Remember, Remember

Remember, remember!
The sixth of December,
The girls in Montreal were shot;
I know of no reason
Why Lepine’s open season
Should ever be forgot!
Young Gharbi with his rifles
Did the scheme contrive
To kill the feminist women,
Make them all die.
“Misogyny!” Media blows.
“Guns are all evil, don’t ya know?”
Good men fought, but they were no match
For the agenda to be dispatched!
Victims were martyred
Illness ignored
“If you won’t give your gun,
We’ll take two,
The better for all,
And the worse for you!”
A rope, a rope to hang Scapegoat,
A gun was the cause of this crime,
A hatred of women is fine,
Talk of mental illness is lies!
Holloa, girls! Holloa, girls! Blame the guns now!
Holloa, girls! Holloa, girls! Take them all now!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

For the last couple of years, I’ve wanted to write a blog about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.  I always seem to get bogged down in November and miss it though, only coming up for air about this time of year when the Ecole Polytechnique furor picks up.  So, this year, I decided to combine the two.  The above poem is my ode to Dec 6, set to the metre of Remember, Remember   😛

With the recent abolition of the long gun registry, I expected the Dec 6 hullabaloo to be a bit more chaotic than usual this year.  Surprisingly, it has been quite tame so far.  I’m not naive enough to think we’ve heard the last of it though.

The fourteen victims of Marc Lepine/Gamil Gharbi were killed on Dec 6, 1989 and their memories have been butchered all over again every Dec 6 since that date.  Rather than using their deaths as a launching point to bring awareness to mental health issues and violence against all people, a handful of Feminazi activitists chose to turn those tragic deaths into a pulpit for gun control and violence against women.  In a stroke, these misguided people drove an irreparable wedge between the sexes and alienated several million honest gun owning Canadians.  Each year, vigils and forums are held to discuss violence against women.  No doubt this is a worthy cause, but it’s irrelevant to the date.  Yes, only women were killed that day, and yes, Lepine spoke openly about his anti-women beliefs.  However, he could just as easily have fixated upon men, or children, or dogs.  It just so happens that his mental illness manifested against women. 

That’s why the memorials on this day are so out of touch with the reality of what happened in 1989.  Where are the focus groups and discussions on mental health?  Where is the funding for community health groups that could have helped Marc Lepine before he went on his ramapage?

Every year that we continue to focus on Marc Lepine’s victims rather than on the cause of his actions, is another year that the deaths of those women continue to have been in vain.  Yes, there are still gender issues that need addressing, but Dec 6 is not, and never was about feminism or misogyny.  Dec 6 is, and always has been, about mental illness.

When are we going to stop dishonouring the victims of Ecole Polytechnique and finally address the real reason that they died?

Meet the Man Responsible for the Death of Canada’s Gun Registry

This article is from a few months ago, but I thought it well worth posting.  Thank you Garry for all of your tireless work for the citizens of Canada!!!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2012/02/29/meet-the-man-responsible-for-the-death-of-canadas-gun-registry/

 

Frank Miniter, Contributer
I expose the excesses of the bureaucracy

Looking north across the border, American gun owners may well see the fall of Canada’s long-gun registry with relief. This, after all, lessens the odds that the anti-gun movement will be successful in its attempt to install a gun-owners database in the U.S. However, before American gun owners forget about Canada all over again, there’s an incredible story here not being told outside Ottawa political circles that needs to be heard by every American who cherishes their freedom.

The way the press is telling it, the Conservatives finally gained control of the House of Commons and the Senate and then used, as they said they would, their majorities to begin the repeal of Canada’s long-gun registry. Their first big step, taken on February 15, was the House of Commons vote to kill the long-gun registry. They accomplished this by 159-130. Next up is Canada’s Senate, where repeal is inevitable because Conservatives also have a majority there. Finally, it’ll make its way to the Governor General of Canada where it will receive Royal Assent and be passed into law. So sometime this spring law-abiding Canadians will no longer have to fill out forms and pay fees in order to keep authorities aware of what’s in their gun cabinets.

All that seems to say that the political winds simply shifted and blew over the registry. The problem with that assumption is it isn’t quite true.

The true story is actually much more interesting; in fact, it needs to be heard by every American, as the arguments used by the anti-gun groups in Canada are the same ones being promoted in the U.S.

The story begins on an evening in January in 1994 in a little town called Preeceville, Saskatchewan. Garry Breitkreuz (pronounced Bright-Krites) was then a new member of Canada’s Parliament. He had been elected in October of 1993. Preeceville has about 1,000 residents. Garry was excited. This would be his first town-hall meeting. The topic was about a new gun-control bill, C-68, brought in by the then Liberal Government. It included the creation of a long-gun registry. “I’ll never forget that first meeting,” says Garry. “Even though it was 39 degrees below zero outside the place was packed and the people heated.”

Now it should be noted that Garry was hardly a gun-rights activist. Not yet anyway. Sure, he grew up in a rural Saskatchewan home and had a .30-30-caliber rifle he used to hunt deer with. “But when it came to the gun issue,” says Garry, “I was very naïve.”

Naïve indeed. Garry started the meeting off by saying to the crowd that “this long-gun registry seems to make sense. Maybe it’ll catch a few criminals….” He barely got started in this manner when his constituents made it clear they didn’t agree.

“They challenged me,” says Garry, “to do some research to find out if forcing people to register their guns will really save lives.”

Garry shut up and listened. Before a few more minutes passed he promised to do some research to find out if requiring people to register their guns really reduces crime.

This is where the story behind this repeal takes a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” shift. Garry set out to learn if making citizens register their deer rifles with the police really prevents homicides. “After just a few months of digging into it I did a 180,” says Garry, who soon hired a researcher to help. The researcher’s name is Dennis Young. Together they started asking the government from the inside how much the gun registry was costing and whether it was really reducing crime. The bureaucracy began stonewalling him, so he started filing “Access to Information” requests (the American equivalent of “Freedom of Information Act” requests). By 2002 he’d filed more than 500 such requests.

He learned that the Canadian government was horribly underestimating the costs of the long-gun registry. In 1995 Canada’s Department of Justice told Parliament that the Canadian Firearms Program would cost $119 million to implement and that this cost would be offset by $117 million in fees; however, by 2000 Canada’s Department of Justice was already estimating that the long-gun registry would cost over $1 billion.

Meanwhile, the gun-owners database wasn’t reducing crime rates. In fact, John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, looked into Canada’s long-gun registry recently and couldn’t unearth one murder the registry solved. Lott says, “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chiefs of Police have not yet provided a single example in which tracing was of more than peripheral importance in solving a case.”

Canada’s Public Safety Minister agrees with Lott. On the day of the vote to repeal the registry the National Post reported that Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the long-gun registry “does nothing to help put an end to gun crimes, nor has it saved one Canadian life. It criminalizes hard-working and law-abiding citizens such as farmers and sport shooters, and it has been a billion-dollar boondoggle left to us by the previous Liberal government.”

Now, back in the 1990s Garry wasn’t getting any traction politically or with the press, so he took his research to the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. The government agency agreed to review his data and to do its own audit. The auditing agency agreed with Garry. In 2002 the agency reported: “The Department of Justice Canada did not provide Parliament with sufficient information to allow it to effectively scrutinize the Canadian Firearms Program and ensure accountability. It provided insufficient financial information and explanations for the dramatic increase in the cost of the Program.”

“This report blew the lid off,” says Garry.

He says that before the Office of the Auditor General report made headlines even many Conservative politicians wouldn’t touch the gun-registry issue. They thought it was a losing battle. They said the facts didn’t matter, just the demagoguery they’d surely receive. They were afraid of the big media in population centers in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver—sound familiar?

“But the public was ahead of the politicians on this issue,” says Garry. “In meetings all over the country I was telling people that with what they were spending on the registry we could hire five or six thousand police officers.”

This resonated.

The exploding costs of the registry made headlines even in the city papers. Gary A. Mauser, a Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, has also looked deeply into the costs. He says, “John Lott and I added up the costs and found that, in total, the Canadian government spent about $2.7 billion on this failed experiment.” That’s more than 20 times what it was forecast to cost.

Even after the 2002 report from Office of the Auditor General came out Garry kept traveling around Canada speaking about the costs of having the government invade law-abiding Canadians’ gun cabinets. He also kept citing the crime statistics, which clearly weren’t being affected by this massive invasion of Canadians’ civil liberties. Criminals, as it predictably turned out, weren’t registering firearms they were using for crimes.

Nevertheless, some Conservative politicians still didn’t want to tackle the issue. So Garry looked for a new way to pull them together. In 2006 he learned that the U.S. has a Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus (CSC). Nearly 300 members of the U.S. Congress are members of the CSC. Started in 1988-89, the CSC is supported by the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF), a group that fights for sportsmen’s rights, including wildlife conservation issues and gun rights. (Full disclosure: I do contract work for the CSF.) Garry hopped on a plane bound for Washington, D.C.

According to Phil Morlock, who is the director of environmental affairs for Shimano American Corporation/Shimano Canada and who is a CSF board member, “Garry couldn’t believe the U.S. had this large caucus fighting for hunting, fishing and gun rights. He was even more astounded that the caucus is bi-partisan. He met with CSC congressional leaders. He found himself talking to Republican and Democratic co-chairs of the CSC and asked them how they get along in such a partisan and politically charged atmosphere. The American politicians laughed and said that sometimes they think all they really agree on are sportsmen’s rights, including the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”

Garry flew back to Ottawa and, with the help of Morlock and others, started a nonpartisan caucus called the Canadian Parliamentary Outdoor Caucus. This caucus now is one of the largest on Parliament Hill. “The caucus helped get the information out to Members of Parliament and Senators that the long-gun registry was intrusive and ineffective,” says Garry.

At the time Garry wrote an op-ed for various newspapers in which he said, “[We] need to become proactive in protecting our outdoors heritage from an increasing number of large, well-funded, international groups who want to shut down hunting, fishing, trapping and sport shooting. Rural and urban Canadians of all political affiliations, backgrounds, ages and abilities contribute over $10 billion annually to the national economy through these industries. These traditional activities are a key part of Canada’s culture and an important component of our history as a nation.”

Sportsmen and those who just wanted to protect their families without government interference now had a caucus working for them.

Then, also in 2006, Stephen Harper, a Conservative, became prime minister of Canada by forming a minority government. Harper didn’t have the votes then to tear down the registry, but over the next few elections the Conservatives gained more seats. Finally, in 2011, with the caucus, the government, the facts and the public on their side, the Conservatives had the votes and the will to move against the long-gun registry.

Garry says the caucus, along with the blatant fact that the long-gun registry was costing a fortune without solving crimes, even had support from politicians in other parties. Nevertheless, when the vote came only two New Democrats—John Rafferty and Bruce Hyer—broke from their party and voted to repeal. “They’re now being punished by their party for doing the right thing,” laments Garry.

Then, when the vote came on February 15, something unusual took place. In the Canadian House of Commons members of Parliament stand to signify their votes. After Garry stood to vote to repeal the long-gun registry, they broke into a cheer: “Garry, Garry….” This just isn’t done in the reserved atmosphere of the Canadian Parliament. But repealing a government program—no matter how onerous and costly it turns out to be—is a rare thing. It’s especially rare to see a database of gun-owners repealed. Throughout history many governments have created gun registries—most recently in Australia and England. Gun registries often end in gun confiscations—again, this has occurred in Australia and England—but as far as Lott knows no registry has ever been repealed.

And the moral of the story is that Canada’s experiment didn’t end with the government disarming its citizenry because the people stood up and challenged a statesman to represent them by searching out the truth—this, in a nutshell, is what the Tea Party has been advocating in the U.S.

In fact, I asked Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action how this might affect Americans and he said, “Gun registration in the United States has always been the political fantasy of the gun-ban lobby. The clear lesson from Canada is that registration did not and does not reduce crime; in fact, since Canada’s long-gun-registration law went into effect, the U.S. murder rate has dropped almost twice as fast as Canada’s. A gun registry only infringes on privacy and has led to the confiscation of law-abiding citizens’ firearms in countries around the world, and even here in the U.S. That is why the NRA will fight any registration effort in the U.S. with every fiber we have.”

Indeed, Americans should be thanking Garry, too. He showed how to use facts, tenacity and a democratic process to overturn bad policy by convincing the government to stop making criminals out of law-abiding gun owners.

Gun control in one sentence

A good friend of mine had an epiphany a couple of days ago while pondering the global gun control issue.  He found a way to summarize the entire gun control debate in one sentence:

“If all the AK47s in Libya were licensed and registered, Muammar Gaddafi would still be alive today.”

Do you like it?  I do.  In fact, I like it so much that I’m dedicating an a blog entry to it.  It’s amazing how much meaning can be crammed into a single sentence!!

First point: the AK-47. 

The most quoted and, apparently feared, firearm on the face of the planet.  The Avtomat Kalashnikova selective-fire, gas operated, 7.62 x 39mm rifle was officially adopted for use by the Soviet Army in 1947.  Since then, it has become a favourite for military forces around the world, due to its robust design, reliability, low cost and ease of use.  AK-variant rifles are, in fact, the most widely produced assault rifle in the world [Source: Weaponomics: The Global Market for Assault Rifles; Killicoat, Phillip; WPS4202; April 2007].

The AK-47 is also incredibly popular among gun control advocates.  Every time a government suggests relaxing gun control laws, the cries of “Assault rifles will be easier to get!!” are heard from coast to coast.  They intentionally invoke images of madmen running loose with AK-47s, shooting anyone who happens across their path.  In the minds of gun control advocates, the AK-47 is the most dangerous gun ever made and nobody should ever own it, or anything like it.  They rely on the average person’s ignorance about firearms to create a state of fear and further their cause.  The bottom line is that a gun is a gun is a gun.  All are inert objects, the only danger comes from the person behind the trigger.  

Second point:  Libya.

The Arab Spring:  a string of revolutions throughout North Africa and the Middle East.  To mention but a few highlights, it began in Tunisia in December 2010, led to the overthrow of the Egyptian government in February 2011, and 9 months of bloody civil war in Libya.  The fighting has calmed in most affected countries, but still rages unchecked in Syria.

The protests, demonstrations and revolutions that rocked the Arab world were widely hailed as positive by the Western World.  They were seen as pro-democracy, the will of people, and the start of a positive new future for citizens of oppressed nations. 

The hypocrisy of it all is that, while groups such as Amnesty International supported these uprisings against oppressive regimes and dictators, they continued to try to disarm the very citizens they were supporting!  Now that the war has ended, the UN has become very vocal about disarming the people of Libya.  They are actively working towards preventing any future generations of Libyans from having the means to fight for their freedom if the need arises again.

Libya is a fitting example for the gun control issue on another front as well.  They have some of the strictest gun control laws in the world.   Civilian gun ownership is entirely prohibited and it is also illegal to privately sell or transfer them.  Despite gun ownership being illegal, civilians own nearly twice as many guns as the military and police.  Civilian firearms are numbered at about 900,000, military firearms at 535,200 and police firearms at 22,000.  The rate of civilian firearms ownership is 15.5 per 100 people.  In comparison, in Canada, the rate of civilian firearms ownership is 23.8 per 100 people [Source:  Small Arms Survey, 2007].

Let me say that again.  In a country where civilian ownership of firearms is completely outlawed, the citizenry still outgun the military and police by almost 2:1!!!  

To summarize, while organizations like Amnesty International fully support the revolutions of the Arab Spring, they are doing everything in their power to ensure that the people revolting are denied the very tools that they need to succeed. 

Third point: Licensing and Registration

Oh boy, where do I even start on this one?  This topic has been done to death so many times, I’m not sure I even want to address it again.  These vary between countries, but here’s the nutshell version for Canada:

Licensing.  This is the process through which a government body determines an individual’s fitness to own firearms.  It essentially states that firearms ownership is illegal unless you are granted an exemption from that law by means of a license.

Registration.  This ties a firearm to its owner by means of a registration certificate.  The certificate contains information regarding the type of firearm (make, model, serial number, etc) and that certificate is linked to a specific firearms license holder.

They seem innocent enough on the surface, but these two puppies have been the cause of much death and destruction throughout history.  Put simply, every major genocide of the twentieth century was preceded by civilian disarmament – Ottoman Turkey, USSR, China, Rwanda, Guatemala, Uganda, Germany.  These confiscation schemes were all aided through systems of licensing and registration.  It’s common sense really – you can’t take a gun away from a person if you don’t first know that they have it. 

In some cases, Hitler and Mao for example, the introduction of the gun control laws was very methodical and a strategic part of their plans.  In other cases, Rwanda and Guatemala, the existing laws were a simple and convenient means to a horrific end.

The bottom line is that the intentions of the people who enact these laws are irrelevant.  What’s important is the potential for abuse and misuse of these laws in the future.  Simply put, if the potential for misuse exists, it’s a bad law.

Putting it all together

Muammar Gaddafi was one of the longest reigning and perhaps one of the most well-known dictators in recent history.  The reason that Muammar Gaddafi is dead is because the people of Libya had the resolve to rebel against him.  The means of their rebellion was their ability to fight for their freedom through the use of privately owned firearms.  The people of Libya were still armed, despite prohibitions on firearms ownership, simply because the country did not have a system of licensing and registration in place that would have allowed for wholesale confiscation.  If Gaddafi had gun controls in place, he would have confiscated firearms prior to viciously crushing the resistance, making many pay the price so that he could remain alive, unchallenged and in power.

Civilian gun ownership is not about hunting or target shooting or even home defense.  It is about freedom and democracy.  Many gun control advocates imagine a world where only the police and the military own guns – a police state.  Others imagine a world of peace where nobody needs guns.  While this is a noble goal, it is not the world we currently live in.  Until the causes of violence are addressed, guns will continue to be a necessary tool in our lives.

Gun Toting Liberals

I was shown this video today and found it to be a very powerful and well thought out argument.  It needs sharing with everyone you know.

There is a misconception all over the western world that guns are a “right-wing” issue.  The topic of gun control has been framed as a left vs right argument, with gun control supporters on the left and gun owners on the right.  This is far from the truth.  The gun debate does not fall strictly within party lines.  History shows that gun control can be introduced from either the left or the right, but that it always has unintended negative consequences. 

Outside the western world, the truth of the gun control argument is obvious. 

Destroy the data

Debate over Bill C-19, which would finally end the contentious long-gun registry, continues to grow heated in both Parliament and in the press.  The Coalition for Gun Control and their supporters have their backs to the wall and are throwing everything they can at this issue.

For those who wish to read the bill for themselves, it can be found here.  For those who prefer the Coles Notes version, the 20 page document can be whittled down to these two points:

1)      Legal gun owners will no longer be required to register their non-restricted firearms, and

2)      The existing registration data will be destroyed

Don’t let the shrill fear-mongering of the Gun Control Lobby fool you into thinking otherwise.  The two points above are the only changes made by Bill C-19.  There are no reclassifications (that favour either the Gun Control Lobby or gun owners), there will be no “delisting” (whatever that means) of sniper rifles, there is no anti-women rhetoric, there will not be blood in the streets.  These claims are simply the death throes of a vocal minority who no longer has the ear of the government.

The Gun Control Lobby knows they cannot stop the passage of this bill.  They know that point #1 is a done deal.  Their goal now is to try to prevent the destruction of the existing information.  Why?

The only coherent arguments that have come out so far in support of keeping the data, is the old “the money has already been spent” line, and Quebec’s interest in maintaining a provincial registry.  They say it would be too costly to start a new database from scratch, so they want the Federal government to hand over the existing information.

I’ll skip over the enormous Constitutional issues involved in the provinces setting up their own firearms registry (quite simply, it falls within federal jurisdiction) and focus on the simpler and more important facet of this debate.  Privacy.

This email from 2000 nicely illustrates the stance of the Privacy Commissioner:

FROM: Privacy Commissioner of Canada
TO: The Expert Panel on Access to Historical Census Records
DATE: February 9, 2000

“At the heart of any conception of privacy, and any code of privacy protection, lies the notion that people have a basic right to control their personal information. What this means, in concrete terms, is that when the government comes to collect information from people, they have the right to know why the information is being collected, how it will be used, how long it will be kept, and who will have access to it. The government has an obligation to tell them, and then proceed accordingly. This means that the government may use the information only for the purposes for which it was collected. And if personal information is going to be given to third parties, people need to be told that at the time it is collected. If they were not told that, release of the information to third parties should be subject to their consent. … Although I recognize the potential value of this information, I also recognize that the use of this knowledge may lead to serious breaches of privacy. … The information was collected for a specific purpose. That purpose has been fulfilled. In accordance with the principles of fair information practices, the information should not be retained. To retain it beyond its stated use is to invite pressure for other uses. No consent was given to other uses of the information.”

The above email was written in reference to Census Records, but it is just as relevant to the registry data.  Gun owners gave their information to the federal government for a specific purpose as outlined in the Firearms Act.  Gun owners did not consent at the time the data was collected for that information to be passed on to any third party.  Nobody knows what the provinces would use that information for and there was no consent from gun owners for the provinces to have it.

The Toronto Police Service nicely illustrated what they would use the out-dated registry information for: the harassment of legal gun owners.  Using the old Restricted Weapons Registry System (which predates the current firearms registry), the TPS went door knocking throughout Toronto (Project Safe City) seizing firearms from citizens who simply fell behind in their paperwork.  They went line by line through millions of records to track down these law-abiding citizens – for administrative errors.  What an incredible waste of police resources!! 

If there is no legal requirement to collect the registry data, there can be no legal reason to possess it.  The data needs to be destroyed and it needs to be made a crime to be found in possession of it.

Hunting ducks, protecting families

Excellent editorial from today’s National Post.

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Hunting+ducks+protecting+families/3577605/story.html

George Jonas, National Post · Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010

Did Canada’s firearm-phobic urban elites score an own goal? Did they open up a political opportunity for Stephen Harper? Many commentators seem to think so.

I’m not as sanguine as some, but if, by their narrow rescue of the registry, Ottawa’s gunless wonders did elevate a wasteful program of loony liberalism into an election issue, it may open up an opportunity to re-examine the debate about gun control.

The police carry guns for a reason: They’re great tools for law enforcement. Letting firearms become the monopoly of lawbreakers, far from enhancing public safety, is detrimental to it. Canada has gone out of its way to make criminals as invincible, and victims as vulnerable, as possible. This wasn’t the aim of gun control, of course, only the result.

Canada isn’t alone. Two years ago, terrorists in Mumbai, India, claimed some 500 casualties, dead and injured. Among the many questions raised by the outrage, there was a purely practical one: Why was the attack so successful? How could so few terrorists claim so many victims?

One obvious answer, as I wrote at the time, was firepower. Guns were illegal in the hands of both the terrorists and the victims. The victims obeyed the laws, the terrorists didn’t. A Mumbai-type atrocity couldn’t have happened in Dodge City–or in Edwardian Europe, for that matter, where gentlemen routinely carried handguns for protection — but it could happen again at next month’s XIX Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India.

Some regard carrying guns uncivilized. Would you call an era of legal guns in the hands of Edwardian gentlemen less civilized — or less safe — than our own era of illegal guns in the hands of terrorists and drug dealers? I wouldn’t. The civilized place was turn-of-the century London, where citizens carried guns and the police didn’t.

Society needs crime control, not gun control. Violent crime in America declined in the past 20-plus years after a majority of states enacted “right to carry” legislation. There may have been several reasons, but the “right to carry” was clearly one.

There are Second Amendment absolutists in America, and libertarians elsewhere, who regard a person’s birthright to own/carry a firearm beyond the state’s power to regulate. I’m not among them. Communities set standards for many things, from the possession of exotic animals to the operation of ham radios; why not lethal weapons? But our aim should be to enhance, not diminish, the defensive capacity of the good guys, and increase rather than decrease the number of auxiliary crime-fighters who are available to be deputized when the bad guys start climbing over the fence.

The relationship between citizens and the law is magnificently simple. Citizens are the law. Not the bureaucracy, not the police, not the pundits: Citizens. It’s all right for people to take the law into their own hands because in a free society the law is, in fact, in their hands. It is the people who delegate the power of law enforcement to the police, not the other way around.

The police may think they license citizens to carry arms, but they don’t. It’s citizens who license the police. They license them to carry arms, to enforce the law, to investigate crime, to serve and protect. All power flows from the public to the authorities, not the other way around.

In free societies, that is. There are societies where power flow is reversed. They’re called police states.

Canada isn’t a police state and we don’t want it to become one– not even our gun-shy urban elites, most of them. The police chiefs with their disarming rhetoric aren’t looking for a police state, either; it’s just that “the police-man’s lot is not a happy one,” as Gilbert and Sullivan pointed out, and being the only ones armed would make their lot happier.

Maybe so, except an arms monopoly only serves and protects the police, not the public. While we support our cops, making police work congenial isn’t Canada’s national purpose. Our entitlement to carry arms, unlike our American cousins’, stems from no particular provision of a constitutional amendment, but intrinsically from our fundamental traditions of freedom, subject to whatever conditions we choose to impose on ourselves.

If the gun registry becomes an election issue, it may serve as a reminder that guns aren’t only for hunting ducks, but also to help people safeguard themselves. It’s as proper for citizens to defend their homes in peacetime against domestic robbers as to defend their homelands in war against foreign invaders. People who defend their families act as honourably as those who provide for their families. They must do so within the law, needless to say, providing or defending, in war or in peace, but as long as they do, one type of action is simply an extension of the other.

If someone could persuade criminals and lunatics to obey gun control, it would be a splendid idea. As long as only law-abiding citizens obey it, it amounts to countering stray cats by neutering vets: Showy, but not very useful.

Women and Gun Control – Part 2

As public debate over the long gun registry heats up, the Gun Control Lobby is continuing to push their stance of gun control being a women’s issue.  In particular, they are claiming that it is a rural women’s issue.  I decided to take a look at this stance in a three part series.

In Part 1, I discussed how the current system of gun control in Canada is diverting money away from programs that could help women who are victims of abuse.  In Part 3, I will be dealing with self defense.

In this part, I’m going to break down the numbers regarding violent crime, family violence and homicide in this country.  Where does it happen, who are the victims, and what are the causes.

Causes

Contrary to what gun control and feminist advocates would have us believe, guns are not a risk factor for domestic violence.  According to the Canadian Department of Justice, the major risk factors for spousal violence are

• being a young person
• living in a common law relationship
• having a partner who periodically drinks heavily
• emotional abuse in the relationship, and
• marital separation

Statistics Canada also adds being Aboriginal to that list.  20% of the Aboriginal population has reported being victims of family violence compared with 7% of the non-Aboriginal population.

A journal article, National Trends in Intimate Partner Homicides: Explaining Declines in Canada 1976-2001 made some more interesting points.  I would especially like to point out the date range of this study, 1976-2001, and remind my readers that the long gun registry did not come into force until 2001.

Over the time period studied, spousal homicide rates had declined by about 50%, falling from 8.5 (per million spouses) in 1976 to 4.2 in 2001.  Spousal homicides using a firearm had declined by 81% over the same time period. 

For those who like to make comparisons with the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1976-2000 our “gun loving” cousins to the south saw a decline in spousal homicides of 45%.  Keep in mind that gun ownership in the US of A increases by about 4.5 million guns per year.  Allow me to repeat that: over a 24 year period, as gun ownership increased spousal homicide decreased.

According to the National Trends article, the reasons for these declines in both countries were

• male to female employment ratios (more women had jobs)
• higher education levels for both men and women
• marrying later in life
• starting a family later in life and having fewer children
• social programs which make it easier for victims to leave their abusers

I hope my anti-gun readers have noted how guns and gun control are not mentioned anywhere as either a cause or a solution to the issues of domestic violence.

Where does it happen?

There is definitely some truth to the claim that rural Canadians are more at risk of spousal violence than their urban neighbours. 

	POPULATION	SHELTERS	SHELTERS PER 100,000	RATE OF SPOUSAL VIOLENCE*
Canada	33,739,900	569	1.7	188
Nfld & Labrador	508,900	15	2.9	123
PEI	141,000	5	3.5	128
Nova Scotia	938,200	16	1.7	145
New Brunswick	749,500	22	2.9	84
Quebec	7,828,900	126	1.6	241
Ontario	13,069,200	160	1.2	141
Manitoba	1,222,000	29	2.4	215
Saskatchewan	1,030,100	24	2.3	329
Alberta	3,687,700	50	1.4	249
BC	4,455,200	110	2.5	124**
Yukon	33,700	5	14.8	421
NWT	43,400	7	9.3	1,605
Nunavut	32,200			2,472

* Rate per 100,000 population
** Incomplete data for British Columbia

There is little data available on the reasons for the greater incidence of abuse in rural areas.  One thing that is known is that there is less help available to victims of spousal violence in rural Canada.  Even though the territories have a high per capita number of shelters, those shelters have very limited services available.  Additionally, because of the vast distances involved in all rural areas, it is not always possible for victims of abuse to reach help when it is available.  Other factors like education levels, financial dependence and divorce rates also play a role in this urban/rural divide. 

While spousal violence may be a bigger issue in rural Canada, there is no clear divide when it comes to violent crime and homicide.  Large and small communities are affected equally in this regard.  There are many socio-economic factors that come into play.

Who are the victims?

Here’s where the numbers become interesting.  There are about 330,000 victims of violent crime in Canada each year.  If we believe our misandrist lobby groups, the number of female victims should far exceed the number of male victims.  Right?

Wrong.  In 2007, 50.04% of the victims of violent crime were female.  Basic math tells me that 49.96% of the victims were male.  Hardly a staggering difference.  In cases of domestic violence, 7% of women and 6% of men have reported violence at the hands of their partner.  Again, hardly a noticeable difference. 

Specifically regarding family violence, the numbers are still not so different, with 63% of female victims and 61% of male victims suffering from common assault (Level 1).  However, the results are not always so balanced.  Men are twice as likely as women to be the victim of a serious assault (Level 2 or 3 – assault with a weapon or assault causing bodily harm). 

Common assault has been declining steadily since the 1970s, however serious assault has been increasing for the last 25 years, falling for the first time in 2008.  It’s no large stretch to see that violence against women is on the decrease, while violence against men is on the increase.

Let’s take a similar look at homicides in Canada.  In 2008, the lowest rate (24%) of female victims since 1961 was recorded.  Conversely, the rate of male homicide victims has been rising steadily for the last 10 years.  In terms of spousal homicide, women are 4 times as likely as men to be killed by a current or former intimate partner (51 vs. 14 for 2007).

To summarize all those numbers and add a couple of new ones:

• men are twice as likely as women to be assaulted with a weapon
• men are three times more likely to be the victim of a homicide
• all forms of violence against women have been falling since the 1960s
• all forms of violence against men have remained stable or have been increasing
• spousal violence and homicide has been falling since the 1970s
• women are four times more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner
• homicide by long gun (rifle/shotgun) has been falling steadily since the 1970s
• homicide by handgun has increased by 24% since 2002

Putting it all together

Well, now that I’ve bamboozled you with statistics, what does it all mean?

It means that violence in our society is not a simple issue.  Gun control advocates and feminist groups would have us believe that women are always the helpless victim at the hands of Neanderthal men. 

What I have attempted to show you with all these facts is that, while women are more often the victim in specific circumstances, the same holds true for men.  Guns are not a gendered issue any more than drunk driving is a mother’s issue.  Violence in our society affects everyone and the divisive tactics employed by groups like IANSA and the Coalition for Gun Control do little to help anyone.

Guns are not the problem in our society, nor are they the solution.  Until the real problems are addressed, weapons – including guns – will always have a place in our world. 

Sources

• Bureau of Justice Statistics, Intimate Partner Violence 1993-2001
• Statistics Canada, Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile, 2009
• Statistics Canada, Homicide in Canada, 2008
• Statistics Canada, Police Reported Crime Statistics, 2008
• Statistics Canada, Residents of Canada’s shelters for abused women, 2008
• Myrna Dawson, Valerie Pottie Bunge, and Thierno Balde, National Trends in Intimate Partner Homicides: Explaining Declines in Canada 1976-2001
• NRA-ILA, Gun Ownership at All-Time High, New FBI Report Shows Violent Crime at a 35-Year Low, Murder at a 43-Year Low
• Department of Justice, Canada, Spousal Abuse: A Fact Sheet from the Department of Justice, Canada

WOMEN AND GUN CONTROL – PART 1
WOMEN AND GUN CONTROL – PART 3

Women and Gun Control – Part 1

The Gun Control Lobby is working hard to convince the public and our MPs that gun control is a gendered issue, in particular, a women’s issue.  They’re right, but not in the way they would have us believe.

Their angle is that abusive men use firearms to intimidate, threaten and harm women.  While this is true in some cases, it still doesn’t make sense to focus on the gun rather than on the person who is wielding it.  Take away the gun and the abuser will use a knife.  Take away the knife and the abuser will use their fists.  The key is to stop the abuse, not to regulate objects that an abuser may or may not use.

This is where the long gun registry becomes a women’s issue.  By taking away money from programs that could actually help victims of abuse, gun control activists are ensuring that the abuse will continue.

Estimates vary regarding how much money will be saved by scrapping the long gun registry – most are in the neighbourhood of $3-11 million per year.  However, those estimates don’t take into consideration the hidden costs of the registry.  Things like law enforcement, court fees, and endless mountains of paperwork to name but a few.

Looking at law enforcement alone, let’s do a quick run through the numbers.  Taking the RCMP numbers at face value, the registry is accessed 3.4 million times per year.  Assuming each “hit” takes five minutes that works out to 283,333 police hours per year.  At an average work year of 2000 hours per officer that means that 141 police officers do nothing but registry checks each year. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, how about we take it a step further?  Let’s take an average salary of $70,000 per year, plus an additional $30,000 in benefits, giving us an approximate value of $100,000 per officer per year (not taking operating expenses into account).  That’s a total of $14.1 million per year spent, or 141 officers off the streets, without solving or preventing a single crime.

Even with my very low estimates, if you add those numbers up we could save $17-25 million in tax dollars per year!!!!!

Now, let’s go back to the issue of abuse:  there are approximately 10,700 beds in 569 women’s shelters, nationwide.  Those beds accommodate well over 100,000 abused women and children each year.  The money saved from scrapping the registry could fund an additional 550-830 new shelter beds across the country. [Source: Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile, 2009]

The money doesn’t have to go towards shelters though.  Imagine what $17-25 million could do in public awareness or education campaigns to teach young women how to avoid abusive relationships, or what their options are if they are in one.  Imagine what $17-25 million could do for mental health programs that help treat and prevent abusive behaviour.

Over the last fifteen years, hundred of millions of dollars have been funneled into the firearms registry.  According to the Auditor General’s Reports in 2002 and 2006, large sums of that money are still unaccounted for.  What have our tax dollars purchased?  The registry didn’t stop the Dawson College shooting.  It did nothing to save Jane Creba.  Nor did it prevent the murder of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, Alberta.  There has been no impact on the spousal homicide rates either.  Those have been falling steadily since the 1970s – long before the registry was ever considered.

Organizations like the Coalition for Gun Control (CGC) thrive on women as victims.  In fact, they need victims to support their cause.  They manipulate victimized women and their grieving families, convincing them that they or their loved ones would have been safe if not for the presence of those “evil” guns.  They know there are no facts to support their claims, so they parade these unfortunate people in front of the media in a blatant attempt to influence public opinion with emotion instead.

With the help of many of the organizations that make up the Gun Control Lobby, we have been trained to expect women to be abused.  We have been urged to believe that there is no way to foresee this abuse, prevent it or stop it, even though there are several identifiable risk factors.  The Gun Control Lobby ignores sources like the Department of Justice or Statistics Canada, who point out that substance abuse, particularly alcohol, makes a person six times more likely to abuse their partner.  They neglect to mention that common law couples are four times more likely to experience abuse than legally married couples.  Instead, they loudly insist that the mere presence of a gun in the home leads to intimidation and abuse.  Where are the facts backing up those claims?

For the last fifteen years, despite a complete lack of any data to support their statements, the CGC and their Gun Control Lobby cohorts have been trying to convince us that guns are the problem.  Their inability to look past the object to the person who is wielding it, has caused immeasurable harm to the women they are supposedly trying to help.   Fifteen years and billions of dollars could have made a huge difference in the lives of abused women across this country.  If that money had gone towards even one of the issues mentioned above, countless women and children could have been helped.  It’s time to stop throwing good money after bad, and direct our resources to where they are really needed.

WOMEN AND GUN CONTROL – PART 2
WOMEN AND GUN CONTROL – PART 3

Folly of Feminism

The Toronto Star recently ran an article discussing a report released by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (CFAIA) and the Canadian Labour Congress.

I could critique the usual fear-mongering and misuse of statistics in their report, or postulate on why a labour union was involved in its creation. However, I think a more useful approach is to focus on feminism as a whole.

In their earliest forms, feminism and women’s liberation were noble movements.  They sought to give women equality, legal autonomy, self-determination, and freedom of choice in a broad range of topics from reproduction to employment.  However, in more recent years, the agenda of feminist activists seems to have less to do with giving disadvantaged women a hand up and more to do with giving them a handout.

Activists wail and beat their drums, blaming everything from men to weapons to government for the plight of subjugated women everywhere.  They ignore the fact that portraying women as helpless victims of society undermines the entire concept of feminism.  They also ignore the fact that men and women are different.  While striving for total equality is noble, it’s also a pipe dream.  Men and women are not equal and they never will be.  There are very definite physical, emotional and mental differences between the sexes.  Some roles in our society are better suited to women, others to men, and no amount of government initiatives will ever alter that fact.

Should women have the opportunity to tackle any societal role that they choose?  Absolutely. However, so should men.  While there are still traditionally male-dominated areas where it’s difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to break through, the same holds true for men. 

This brings up another concept that modern feminist activists refuse to acknowledge: that men suffer too.  In their world, violence or discrimination against a woman is a human rights abuse, but violence or discrimination against a man is not just normal, it’s acceptable.  The divisive tactics used by feminist activists show that they have another agenda that has nothing to do with bettering the lives of women.  If they were truly interested in bettering our society, they would be looking at ways to improve the quality of life for everyone, not just women.

Taking a slightly different tack, in the Star article I mentioned above, wage parity (or lack thereof) in Canadian society is brought up.  I’m not going to touch on the fact that the professor quoted in the article is focussing only on wages as an indicator of quality of life.  Instead I’m going to point out how feminist activists, as usual, fail to take into consideration 3 very key issues that cause such a discrepancy in earnings: choice, childbearing and communication.

Many women simply choose not to go into higher paying (and traditionally male-dominated) fields.  The reasons are many and varied: it may be a career that is better suited to men, women just aren’t interested, or if they are in the field they’re unwilling to do what’s necessary to earn their place.  You see, equal opportunity isn’t something that can come from government handouts or special committees.  Like men, women need to push through obstacles on their own and prove that they are capable of doing the job.

I’ve worked in a male-centric field my entire adult-life and I’ve encountered many seemingly “backward” or “sexist” attitudes along the way.  I know my male readers are going to love this, but men really are like children 😀  They will regularly push the boundaries to see what they can get away with.  Women planning to work in a mostly male environment need to learn how to thrive in that environment.  There are many tricks and tools that are far more effective than crying “harassment” and seeking disciplinary action.  Gaining acceptance isn’t about running to management to complain that your male co-workers aren’t playing nice and trying to demand their respect simply because of your gender.  It’s about earning their respect based on merit. 

Connected to Choice is the second item I mentioned: Childbearing.  In 60% of two-earner families, one partner works full-time while the other either doesn’t work, or works part-time.  In 91% of those families, the man is the primary breadwinner. [Source: Statistics Canada, Family Work Patterns]  It’s pretty simple.  Women who have children work less, which means they have less work experience than their male co-workers, which means they will earn less. 

I can already hear people complaining that women are being “punished” for having children.  Quite the contrary, it’s actually very equal.  Like their male co-workers, they’re being paid based on their recent relevant work experience, rather than being given a handout simply for being female. 

My last point is communication.  Many a book has been written outlining the differences in communication styles between men and women.  In general, men tend to be more direct and ask for what they want.  Women tend to use a more subtle approach. 

Over the years I’ve seen the following scenario happen time and again, not so much in unionized employment, but definitely in the private sector:  Joe and Jane start working in the same job at the same company at the same time earning the same wage.  Five years later, they’re both in the same job, but Joe is now earning more than Jane.  Another 5 years down the road, Jane is still in the same job, earning only slightly more than when she started, while Joe has been promoted and received a raise…twice!

The modern feminist would have us believe that this is a perfect example of inequality in the workplace.  On the contrary, it’s a perfect example of a skill that women need to be taught in order to be successful in the workplace.  Why is Joe doing so much better in the company than Jane?  Because he asked.  Women will toil away at a job for years, expecting their boss to notice their hard work and offer them a raise or promotion.  Men will simply go to their boss and ask for it.

Much progress has been made in the quest for women’s rights over the last 200 years.  Laws have been made and repealed; cultural norms have been challenged and changed.  Government legislation has gone about as far as it can go.  It’s now up to women to pick up the flag and run with it themselves.

Instead of undermining their own efforts by portraying women as victims, feminists need to start taking a more positive and proactive approach.  Rather than wasting their time and energy lobbying for sympathy and handouts, they should be teaching women the skills they need to succeed.

Public Safety is Everyone’s Responsibility

~Benjamin Franklin~  “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

This evening I watched “Guns”, a CBC miniseries that deals with gun violence on the streets of Toronto.  I’m not going to go into the merits of the show, which was rather one-dimensional to say the least.  The reason I bring it up, is because it really drove home a point for me.  The show starts off with a shooting on a busy street which results in innocent people being hurt.  For the next three hours the predominant message from the victims is “Someone needs to do something about all the guns” and “They need to stop this gun violence”.

Leaving the gun politics alone, I’d like you to please read those two sentences again and really let them sink in.

• Someone needs to do something
• They need to stop this

We hear those lines all the time, every day, in almost every single newscast.  A victim or a family member is interviewed after some crime, and it’s always the same, “Someone needs to do something.” 

How did our country get to this point?  When was it that people gave up responsibility for their own safety and well-being?  When did we, as a nation, decide to entrust our very lives to someone and they?  And who exactly are the elusive someone and they?

Well I have a newsflash.  Someone is you.  Someone is me.  They is each and every one of us.  The police can’t be everywhere at once, nor should they be expected to be.  It is not their job to protect us.  It is their job to maintain order, and they do that by attempting to catch criminals after a crime has been committed.  

I remember when I was a little girl, the message was simple: if someone tries to hurt you, fight back and hurt them more.  One of my earliest memories is of my Dad teaching me how and where to hit someone if they tried to abduct me. 

The message is very different today.  Submit.  Don’t anger your attacker.  Just give them what they want.  Be a good victim and call the police after the dust settles.

There is no doubt that submission is sometimes the best course of action.  But it shouldn’t be the only course of action.  Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants us the right to life, liberty and security of person.  Every human being has a very clear and unassailable right to self defense.  Unfortunately, years of left-wing governments have legislated away our ability to carry any of the tools that would help us to exercise that right.   Even carrying pepper spray for self defense is prohibited by law in Canada.

So where does that leave us?  We are now a society where only the criminals and police are armed and the citizens have been trained to meekly submit.  People seem to have forgotten that the role of government is to maintain public order.  Its role is not to act as nanny, providing for our every need and want with an endless progression of laws designed to protect us from ourselves.

Public safety begins with each and every one of us.  It is up to us to accept responsibility for our own lives, safety and well-being.  Rather than looking for the mysterious someone or they to blame or make things better, everyone should take a good long look in the mirror.  You are the only person on this earth who can keep yourself safe.  And the sooner the people of this country start to realize that, the safer our country will be.