If you would like to try shooting someone will show you. Many clubs have open houses where you have the opportunity to try target or trap shooting and ask questions. They also hold courses in firearms safety. For more information on legal gun ownership and sport shooting check out the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA) on the web. Please get the facts before you decide. Mike Tyrrell, East Grey Hunters and Anglers - --------------------------------- Editor: Letter writer Francesca Dobbyn should know that when she was stopped for speeding, she just contributed to the inflated statistics used by the Chiefs of Police to justify the firearms registry. Every time a licence plate is run, the registry is automatically queried by the computer system in the cruiser. The officer doesn't even need to look at the display page. She should also know that she is allowed to own as many cars as she wants, and of any type desired, and not a single one of them needs to be registered with the government, nor does she need a licence. She can keep them in her garage and admire them, can drive them on her own private property or that of a friend, she can even put them on a truck to have them transported anywhere in the country. She only needs to be licenced and the cars registered if she decides to drive them on public roads. As soon as the government starts building some publicly owned shooting ranges, her argument might have some merit. David Mahoney, Ottawa ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:27:31 -0800 (PST) From: Bruce Mills Subject: Sudbury Star: Letter: Long-gun registry served a valuable purpose http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2183418 Long-gun registry served a valuable purpose I am writing in response to what appears to be some emotional, irrational and on-going rhetoric around he long-gun registry. Jingoism and simplicity have certainly triumphed over logic -- at least in the short term. Hopefully, no readers conclude that respondents to The Sudbury Star poll represent the consensus of the community at large on this important issue. Some serious questions have to arise about people who freak out about the gun registry, but see nothing wrong with registering and paying annual fees to the government for their cars, trucks, skidoos, ATVs, boats and dogs. Perhaps I am missing something, but it appears that an important item on our national agenda is being hijacked by a bunch of backwoods yahoos who get their jollies out of killing defenseless birds and animals. They might not like it if they knew some of the psycho-sexual dimensions of shooting guns. I once had an economics professor who claimed, with his tongue only partially in his cheek, that hunting would be a real sport if the animals had guns and could shoot back. Admittedly, one should be careful when drawing cause and effect conclusions from statistical relationships between variables or events. But what other explanation is there for the decline in long-gun murders and other incidents since the inception of the registry? If the registry is such a bad thing, why do the police use it so often? And why are those police so publicly in favor of it? It is true that the registry was badly set up, wasted millions of dollars and is still probably poorly administered. But surely the solution is to fix it, not scrap it. Lost in all the sound and fury is any discussion of the thousands of guns that have been taken out of circulation and destroyed since the establishment of the registry. Those guns will never be grabbed and used in a moment of anger or inebriation. Nor will any children, thinking they are some sort of toy, accidentally discharge them. That in itself has to be worth something. One must also raise the possibility that, during a break-in, thieves might take a pass on guns on the chance that they could be traced through the registry. William E. McLeod Sudbury ------------------------------ Date: Sat, November 21, 2009 10:31 am From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: Globe & Mail Column: Layton betrays the faithful by Gerald Caplan - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sender: owner-cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca Precedence: normal Reply-To: cdn-firearms@scorpion.bogend.ca GLOBE AND MAIL - NOVEMBER 20, 2009 Layton betrays the faithful by Gerald Caplan By allowing a third of his caucus to vote in favour of killing the gun registry, the NDP Leader leaves a bitter taste with a core constituency http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/layton-betrays-the-faithful/article1372134/   The bitter divisions over the long-gun registry are by no means over. When the House supported the bill to abolish the registry, it left significant numbers of Canadians feeling betrayed and wondering how to vote in the next election. Many of us lobbied publicly and privately against passage of this bill. The Liberals and New Democrats in Ottawa heard in no uncertain terms from a large, spontaneous alliance of their own political supporters and potential supporters. Trade unions, feminist organizations, NGOs, ordinary women, social activists of all kinds, women like Suzanne Laplante-Edwards whose daughter had been murdered by Marc Lepine in the Montréal massacre – all pleaded with both parties to stand united to defeat the bill. It did no good. That the Conservatives voted unanimously for the motion was hardly a surprise; everyone knew it was really a Harper government initiative from the get-go. But the government couldn't pass the bill without the support of some opposition MPs; that's why they made it a private member's bill. It worked, even more successfully than they expected. Everyone expected a squeaker. But thanks to 18 Liberals and New Democrats, the bill sailed through by a comfortable 164 to 137 votes. Both the Liberals and NDP allowed their members a free vote on the grounds that such is the custom with private members' bills. But that was just a charade. Since this was obviously a government-driven bill, both Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton could have insisted on a party vote. That neither even attempted to keep their dissidents in line has deeply shaken supporters of both parties. They wonder what to do now (other than lobby hard again in preparation for committee hearings on the bill). Clearly most of us who opposed the bill are not Conservatives. Few believe in the government's “law 'n order” initiatives. That the Harperites have even repudiated the Canadian Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association, strong advocates of the long-gun registry, is seen as proof that the Conservative agenda is really based on politics, not public policy, playing to the Conservative base rather than attempting to strengthen Canada's justice system. As for the Liberals, while there is some disappointment, it seems of a muted kind. Gun control advocates, like most Canadians, have watched Ignatieff and found him wanting. Pulling his caucus together on this issue would have been a pleasant but unexpected surprise. In fact most gun control supporters believe Ignatieff was perfectly happy to have eight of his members bolt from their peers to reassure rural Canada that the Liberals hadn't lost touch with their sensibilities. Which leaves the NDP, where a full third of MPs broke ranks with party policy and voted to abolish the long-gun registry. It's clear that many NDP loyalists and many others sympathetic to the party were bitterly disappointed both by the number of breakaways and the failure of Layton to rein them in. The subsequent excuses have merely poured salt in these wounds. After the vote, a number of these people, many of them women, wrote Layton directly to express their deep disappointment. Normally, Layton is known to welcome such direct contact. I doubt this was one of those occasions. When he eventually responded, it was with a form letter that infuriated his correspondents even more. Many found his position completely unacceptable, even reprehensible. “We believe all Canadians support gun control,” Layton wrote. “But the long-gun registry is a contentious issue that Stephen Harper has exploited to divide urban and rural Canadians. … It didn't have to be this way. He could have shown real leadership. He could have helped bridge the divide. Instead, he betrayed you and millions of others who support the registry.” In fact, not one of these women felt betrayed by Harper; they expected nothing more from him. They feel betrayed by Jack Layton and the NDP. They are outraged that Layton had the chutzpah to accuse Harper of failing to show real leadership when he allowed a third of his own caucus to vote against the party's position. Some think he should be punished for the hypocrisy and opportunism of this stance. (Others think he needs better advisers, much as Ignatieff did. How could his staff allow such a dumb message to be sent?) But if you can't vote for Layton, or even Ignatieff, and of course not for Harper, do you just stay home? Many of those who passionately supported gun control are activists; they believe in political action. And most would never forgive themselves if they sat out the next campaign and helped Harper win. So they'll probably swallow their bitterness and return to the fold. But they won't be proud of their party in the same way. When you back a party that will likely never form a government, pride in its principles and actions is really all you have. Gerald Caplan is a former national campaign director for the New Democratic Party and author of "The Betrayal of Africa".   ------------------------------ Date: Sat, November 21, 2009 11:12 am From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: LETTER: Most guns are not registered LANGLEY TIMES - NOVEMBER 19, 2009 LETTER: Most guns are not registered http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/letters/70573017.html Editor: I think Charles Perkins (The Times, Nov. 18) is very confused. The facts are, after $2 billion has been spent on the gun registry, two-thirds of all the firearms estimated to be in Canada at the time the registry was put into effect are still not even registered. The numbers were something like eight million gun owners, owning over 21 million guns. I wish registry supporters like Charles would also stop using victims of insane acts, committed by insane people, to create and force insane laws on the innocent. Those victims, both living and dead, deserve better, and so do we law-abiding gun owners. The gun registry has not and will not ever save anyone from gun crime. It did not stop massacres at Dawson College or Mayerthorpe. It would not have stopped the slaughter at Polytechnique, because it only targets law-abiding, legal firearm owners. How can Charles and other supporters not understand this? It's a piece of paper. Please Charles, stop blaming the object and the innocent law-abiding for the social shortfalls of a modern day society. The long gun registry has been, and continues to be, a significant waste of taxpayers' dollars, at any cost, with no measurable reduction in crime, or benefits in crime prevention. I also believe repealing the long gun registry is an important first step in correcting the multitude of injustices that make up the Firearms Act. Jay Ingram, Thunder Bay, Ontario - --------------------------------------- HOW MANY GUNS ARE THERE IN CANADA? By Garry Breitkreuz, MP - December 13, 2001 http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/GunsinCanada.htm NUMBER OF RESTRICTED & PROHIBITED FIREARMS STILL TO BE RE-REGISTERED = 578,330 (as of June 30, 2006) http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/2006_new/76.pdf NUMBER OF REGISTERED RESTRICTED & PROHIBITED FIREARMS = 1,208,903 (as of December 31, 1995) http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/2006_new/66.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:22:47 -0500 From: "mred" Subject: Re: Urgent Calls Needed Against ObamaCare - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Gingrich" To: "Canadian Firearms Digest" Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 9:58 AM Subject: Urgent Calls Needed Against ObamaCare > http://gunowners.org/a112009.htm > > Urgent Calls Needed Against ObamaCare > > -- Vote is scheduled for Saturday night > IT ALWAYS AMUSED ME THAT THEY CAN SPEND TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON "WARS" ALL OVER THE PLANET AND MILITARY BASES LIKEWISE ,BUT NO HEALTH CARE FOR THEIR OWN CITIZENS ,WHICH IN THE LONG RUN WOULD BE CHEAPER THAN ALL THE "WARS "THEY START AND FIGHT It would appear that the US is as corrupt as any other third world country. OFF TOPIC Crossed the US/Canada border Friday and they ask you if you're bringing anything in that will stay in the US? I always say yes; money, we`re going shopping . I have NEVER had a problem crossing the border. Coming back was just as easy as long as you declare everything they allow you to come back tax free. My wife bought some expensive perfume at the "Duty Free" shop on the way back.(cash), but they wanted to know her name , so she told them. When we were asked what we purchased in the US we truth fully told the customs , groceries and perfume . I watched the customs guard closely and as soon as my wife told him about the perfume he looked at his computer. So when you buy something at the duty free shop your name automatically goes to Canada Customs computer. And they KNOW your name because they can see it on your passports. Its tied in with their cash register . ed/on ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:27:11 -0500 From: "mred" Subject: Re: Obama Pushing a "Radical's Radical" to the Federal Bench - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Gingrich" To: "Canadian Firearms Digest" Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 9:52 AM Subject: Obama Pushing a "Radical's Radical" to the Federal Bench > http://gunowners.org/a111209.htm > > Obama Pushing a "Radical's Radical" to the Federal Bench > > -- Vote could come as early as Monday -- > > Thursday, November 12, 2009 > Same old , same old , same old ; judges are as corrupt there as they are here. When you think about it the whole judicial system is set up so that the commoner will lose and they do this by decreeing that all! lawyers are "officers of the court" In other words ? they owe their allegiance to the court and not to any accused. ed/on ------------------------------ Date: Sat, November 21, 2009 12:18 pm From: "Dennis & Hazel Young" Subject: NDP MP: "the gun registry here has nothing to do with agriculture" Subject: "NDP MP Alex Atamanenko: "...the gun registry here has nothing to do with agriculture..." WWW.STEPHENTAYLOR.CA House of Commons Agriculture Committee - November 19, 2009 NDP MP Alex Atamanenko: "Blake I've had it with you and I've had it with that crap and the gun registry here has nothing to do with agriculture. " Click on one of the links below for full Audio; http://www.stephentaylor.ca/2009/11/alex-atamanenko-and-civility-in-parliament/#disqus_thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIloch5_bSA&feature=player_embedded ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:19:40 -0600 From: Edward Hudson Subject: Connecting the Dots at Fort Hood Connecting the Dots at Fort Hood "We're just not very good at predicting human violence. We don't have an x-ray for a man's soul." - Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Adviser, RAND Corporation 20 November 2009 CNN NEWSROOM http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/20/cnr.04.html Do Senate Democrats Have the Votes to Move Forward With Health Reform? Oprah Winfrey Announces Talk Show Coming to End; Connecting the Dots at Fort Hood Aired 20 November 2009 - 12:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We've got to move on here. Time for your top-of-the-hour reset. I'm Tony Harris in the CNN NEWSROOM. It is noon in Washington, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sets a Saturday night showdown on his health care reform bill. It is 11:00 in Chicago, where talk show queen Oprah Winfrey says she will end her daytime reign in 2011. It is 12:00 in Atlanta, where class is in session again. Ahead, a heated discussion at Georgia State University about racism and the presidency. Let's do this -- let's get started. [Snipped first portion on Health Care & Oprah Winfrey] Congress is now looking for accountability after the Fort Hood shooting spree. One senator says there were warning signs and red flags galore on Nidal Hasan, the accused gunman. Here's CNN's Brian Todd. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): More indications that potential safety nets may have either broken down or were never in place to prevent Nidal Hasan from allegedly murdering 13 people at Fort Hood. At the first congressional hearing into the shootings, discussions on what may have been the failure of law enforcement, military and counterterror officials to communicate with each other, even though it was discovered last year that Hasan had corresponded with a radical Muslim cleric. Former Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend, a CNN contributor, indicated some restrictions on the agency's cooperation are just too unwieldy. FRANCES FRAGOS TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: But the rules become so cumbersome that they're discouraging, and so people don't do it. General John Keane was commanding general at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, during the trial of two white soldiers for the murder of a black couple. Keane said, after that incident, the military took steps to flag racial extremism, but never came up with anything like that on radical religious behavior. Keane was asked another key question on why Hasan kept getting promoted, even when his superiors reportedly had information on his extremist views and incompetence. SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Do you think that political correctness may have played some role in the fact that these dots were not connected? GEN. JOHN KEANE (RET.), FORMER ARMY VICE CHIEF OF STAFF: Yes, absolutely. And also I think a factor here is Hasan's position as an officer and also his position as a psychiatrist contributed to that. TODD: Most of these security and terrorism experts agree that Nidal Hasan is likely someone who became self-radicalized, a lone wolf influenced by militant extremists, but not directing by anyone to kill. But connecting those dots before this tragedy, one expert said, may have been important. BRIAN JENKINS, SENIOR ADVISER, RAND CORPORATION: We're just not very good at predicting human violence. We don't have an x-ray for a man's soul. TODD (on camera): But Brian Jenkins said looking back, it does appear that Hasan had what he called obvious personality problems that he channeled into a deadly fanaticism. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE) - -- -- Brian Michael Jenkins Santa Monica Office Senior Adviser Education M.A. and B.A. in history, University of California, Los Angeles RAND Publications List http://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/j/jenkins_brian_michael.html Homeland Security Program RESEARCH FOCUS Terrorism; counterinsurgency; and homeland security RAND RESEARCH AREAS Terrorism and Homeland Security http://www.rand.org/research_areas/terrorism/ SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Brian Michael Jenkins, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, RAND Corporation, 2006 Paul Wilkinson and Brian Michael Jenkins, eds., Aviation Terrorism and Security, Frank Cass Publisher, 2005 David Aaron, ed., Three Years After: Next Steps in the War on Terror, RAND Corporation, 2005 Brian Michael Jenkins, Countering al Qaeda: An Appreciation of the Situation and Suggestions for Strategy, RAND Corporation, 2002 Paul K. Davis and Brian Michael Jenkins, Deterrence and Influence in Counterterrorism: A Component in the War on al Qaeda, RAND Corporation, 2002 Source Reference; http://www.rand.org/about/people/j/jenkins_brian_michael.html The RAND Corporation (Research ANdDevelopment[2]) is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company and currently financed predominantly by the U.S. government, a private endowment[3], predominantly pharmaceutical corporations, [4]universities[5] and private individuals[6]. The organization has long since expanded to working with othergovernments, private foundations, international organizations, andcommercial organizations on a host of non-defense issues. Source; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:21:37 -0800 From: "Todd Birch" Subject: Clarification, please .... With all the hoopla and media hyperbole surrounding the noise of a private member's bill to scrap the long gun registry, I'm left wondering ...... In the unlikely event that the bill survives the committee stage, gets third reading in the House, gets through the Senate ungutted, and the registry is ultimately scrapped, how will we be better served? What about the tens of thousands of registered guns in the system and what about the number of unregistered guns that have changed hands during the "amnesties"? What watchdog agency is going to oversee the scrapping of the data bank? When we trade, sell or give away a registered firearm other than a hand gun, will we still need a thumbprint from God and a note from our mothers? We will still have to present our little plastic cards to purchase guns from dealers and show them to teen aged clerks at Wal*Mart to buy ammo. I feel so much better ...... When we had the FAC system, we were required to ensure that a private buyer or trader had an FAC, but we were not required to record it. The original purchaser was in the dealer's books. This was onerous in itself, but we were so shocked and into la-la land that we ate it with barely a whimper. Once we became 'licenced' gun owners, we surrendered any pretext of being free citizens, joining the ranks of those societies and cultures that enjoy 'freedoms' and 'privileges' at the whim of government and lose them by the same whim. We laugh at Australia and Britain, but are we so different? "It has nothing to do with power - it's all about control" ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V13 #571 *********************************** 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".)