Column: For effective gun control, use both hands

PUBLICATION: The Whitehorse Star
DATE: 2003.12.12
SECTION: Opinion
PAGE: 16
COLUMN: Comment
BYLINE: Gaffin, Jane

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For effective gun control, use both hands

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It was God who made women but Colonel Colt made us equal.

Yet gun-control fanatics like Sarah Brady, Barbara Streisand, Janet Reno,
Rosie O’Donnell, Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Carolyn
McCarthy, Wendy Cukier – some who pack concealed weapons for personal
defence or employ body guards – want the public to believe all women support
their bilge about gun control making the world safer.

The high calibre ladies, who are busier practising than preaching, proclaim
that if you want real gun control, use both hands.

But, if the hypocrites and uplifters have their way, they will promote the
passage of jackass laws until all guns and ammunition are ripped from the
hands of decent, honest, conscientious, respectable citizens.

Then, as with prohibition of anything, the arms will go underground and fall
into the hands of the rogues, fools, thugs and bootleggers who peaceable
citizens need protection against.

Then the do-gooders will bray for the passage of more jackass legislation so
demur damsels don’t get hurt on the ice picks and knives they are forced to
stash under their pillows or slip up their sleeves.

What women need to be safe is a nice little pistol. It can be concealed
inside a handbag or beside the bed in the cavity of a hollowed-out Bible.
(It’s an honourable use of those about-to-be-destroyed Good Books that
moralizers censored from Alberta hospital bedsides for fear immigrants of
other faiths might be offended.)

Meanwhile, bureaucrats continue blathering about gun registration reducing
crime and leading to greater public safety.

One day, a young man visited the firearms office. The firearms officer was
paid to espouse the wonders of how registration was a public-safety measure.

The customer listened a while, then replied, Dan, you and I both know that’s
a bunch of bulls–t.

That is about the sum total of what the Marxist-Leninist social-engineering
sham is worth.

The feds didn’t know what the gun registry was supposed to do and didn’t
care a whit if it worked or not. They just wanted the cumbersome,
tax-grabbing, make-work project implemented.

Otherwise, why set up a national registry in an obscure place like
Miramichi, New Brunswick, without any checks and balances on the system?

The estimate to date of the taxpayers’ cost for trying to license gun owners
and register every blessed gun is nearly $3 billion.

Millions of guns are still unregistered and the obscene Firearms Act is
still being phased in. Does anybody feel any safer?

A November news release from Garry Breitkreuz, a Canadian Alliance member of
Parliament from Saskatchewan, disclosed one reason why the gun registry cost
so much: The government, in its wisdom, paid twice for the registry’s
computer system.

This is disgraceful considering that the new company is being paid to
provide computer services and programs that the Department of Justice
already paid $227 million to EDS Canada to provide, said the official
Opposition’s critic for firearms and property rights.

It’s well-known that the registry has served only to expand bureaucracies
while trouncing our cherished civil liberties with an ill-conceived program
that has opened up dark and dangerous avenues where only the lawless tread.

The registry is blamed for setting people up to be robbed. Professional and
amateur computer hackers enter the database, learn where firearms are
located, then burglarize a place for specific goods without guess work.

A retired RCMP staff sergeant was targeted for a house break-in on Vancouver
Island last January.

Steve and Judy Vatamaniuck told the Alberni (B.C.) Valley Times they
believed the criminals used the national firearms registry to locate his
collection of hunting rifles, shotguns and revolvers to steal.

All the firearms were registered and said to be secured with trigger guards,
steel cable and locked inside an approved gun safe.

Gun owners are really running scared lately, especially since it was
revealed that thousands of files have gone missing from the databank, Mrs.
Vatamaniuck told the Times.

I’ve spoken to several people just in our neighbourhood who have been
targeted in the past several months. It just doesn’t make sense that our
government is making it easier for organized criminals to get their hands on
weapons that have been registered by law-abiding citizens.

If that example sounds like the registry is a countermeasure to public
safety, how about the next scenario?

Several years ago, hundreds of guns went missing from the Toronto police
confiscation vault. After the initial for show flap, nothing was said nor
done.

Why? The biggest known black marketers in guns are police officers. Neither
they nor government prosecutors and judges are apt to lose their privileges
to own guns. Valuable firearms of collector or prohibited status which are
seized through raids and end up the subjects for court proceedings are not
necessarily destroyed if the defendant is found guilty of sin.

As per s. 491(1) of the Criminal Code, the guns are disposed of as the
attorney general directs.

Translation: Those employed on the inside track have the opportunity to buy,
divvy or trade the spoils among themselves.

Last May, the Ottawa Citizen reported a veteran Ottawa police officer, a
senior RCMP officer and a heroic firefighter were among 10 men charged with
121 criminal offences ranging from gun trafficking to theft to fraud.

A network was putting stolen handguns, rifles and police-issued ammunition
on the street. Also seized were knives, batons, pepper spray, police duty
belts, body armour and gas masks.

Is this a surprise? A gun trafficker, who has an order for a specific piece,
puts in a request with a police officer who accesses the gun registry to
find who might have a prohibited or collectible item no longer attainable
through commercial channels.

A case is concocted against an unsuspecting firearms owner, a surprise raid
is pulled on his home, all his firearms are seized and criminal charges are
laid.

A backroom deal may be bargained with the defence lawyer who is part of the
legal crowd. The state will offer to stay procedures in exchange for the
defendant’s forfeiting of his Lilliputian Special or Snake Charmer 202.

The owner may relent without a fuss to avoid a costly court case and the
possibility of a criminal record and/or jail term.

Other victims, who won’t deal with the devil, force the state to prosecute.
The crafty government will win the case(s) by hook or crook, eventually
ending up with the desired firearms, anyway.

Last month, a public-policy paper titled The Failed Experiment: Gun Control
and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales was released by
the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute.

Author Gary Mauser, a Simon Fraser University professor, has once again
blasted the national gun registry.

The Canadian experiment with firearms regulation is moving towards farce, he
wrote. Instead of enhancing public safety, he suggests that Canadian gun
laws may even have caused an increase in armed robbery.

The expansion of the state’s search and seizure powers should be taken very
seriously by all civil libertarians concerned about the erosion of
Canadians’ individual rights, Mauser warns.

Firearms registration also violates the basic rules of policing set forth in
the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the first professional police
force, the British Bobbies.

In order for laws to be enforced effectively, the police must have the
support of citizens being policed, he said.

Firearms registration may be seen as an attempt by urbanites to impose their
cultural values upon the rest of society. The demonization of average people
who happen to own a gun lays the foundation for a massive increase in
governmental intrusiveness in the lives of ordinary citizens.

Firearms registration and owner licensing threatens long-standing Canadian
liberties and freedoms. The type of gun control Canada has enacted is not
consistent with many democratic principles and the protection of civil
liberties.

Yet Canada spearheaded a move in the United Nations to impose a similar
regime of Draconian restrictions around the world.

No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to
commit violent crimes.

There have always been criminals, and there have always been deranged
people. Murder has been illegal for thousands of years: We need only
remember the saga of Cain and Abel.

The truth is we live in a dangerous world and the government cannot protect
us. We must ultimately rely upon ourselves and it is only right we have the
necessary tools to do so, Mauser concluded.

Well, I say, if God made women, who needs government’s permission to possess
the tool Colonel Colt invented to equalize us?

After all, government claims it is trying to make society a safer place for
the women and the children.

And people have a duty from On High to defend themselves and their families.
Self-defence is an instinct, a God-given – not government – given – right.

For effective qun control, remember to use both hands!