Thursday, November 05, 2009

What It Will Take For Right-minded Parliamentarians To Enact Another Gun Law...

It took a massacre at a Montreal University campus to create the very helpful gun registry (don't quote us - ask the Police how many times they use the registry - and you will hear this during the committees).

Seriously though, just what will it take before we "grow up" on this issue? Another massacre? More senseless and needless deaths? Just how much is even ONE human life worth saving?

What indeed.

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VICTORY FUND

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What will it take?

For starters it will take a party that actually respects the needs of both rural and urban Canadians. The messages I've been reading on Liblogs lead me to believe that your party has not learned from its previous blunders on this file.

I supppose there is just a lot of bitterness on the left for now but a "grown up" debate isn't in the cards with them for a while.

Mr. Lorne said...

Sorry I must respectfully disagree.

If only criminals like the one in your photo actually registered their weapons. Of course, they don't and I believe that's where the problem exists.

Thanks.

ridenrain said...

Maybe you could tell what shooting rampage was prevented by the registry?
The registry didn't stop Kimveer Gill from buying firearms and shooting up Dawson College.
It didn't make a difference in Mayerthorpe either.

WesternGrit said...

This isn't about "respect" for rural Canadians. You do them/us a disservice by lumping us all in together. I lived in tiny hamlets all my life, and my friends and I very often saw things the same liberal way. The gun registry was one item that many of us from rural Sask agreed on.

Thing is the loud, angry, threatening gun lobby bought up newspaper ads, had 3rd party advertising during, and after elections, and was (kudos to them) better organized and louder. Foaming at the mouth in some cases. I was in doorsteps in Regina and Edmonton, where I (along with several door knockers) were threatened by gun nuts to the tune of "you better not knock this door if you know what is good for you.." then a tirade about the registry...

Most Canadians ARE NOT gun owners. Neither are MOST rural Canadians. Guns should EACH be registered and monitored, as their SOLE purpose (with the exception of "target pistols") is to kill. We register things that AREN'T killing tools (cars, bikes, dogs, etc.), so why not guns? Why not - I'll tell you why: the gun lobby is too rich and powerful. The entire weapons sector is behind it. Lots of powerful and fearful messaging coming up through Yankee media...

Leeky: Not even close. You're assuming they're criminals before they even have the gun. Fact is, most of the long-gun deaths we see are "domestics" and among people who know each other. The people are law abiding citizens until they "snap", and voila! They're "criminals". Knowing that a wife abuser, or other violent person, has a gun makes it a lot easier for law enforcement to avoid the occurances.

For someone to guess what was prevented is a joke - since you can't possibly count what didn't happen. You can't predict how many police lives were saved by the registry. Sorry - you put of a very imbalanced argument.

One only needs to look South to realize what lax gun laws can and will do.

Today is a dark day in Canadian history. Canadians DON'T have a "constitutional right" to bear arms. This is not the US. This battle will come again. It ain't over.

Anonymous said...

You do know that firearm in the picture is prohibited in Canada which means no law-abiding citizen can acquire or own it. Seems that the criminal had no problems though. Oh, the irony of gun control and their advocates.

Savant said...

Why stop at a gun registry? Why not a knife registry? You were aware that murders by knife happen just as often as by gun right? (Look it up in Statscan if you don't believe me)

The problem with a long gun registry is that it is a false panacea. It accomplishes nothing while purporting to be beneficial to solving crimes.

Criminals don't register their guns. Frankly I am less concerned about the rifle that farmer Bill or hunter Rick owns, and more concerned about the handgun Ricky bought on the street for a few hundred bucks - a gun bought with money made from the sale of marijuana.

I live in Toronto and I don't feel one bit safer knowing there is a registry for long guns.

A registry like this CAN NOT prevent crime. Even the police will admit that the registry cannot prevent crime. Furthermore, the registry has yet been able to solve a single crime that involved an indictable offense.

If a registry like this is such a good idea, then why not a fingerprint registry? Surely the law-abiding public would have nothing to fear from having their fingerprints on file with the police. Crime would be a breeze to solve with a national database of fingerprints. Heck, add DNA to that too. That way we solve those rape crimes.

Sorry, but more information registries won't help us, since there will be criminals that won't abide by them. Let's put future money towards policing instead of wasting it on mindless paper-pushing exercises.

WesternGrit said...

You do know that the image is a scene from an American movie, and is a blatantly "over-acted" scene, which simply highlights the crimes related to guns...?