Viewpoints This page is dedicated to various firearms-related viewpoints and do not constitute an endorsement by the GRGCC. Any member-submitted article content may be edited at the discretion of the Webmaster. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Oh, sure, cancel the gun registry. But how dare you celebrate! Matt Gurney  Feb 16, 2012 – 12:45 PM ET | Last Updated: Feb 16, 2012 12:56 PM ET  http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/matt-gurney-oh-sure-cancel-the-gun-registry-but-how-dare-you-celebrate/ This is so insulting. Once upon a time, it would have been possible to make some logical arguments in favour of the long-gun registry. Probably not logical enough to change many minds — the debate over the particular merits (or lack thereof) of the registry was always more of a litmus test for how one feels about private ownership of firearms. But in this hypothetical debate, you could have made some reasonable arguments for a registry, or at least offered some passable defences of it against libertarian criticisms: It would be a useful crime-fighting tool when guns are stolen, it would provide statistically relevant information of interest to the public, it would generate some revenue (or even just pay for itself). Or that it was not an unreasonable burden for a citizen. Again, these arguments wouldn’t have flown with a lot of people (myself included). And the registry was so badly executed and proved so frustrating to work with that these arguments wouldn’t have been enough to cut it once theory became practice. But Canada never really had the chance to have that calm, rational discussion, because the registry quickly became a memorial to the victims of gun crime first and a theoretically useful databank a distant second. We were reminded of that again on Wednesday, as Quebec politicians (and a few in Ottawa) erupted in fury not so much at the end of the registry, but that Tory politicians dared celebrate their victory. The registry isn’t entirely gone — it will still be some months before the Senate finishes reviewing the government’s bill and, one presumes, passes it onto the Governor-General for Royal Assent. But Wednesday’s vote in the House of Commons, where the bill to scrap the registry and delete its record passed third reading  — with two NDP MPs breaking ranks with their party to vote with the government — means it’s all over but for the crying (and the senatoring and the David Johnstoning). This is a major victory for the Tories, who have been gunning for the registry (pun not intended, but acknowledged) since the day it was enacted. Some would argue its demise is a good thing for Canadians. But anyone can see that it’s a good thing for the Conservatives. So it’s not surprising that some Tories met with some prominent anti-registry lobbyists and other registry foes after the vote for a reception. Cocktails were served. Hands were likely shaken. No doubt a back or two was patted. How dare they! “I find this deplorable,” Quebec Public Security Minister Robert Dutil said Wednesday. “Frankly, they have a right to their opinion. We understand. It’s their opinion. They promised it. But to go so far as to celebrate . . . is not very adequate.” Lisette Lapointe, an independent member of the Quebec National Assembly, called it, “really offensive” and an insult to the victims of the Montreal massacre. Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois read off the names of the 14 women killed by Marc Lepine and then said, “Imagine you are the parents of one of the victims.” The celebration, said Marois, was “shameful … disgusting and … revolting.” Nevermind the fact that the registry never would have stopped Lepine’s rampage even if it had been in place in 1989. That’s irrelevant. Just think of the families! In Ottawa, the response was similar. Interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel called the cocktails “arrogant.” Bob Rae criticized the Tories for celebrating the end of a program that not every Canadian agreed should have ended. Sure, Bob. Because the strong objections of gun owners to the needless stigmatization that your party foisted upon them never stopped the Liberals from celebrating the registry as proof of their devotion to public safety. You heard it here first: From now on, the Liberals will only drink to issues that 100% of Canadians agree with. The one-step program to sobriety — under those rules, they’ll never drink again. It’s a good thing the registry is soon to end. The trumped up displays of emotion and grief inflicted upon the voters every time this needlessly expensive and error-riddled computer database was mentioned were getting hard to handle. Maybe some day, way in the future, Canadians can sit down and talk this one out rationally again. Perhaps over a cocktail or two.   We still have the right to defend ourselves   11 Feb 2012 Times Colonist LAWRIE MCFARLANE jalmcfarlane@shaw.ca There’s an old taunt that a liberal is someone who won’t take his own side in a fight. Apparently there may be some truth in it. Last Wednesday in Parliament, an MP from Alberta asked Justice Minister Rob Nicholson this question: Is it a reasonable use of force to fire a warning shot in self-defence? The query wasn’t academic. It came on the heels of an Ontario trial that turned on just that point. The case involved a homeowner who awoke to find three masked men throwing fire bombs at his house. About those facts there is no disagreement. The bomb throwers were charged with “intentionally setting the house on fire while the homeowner was inside.” However, what followed is controversial. The intended victim went outside and fired a revolver over the heads of the thugs, scaring them off. For this, he was charged with careless use of a firearm and the Crown prosecutor wanted him jailed. Digressing for a second, the trial was unsettling in several respects. In a moment of farce, it emerged the Crown prosecutor didn’t know the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic handgun. Noting there were no shell casings at the scene, he accused the home owner of taking them inside to hide them. Except revolvers don’t eject shell casings. But what the hey, it was one of those gunny things that go bang. Off with his head. More troubling, the judge temporarily halted the hearing because he couldn’t understand the legal principles involved. But returning to Parliament, the justice minister said that in his opinion, a warning shot in such circumstances would be reasonable. That prompted a reaction of stunned disbelief among opposition members. “Shooting a gun over their heads is essentially threatening to shoot them. That seems to me to be unreasonable,” spluttered NDP justice critic Jack Harris. And Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, himself a former justice minister, agreed: “We’ve got to be very cautious that we don’t encourage any sense of vigilantism in this country.” So there you have the state of contemporary liberalism. Firing a gun harmlessly to save your own life is unreasonable and vigilantism. Never mind that the people you deliberately didn’t harm are, at that very moment, lighting the next fire bomb. We can’t have folks defending themselves. Somebody might get hurt. Earlier generations of Canadians, raised to be self-reliant, would have laughed out loud at this. What Cotler and Harris want for us is a Peter Pan existence, where we play the boy who wouldn’t grow up, and the only adult in the room is government. This is condescension on a rare scale. Hillary Clinton assured us that it takes a village to raise a child, parents being unequal to the task, apparently. But her Canadian soul brothers have gone one better. They don’t want us raised at all. We’re to remain children forever, relieved of such adult responsibilities as taking care of ourselves. And if it’s not all a bad dream, and we’re attacked in our home? Or take another recent incident. In a small Oklahoma town, two men forced open a door and came at a young mother with a knife. The woman — an 18-year-old widow with an infant child — had tried to barricade the entrance with a sofa. She called the police, but there was no sign of them when the barricade gave way. What does she do? As the intruder crossed her threshold, Sarah Mckinley shot and killed him with a shotgun. Police said she acted in self-defence. It’s time some of our MPS grew up. Liberalism isn’t a suicide pact. And we don’t need their permission to defend ourselves. We have that right by law. Matt Gurney: Toronto Star declares state of emergency after finding guns in the GTA Matt Gurney  Jan 30, 2012 – 11:21 AM ET http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/30/matt-gurney-toronto-star-declares-state-of-emergency-after-finding-guns-in-the-gta/     In an “exclusive” piece that ran on that weekend, the Toronto Star reports that, according to information available through the federal gun registries, people in the Greater Toronto Area own guns. Lots of guns. Everyone, please — remain calm. The numbers are admittedly interesting. In the Toronto area, there are 263,000 privately-held non-restricted guns (shotguns and rifles), 62,818 restricted guns (most handguns and some rifles) and 26,315 prohibited guns (snub-nosed pistols and military-grade weapons). That’s at least 352,000 icky firearms, right in the Toronto Star‘s backyard. For a paper still trying to wrap their minds around a Harper majority and a Rob Ford mayoralty, it’s gotta be a tough pill to swallow. The article, of course, hinges on the imminent scrapping of the long-gun registry, after which the 263,000 nonrestricted guns will no longer be tracked by the government, even though the 53,000 holders of non-restricted licences will still require those to purchase and possess firearms and ammunition. Experts are quickly trotted out to tut-tut about public safety, including former Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant, now working with the Coalition for Gun Control, who says the number of gun owners in and around Toronto prove firearms ownership “isn’t a rural-urban issue,” but instead about “safety, and suicide prevention.” Wrong on every count. Firearms ownership has always been an urban vs. suburban-rural issue, and that’s especially true in Toronto. In 2010, the Star released a colour-coded map of the GTA showing the percentage of the population that had a firearms licence, and the results were what you’d expect — the figures were very low in downtown Toronto, much higher in the outer suburbs at the fringes of the GTA, and somewhere in the middle at all points in between. Nor is there any truth that the gun registry, or rates of gun ownership, has any relevance at all to the suicide rate, which has been generally flat for decades, far longer than the registry has been around. Any success that gun control has achieved in getting Canadians to stop shooting themselves is an empty victory — they’re still committing suicide, they’re just using pills, a bridge or subway car instead. Not exactly a victory for gun control. Then, of course, there is the safety issue. The Star‘s own earlier reporting has found that the rate of gun ownership over the last several years has been generally stable in and around Toronto — some minor drop in the rate of gun ownership inside the city of Toronto has generally been offset by a rise in the number of guns in the suburbs. And yet, all the same, it was just last November that the Star was reporting that the rate of homicide in Toronto had dropped 50% in only a few short years. Indeed, they noted that, “Toronto is on its way to becoming the safest it has been in a quarter of a century.” That’s great news. But isn’t it worth noting that that victory for safety was against a backdrop of steady gun ownership in a city with hundreds of thousands of firearms to choose from? They might also note that Toronto’s suburbs, despite their higher rate of gun ownership, have much lower murder rates — rates, note, not just individual homicides — than Toronto itself. But that isn’t the issue the Star is really delving into. The statistics about gun ownership and suicide trends and murder rates are just background noise to the main issue — the belief of many, particularly in urban areas, that gun ownership is itself asocial, dangerous and indicative of a deranged mind. If not for the social stigma of gun ownership, no one would care how many of their neighbours might have an old rifle or two locked up in their basement somewhere. They’d only care that they lived in a safe neighbourhood — and almost every where in the Toronto area, that’s true and getting truer. It’s not enough for supporters of the gun registry to simply state that many people own guns, and rest their case. It’s certainly true that with the registry scrapped, there will still be murders and suicides committed with firearms. But that was true even with the registry. If this is the best defenders of the status quo have to offer, the registry can’t be scrapped quickly enough.       Fredericton's gun registry targets toys, critics complain  By Jeff Davis, Postmedia News January 26, 2012 The looming end to the federal long-gun registry will soon leave Fredericton in a unique position: the only major Canadian city with a municipal gun registry. Except that its registry covers anything that shoots a projectile by means of compressed air, spring or mechanical means. That covers pellet and paintball guns and, in theory, even such toys as Nerf guns. Since 2005, Fredericton has maintained Canada's only mandatory registry regime for such items, complete with fees, fines, databases and, in one instance, a SWAT team raid on a home. But it could also represent the wave of the future, as Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says municipalities have full freedom to implement registries of their own - whether for real guns or fake ones. With provincial governments locked in a war of words with Ottawa over the end of the long-gun registry, Fredericton bylaw S-5, titled ``A bylaw respecting fireworks, spring guns and air rifles,'' establishes a mandatory registration regime that is a microcosm of the federal long-gun registry. Under the strict letter of the bylaw, no such devices can be discharged within city limits, except at an indoor target shooting range. It goes on the say that all spring and air powered guns must be taken to a local police station and registered, at a cost of two dollars per gun. Each gun is issued a numbered sticker and the owner's address is entered into a database. A user permit is also required. Any unregistered spring- and air-powered gun or firework can be seized and destroyed, and the chief of police may cancel user permits following any infraction of the bylaw. Any infraction can result in a fine of between $50 and $200. But city councillor Eric Megarity, chair of the city's public safety committee, said the law has never been applied in such a strict fashion and children playing cops 'n' robbers should have no fear. ``You're not going to see our city police go around the streets and confiscate water guns from kids,'' he said. ``There's got to be some sensibility to this.'' Megarity said Fredericton has had bylaws governing fireworks and some pellet guns since 1990, and that the current bylaw was passed in 2005 following a string of incidents involving pellet guns. The law gives the city a tool to use against residents who misuse their pellet guns to shoot people and vandalize property, Megarity added. ``Back around 2003 and 2004, we had a problem with people using pellet guns on cars and bus stations,'' he said. ``It caused a lot of damage, thousands of dollars.'' Megarity said realistic-looking toy guns are a danger to the public because police can mistake them for real guns. ``Some of these pellet guns look like assault rifles, so that created a concern for police and SWAT teams,'' he said. ``When you're in a high stress situation as an officer, you have to make a split second decision . . . that can mean the life or death of somebody.'' Fredericton police Const. Rick Mooney said a number of residents have been charged under the bylaw in recent years. In 2011 one man was charged, in 2009 four were charged and in 2009 one was charged. Mooney said he thinks many spring- and air-fired guns have not been registered, but added that's not really the point of the law. The only people who have been charged attracted attention to themselves through irresponsible behaviour, he said. ``Often times it will be a young person,'' he said. ``The main reason we become involved with someone who is using one inappropriately, it's because they brought that attention to themselves.'' Gun enthusiasts have pilloried Fredericton's ``Nerf registry'' on online message boards including CanadianGunNutz.com, ridiculing a law that could provide police the power to seize toys from children. The Canadian Federation of Municipalities said it is not aware of a similar registry for toy guns anywhere else in Canada. But it appears municipalities have the legal right to create registries for both real and toy guns as they see fit. Toews said municipal registries are indeed legal, if the relevant province assents. ``It's certainly possible for a province to create a gun registry under property and civil rights, and if the municipality has that delegated authority, I don't see a constitutional issue there,'' he said. Nevertheless, Toews said he is ``certainly not advocating'' registries be set up at the municipal level, whether for real firearms or their plastic cousins. Nationally, the Conservative government has taken controversial steps to repeal the federal long-gun registry though Bill C-19, which is currently before Parliament. Quebec is considering implementing a provincial gun registry to track non-restricted firearms within its borders. Read more: http://www.canada.com/Fredericton+registry+targets+toys+critics+complain/6064410/story.html#ixzz1kn2vRI1G      More guns, fewer owners: RCMP report  By Jeff Davis, Postmedia News January 22, 2012   Canadians own more than half a million more firearms than they did in 2006, according to the 2010 annual report from the RCMP's Canadian Firearms Program. But while federal firearms data shows that the number of registered gun owners in Canada is dropping, the arsenal of each is getting bigger and bigger. But many gun owners - and a Tory MP - say the government's estimates are off the mark, and that there may be twice as many firearms, and firearms owners, in Canada as the RCMP says. They say many Canadian gun owners are ``going underground,'' due to fears they will face increased police scrutiny and the seizure of their weapons. In 2006, there were a total of 7,102,466 firearms registered in Canada. By 2010, this number had grown to 7,646,699, an increase of 544,233, or over 100,000 per year. However, between 2006 and 2010, the number of licensed gun owners has dropped from 1,908,011 to 1,848,000. This represents a decrease of 60,011, or about 12,000 per year for five years. As such, each registered gun owner in Canada had an average of 4.14 guns in 2010, up from 3.72 guns per registered owner in 2006. Many Canadians, however, say that there are many more guns and gun owners in Canada than the RCMP says. Garry Breitkreuz is the Tory MP who drafted the legislation to repeal the long-gun registry currently before the House. He said his own independent research - gleaned from comparing Canada's firearms import and export data - has shown there are between 16.5 and 21 million guns in Canada. He said the dwindling number of registered firearms owners is perhaps due to a disinterest in hunting among younger Canadians. ``There is a slow decline in the number of people hunting,'' he said. ``The registry has discouraged people from getting involved.'' Canadian Shooting Sports Association executive director Tony Bernardo agreed the RCMP's estimates on the number of guns in Canada is way off. ``There are still seven, eight, nine, 10 million guns out there that are not in (the) system, and never were in the system,'' he said. Allister Muir, a spokesman for the Canadian Unlicensed Firearms Owners Association, said he has never held a firearms licence, but owns seven guns. Muir said he thinks there are between 3.3 and four million firearms owners in Canada - registered or otherwise - and between 14 and 21 million guns. He said he has never been charged by the RCMP, despite his best efforts at provocation, such as a cross-country tour to protest the gun registry. Due in part to weak incentives to register, he said, millions of gun owners have simply chosen not to inform the government of their arsenals. Reached at his home in Stellarton, N.S., Muir said that back in 1995 when the long-gun registry came into force, many gun owners simply chose not to opt in. Muir said he thinks there are around two million Canadians who, like himself, have chosen not to register. ``The original belief was that this registration was about confiscation, and that was the driving force,'' he said. Muir said there are now more than 300,000 firearms licences that have lapsed and were not renewed. The licences are supposed to be renewed every five years. He said he thinks the risk of being slapped with a trumped up criminal firearms charge is much higher for registered owners, so many shooters choose to keep a lower profile. ``And a lot of people are simply going underground right at this point,'' he said. ``It's getting harder and harder to determine whether this is an issue of lower ownership or hidden ownership.'' Bernardo estimates there are 330,000 expired firearms licences in Canada, which he said is mostly people who have had enough of the registry. ``Most of them consciously opted out, and said, `I'm not going to do this anymore,''' he said. ``This is the government's elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.'' Government to gun owners: We made a mistake. Fix it for us or go to prison Matt Gurney  Jan 10, 2012 – 11:59 AM ET | Last Updated: Jan 10, 2012 12:18 PM ET http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/10/government-to-gun-owners-we-made-a-mistake-fix-it-for-us-or-go-to-prison/ Two small-calibre rifles have been suddenly reclassified by the RCMP-run Canadian Firearms Program. The rifles in question, the Armi Jager AP-80 and the Walther G22, are both unremarkable .22-caliber long guns. While any firearm is dangerous, .22-caliber firearms are among the weakest around — indeed, they’re typically used to train rookie shooters basic firearm safety and operation. Canadian law divides firearms into three categories, using complex technical criterion and a bevy of politically-motivated “exemptions”, and citizens can only legally own firearms in the categories their licence covers. No further licences are issued for the third and highest category, prohibited. By declaring a new exemption and moving these rifles from the non-restricted list — the category subject to the least controls  — to the prohibited list, the RCMP has essentially banned them for all but a constantly shrinking group of Canadians who owned prohibited-class firearms before the current gun control legislation was passed under Jean Chrétien. That’s bad. This is worse: Any citizen who already owns an AP-80 or G22, and does not already possess a rare prohibited-class licence, has been ordered to turn in their rifles within 30 days. Failure to do so will mean they are unlawfully in possession of a prohibited firearm, and subject to as much as 10 years behind bars. It doesn’t matter if they purchased it legally, paid all the sales taxes, and have stored it safely ever since. The RCMP has declared that it was a mistake to allow citizens to purchase these firearms, and wants them turned in, pronto. Or else. No apology for the error. No mention of monetary compensation. No exemptions made for people who already owned them. Just an order to hand them over or become a criminal. When a private citizen tries to do what the RCMP is doing, it’s called theft. The RCMP’s seizure of these (up-til-now) legally owned guns will be accomplished with the full weight of the state. With the G22 rifle, the RCMP has at least a flimsy excuse for the reclassification— it says because the rifle can be easily shortened by removing the back end, it’s too easily concealable to be a non-restricted rifle (the blame still lies with the government for making the mistake in the first place, but at least that’s something). The decision to ban the AP-80, however, has no logic behind it at all. The RCMP claims that it was “incorrectly registered” as non-restricted because the AP-80 is a “variant of the design of the firearm commonly known as the AK-47 rifle” — a Soviet-designed military combat rifle. Except … it isn’t. At all. The AP-80 fires an entirely different (and much weaker) kind of ammunition, using a different internal mechanism and is built from completely different materials and components (precisely zero of the parts of the AP-80 and AK-47 are compatible or interchangeable). The only thing the AP-80 has in common with the AK-47 is its silhouette — when the AP-80 was designed, the manufacturer decided to make it look like the famous AK-47, for purely marketing reasons. As a rifle, the AP-80 is a completely unremarkable low-caliber plinker. Only by making it look like a famous military rifle could the company hope to sell many copies, so that’s what they did. The RCMP is banning the AP-80 because it looks scary. Many Canadian firearms owners suspect that the federal Tories, once they scrap the long-gun registry, will lose interest in the firearms issue. They’ll have kept their promise but, fearful of being painted by the media and opposition as pro-gun extremists, will move on. But even once the registry is gone, Canada’s firearms laws will still be a mess — for proof of that, look no further than the above. Stepping in now to prevent this outrageous seizure of private property on the flimsiest of justifications would be a good place for the Tories to start showing Canada’s lawful firearms owners that the Conservative party hasn’t forgotten them just yet.