Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 16:35:47 -0600 (CST) From: Canadian Firearms Digest & Alert Subject: Pro-gun column by Lorne Gunter <[l--n--r] at [thejournal.southam.ca]> MYTHS BEHIND GUN CONTROLS Push for registration fuelled by misinformation and emotionalism BY LORNE GUNTER appeared in the Edmonton Journal 29 August 1997 "It's not so much that liberals are ignorant," Ronald Reagan once said. "It just that so much of what they know isn't so." On no other issue in Canada is this more apparent than gun control. Its proponents are possessed by all sorts of myths about guns. Here are some of the most common, and why they are fictions: WE REGISTER VEHCLES, SO WHY NOT GUNS? This reasoning actually bolsters the argument against C-68. Registration of vehicles is a provincial matter because under our constitution the regulation of private property is outside Ottawa's jurisdiction. This is the basis of the legal challenge by Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and the territories to Ottawa's gun law. Most gun owners might accept provincial gun control. But there's more. Failing to register a car is not considered a criminal offense. Under the new federal law, failure of an otherwise law-abiding citizen to register his or her hunting rifle will be punishable by the same jail time given to criminals who steal guns. If Ottawa handled vehicle licensing, failure to renew license plates would be as serious a crime as stealing a car. Also, the registered owners of vehicles are not subject to police "inspections" of their homes to see how many cars they have or whether they have them safely stored. Owners of registered guns will be. Nor has registration of vehicles reduced the incidence of auto theft, which is germane to the gun control debate because gun control advocates insist that by registering firearms they will be less likely to be stolen for use by criminals. Finally, under existing firearms law, Canadian gun owners must already take a safety course, pass a test of their competence, and wait 28 days while police determine their mental stability and lack of a criminal record -- much more than is required of vehicle owners. LOTS OF OTHER DANGEROUS GOODS MUST BE REGISTERED--DYNAMITE FOR INSTANCE And lots don't. Purchases of fuel oil and fertilizer need not be registered, and yet that combination killed 167 innocent people in Oklahoma City. Most years there are as many stabbing murders as firearm murders in Canada, and yet there is no movement to register knives. What gets registered seems to depend on what frightens our decision-makers rather than on what is truly dangerous, or whether registration of it will do any good. The triumph of emotion over reason. THE RIGHT OF CANADIANS TO BEAR ARMS IS "PATENT NONSENSE IMPARTED FROM SOUTH OF THE BORDER." Hardly. Like the Americans, we inherited the right from English common law; it's just that the Yanks decided to elevate the right by adding it to their constitution. We chose to leave it in our common law, where nonetheless it was clearly part of the 800-year-old compact between the governors and the governed that symbolized the faith the governors had in the good sense of the common people. Like it or not, private gun ownership has always been a powerful symbol of the limits the common law placed on the prerogatives of the governors. OPPOSITION TO GUN CONTROL COMES FROM MACHISMO, MINDLESS INDIVIDUALISM AND A WILD-WEST MENTALITY Yea. And support for it comes out of radical feminism, collectivism and an unquestioning faith in big government's ability to make the world safe. CANADIAN SUPPORT GUN CONTROL If all pollsters ask is "Are you in favour of gun control?" about two-thirds of Canadians say they are. But if pollsters explain existing controls or inform Canadians that extending them will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, support slips to around 40 per cent. NO ONE IS GOING TO TAKE AWAY GUNS Maybe not right away, although police seizures are way up. But I understand gun owners who think registration equals confiscation. They reason that since no other attempt at universal registration has ever reduced crime, and the authors of our gun controls surely know that, seizure must be the goal. The truth is, our gun control planners are like Reagan's liberals. They are so sure of their own intelligence that they plow ahead with what seems reasonable to them, no matter how often it has been tried and failed. Besides, staff at Ottawa's Canadian Firearm Centre recently admitted to representatives of the National Firearms Association that one of the goals of C-68 all along was to reduce the number of guns in Canada. That may not be confiscation, but it's certainly attrition. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 16:38:51 -0600 (CST) From: Canadian Firearms Digest & Alert Subject: Pro-gun column by Lorne Gunter <[l--n--r] at [thejournal.southam.ca]> GUN LAW APPEAL WILL FAIL Case needs to be judged by court of public opinion BY LORNE GUNTER appeared in the Edmonton Journal September 9, 1997 The Alberta government's court challenge of the federal gun-control act will likely fail; if not at the Alberta Court of Appeal, where this week a five-judge panel is hearing arguments for and against universal registration of firearms, then at the Supreme Court of Canada. The cause will not be the lack of sound arguments. The opponents of registration have most or all of the facts on their side. Compelling law-abiding citizens to register their guns -- which has been tried and abandoned in Australia, Britain and New Zealand -- does little or nothing to prevent murders, armed robberies, muggings and suicides. Criminals, refuse to play along. Those scoundrels keep using unregistered weapons, making registration ineffective as a tool for tracking down bad guys. And while controlling access to guns marginally reduces gun suicides and gun homicides in domestic disputes, it does nothing to reduce suicides or domestic homicides. It merely encourages those who commit such acts to use other means. Supporters of controls, such as the Coalition for Gun Control (CGC), have been reduced to contemptuousness, wishful thinking and agrumentum ad hominum to push their case. If only we had universal registration, supporters argue, we're sure it would work. Previous attempts in other countries just weren't done properly. (This is a cousin of the arguments devotees of big government have been making for years. If only we had another billion, we could wipe out poverty. If only we had another regulation, we could save the environment. If only we had one more program, we could eliminate the root causes of crime.) In a press release issued on the eve of the court challenge, the CGC passed off the speculations of notoriously anti-gun police chiefs and professors as evidence that registration will work. "It is my opinion," says Gwyn Thomas of the Association of Chief Police Officers of Great Britain, in a typical example, "that the licensing and registration of firearms and shotguns is core to policing in Great Britain." No proof, just a string of assertions by pro-control chiefs and academics. Concurrently, the CGC tried to discredit the major Canadian studies of gun use. It did not assert that the studies' author erred in his findings, but rather that Prof. Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser University has in the past taken money from the National Rifle Association. That might call his motives into question (although his findings appear solid). However, the CGC makes no mention of the $50,000 it took earlier this summer from Toronto city council to finance its participation in the court battle, or the support it has from Montreal's civic leaders. If the Alberta challenge to the federal law fails, it will not be a indication that the anti-registry side is wrong and the pro-registry side correct. Nor will it be an indication of bias on the part of the three-woman, two-man panel of judges. Nor an indictment of our constitution, which gives jurisdiction over property to the provinces and criminal law to Ottawa. It might be an indictment of the weakness of the opening arguments of lead Alberta lawyer Rod McLennan, who was unable to convinclingly explain why the intrusive, expensive new law would be no better than the old one at preventing criminals and mentally unstable people from acquiring guns. (Canadian law already mandates a 28-day waiting period prior to the purchase of a gun during which time police do a background check of the applicant.) Moreover, the main argument was weak -- that the new law makes possession of firearms a crime on par with criminal misuse, and therefore constitutes an obstacle to property ownership that cannot be justified in the absence of proof of a greater public good, such as an appreciable reduction of crime. He conceded guns are inherently more dangerous than other forms of property. Courts have long ruled that Ottawa has a right to legislate concerning dangerous goods without infringing the provinces' authority. However, if the challenge fails it will mostly be because the courts have little jurisdiction to decide whether Ottawa's registry will be effective. Chief Justice Catherine Fraser, who is sitting in on this case herself, explained during proceedings that she and her colleagues could not rule on "whether (Ottawa's) means are wise," but only on whether the federal government has the right to try them. Ultimately opponents of the registry will have to convince their fellow citizens, not judges, to have it repealed, which is as it should be.