O, Canada!
Our neighbors to the north have been looking sharp lately, and don’t think America hasn’t noticed.
As always, the issue is not about guns, it’s about governance, as a conservative movement makes its way.
Praise to Canada for it’s perseverence and courage in resisting the anti-freedom movement there.
In order for any system to operate well and to prosper, it must be free. Socialist states do well in a one-sided sort of way, but deteriorate and become stagnant. Many states around the globe say they are a Democracy, but, of course, they are oppressive, pretending that their oppression is the desire of the people, a democracy.
Free means that the people decide and government responds, and true freedom means letting the people direct the values, actions and interactions with government, come what may. If you’re going to live with the actions of government, it’s best you direct those actions, n’cest pa? Canada is moving more in that direction, and it’s good for Canada on this important subject.
For instance, Canada’s gun registration which is being dumped. In Gun Lobby Trading Favors With The Feds, appearing at thespec.com, June 12, 2006, Dianne Reinhart of The Hamilton Spectator writes that the amnesty for gun registration means “They won’t know where they [the guns] are.”
Well, Ms. Reinhart, that’s the idea. Governments have no business knowing where the guns are. Read the entire article here. Why governments don’t need to know where the guns are is this: people and government are not adversaries.
A very shrewd marketer once said, “Registration is the first step to confiscation of guns.” That shrewd man was Lenin. He was right, because, there, the people and the government were adversaries.
Thus, the conservatives in Canada are right to forget all about registration; they are not opposed to the people, they serve the people.
Ms. Reinhart has said earlier in the article, “You have to hand it to the federal Conservative government spin doctors. They would have us believe that Stephen Harper’s government is big on fighting crime.”
Begging your pardon, Ms. Reinhart, but that’s the best way to begin to fight crime: untie the hands of the people to resist it. Where’s yer head?
As I’ve said, you don’t fight crime by adhering more and more to go-nowhere anti-crime policies, and registration compelling the law-abiding will, by definition, never reach the criminal, hence it doesn’t fight crime. In fact, very few after-the-fact and compel-only-the-law-abiding plans can honestly be said to fight crime. Registration is not one of those few.
Crime is fought instance by instance, by the resolve not to be a victim and by the decision to act with superior force. Force, not characterized as violence, but moral force. The main idea of armed citizens is this: violent acts can be stopped from escalating, and by the people who know the immediate situation best, the target. You know, the asset of the country.
It means trusting the citizen, individually. It means preferring the interests of the citizen over those of the aggressor.
The conservative movement in Canada seems to sense this and steps up with authority.
The article goes on to analyze various non-sequiturs such as gun crime in general, costs and ease of transfer of weapons and various theories, but ignores specific realities, such as non-gun crimes (knifings, robberies, strong-arms, weaponless murders, multiple assailants, rapes, abductions and other non-gun crime both reported and not reported). Such analyses tend to focus on figures and sterile after-the-fact perspectives rather than realities the people have to live with when they cannot fight back in facing real-time grave danger.
Mixed in with these assessments are other reports of stupid official advice on the subject, such as urging crime targets to scream or otherwise do anything but resist. In an armchair analysis, typical of anti-resistance, anti-dignity, anti-safety groups, this after-the-fact report shows the chase and discourages the power and spirit of stopping the act in progress. Â
To wit: Aside from remaining aware of surroundings, Lafreniere’s best advice to anyone who is attacked by the man is: “Scream your head off.”
But this line appeared in that article before: Earlier, on March 18, a woman walking home from work was grabbed from behind, but managed to scratch and hit the suspect and escape.
Resistance works.
— and these are becoming more marginalized, I see, as more encouraging reports appear, such as the notice of dumping registration. The entire thrust of the article was how much money and assets are focused on chasing a suspect with a little tiny bit on the most obvious and simplest of solutions: resist, with force, if necessary.
Reinhart closes with this: Here’s some other news you won’t hear from government and anti-gun control spin doctors: 90 per cent of gun owners are licensed and 90 per cent of guns are registered — and the registry is highly supported. In fact, the decision to remove long guns from the registry is opposed by police, public health officials, more than 40 women’s groups — and the Attorney’s General of Ontario and Quebec, who have announced they will fight the proposals.
And the registry works.
Well, I hate to tell you this, Ms. Reinhart, but these people are officials, and as public servants, they don’t get an opinion; they get instructions. What about the objections of the people they serve?
The registry works?? Works for whom? It works for officials and not for the people in terms of safety. And it works for criminals in terms of advantage.
You don’t need to know where the guns are.
This assertion to drop registration is encouraging, and I’m interested to see just how Canada will answer the United Nations’ intrusive dictates about world disarmament, the so-called illegal trafficking in small arms. [Most worldwide weapons dealings are legal, according to U.S. Ambassador to the U. N. John Bolton, and the genuine illegal trafficking is insignificant. Furthermore, many nations need arms to survive, since, as many historians point out, millions die at the hands of their governments, not each other. How will another free nation meet this question?]
I have appreciation for Canada. When the belligerent nations are asking you to hand over your weapons, it’s one thing: when some of your own people are asking the same, and advocating that you give them what they want, it’s joining the belligerents.
And when the people resist it all, then the people speak. As a free nation does in order to remain free.
This movement to discourage resistance on various fronts comes with the flimsiest of reasons, and I’m glad to see Canadians seeing through them by taking this important first step.
It’s good for Canada. It’s good for the hemisphere. It’s good for the world.
________________________________________
John Longenecker is author of Transfer Of Wealth. John can now be heard on MP3, and his website is www.TransferOfWealth.net
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Toubrouk, nice to hear from you.
We try to tell the Mexican illegals to keep on going, there are lots of jobs harvesting wheat in Alberta but they just don’t believe us!
I understand they recently got a bunch of Islamists pronto in Toronto and pretended to be mystified by such a broad spectrum of society!
And just what were they doing shacking up with Mrs. Sauga?
Anyway, are you from British Columbia? That is the part of Canada we in Washington State have access to.
On a bright sunny day I rode the BC Ferries from Tsawwassan to Schwartz Bay in 1999. Before Rassam rode those same ferries the next winter. I have plenty of experience with Washington State Ferries. Nevetheless the Washington boats just did not prepare me for the BC Ferries and I’ll bet Rassam never took a dry run to see what he was getting into.
You see, the BC Ferries on the busy runs from the mainland to Vancouver Island are huge ships with the capacity of several hundred cars. The dock at Tsawwassen is at the end of a 2 mile long causeway to get to the deep water off the Fraser River Delta. There are several ramps to load cars on to the Spirit of Vancouver or whatever big ship is going across. You drive into a big steel box, closed at both ends after loading. Washington boats are open at both ends and the air flows through the car deck while under way. On the BC boat, a public address system advises that you are not allowed to remain with your car during the trip, you must lock your car and come up to the passenger deck.
So I did.
While up on top, I walked out to the end of the boat away from shore. You look back at the land you can see Point Roberts and the cut through the trees that marks the border. You feel like you are about 50 feet north of the border.
Then it was time to get under way. A truly surprizing thing happens, and I’ll bet it surprized Ahman Rassam!
You see, unlike a Washington Ferry, which has propellers at both ends, a BC Ferry only has propellers at one end. At the dock, these propellers are pushing the ferry to hold it to the dock while loading. When a Washington ferry pulls away from the dock, the pilot merely switches the power from one set of propellers to the other, a smooth transmission shift.
The BC Ferry REVERSES the one set of propellers like the Titanic trying to avoid the iceberg. Do you know what that FEELS like? The whole ship shaking like a California Richter Scale 8 earthquake!
Whoa!
I look around at the other passengers. Calm. Like this happens every time. Nothing to worry about. No big deal.
Finally the propellers are in reverse and the ship pulls away from the dock and does a half moon circle in front of Point Roberts so as to point out across the water. Then the propellers are shifted back to forward with the same level of shake, rattle and roll!
You are Ahman Rassam. You KNOW your car has stuff in its trunk that might detonate when shaken and stirred. Setting off several hundred pounds of explosive. On top of a tank of gasoline. Inside a big steel box in which there are several hundred tanks of gasoline.
That is enough to make al-Zarqawi say: “Ble-blah, lig, loog, doiya doo, ugh.”
Of course after getting underway, for Rassam it was December, and the water gets a bit choppy, making the ferries roll a bit and bounce.
It is no mystery to me why this guy was a nervous wreck by the time he got to Port Angeles.
Now I agree, we should tighten things up along our southern border. But Mexico at least has some strict immigration laws. It is not easy for Arabs to get into Mexico illegally. Those Arabs who make it to the US border with Mexico have two problems: 1) They speak a very bad heavily accented Spanish that just does not sound like the Spanish spoken by the Mexican poor. Those Muslims who learned their Spanish in Spain definitely do not sound like Mexicans. Mexicans do not use the “vosotros” conjugation of verbs that Spaniards use. 2) The Arabs try to, as taught in the Al-Quaida manual, to hide their Muslim tendencies to blend in. But the Mexican Catholics never were Muslim and so do not have such tendencies to hide.
Thus, the “Other Than Mexicans” tend to stand out like a sore thumb. They get ratted out a lot by illegals who only want to work jobs under the table or suck on our welfare system, and thus do not want some damn bomb going off to ruin it for everybody!
A lot of crimes in the U.S. are also committed with stolen guns, but here, owners are blamed more than the crooks who stole them.
This is true almost everywhere, which de-emphasizes the idea of trafficking somewhat.
Let’s face it: crime is crime, and the criminal is to blame, so why punish the honest?
The part I praise is the idea of relieving the honest of another burden which he shouldn’t carry in the first place, and which really doesn’t stop crime: it might chase it after it’s committed, but it doesn’t stop it.
Victims can stop crime.
There’s a little statistic overlooked in that text; it’s the fact that 50% of the crimes commuted with a firearm in Canada is made with a stolen gun. Only on this factor, a registery is a good thing. The real problem is that the current gun registery costed up to 2 Billions of $ allerady and din’t work yet. Up to that point, better junking it instead of spending more in that hole.
As far as immigration goes, I would kindly ask to Mr. Knight to re-check his facts about Canadian immigration laws. We might had acepted Ahmed Ressam but it pale in comparaison when we remember the fact that the U.S. accepted the 9-11 hijackers on a student visa and millions of illegal immigrants on no visa at all.
Too bad Canadians had to live under decades of liberal bull manure before finally beginning to see the light and thereby placing their government in the hands of those who believe in freedom.
Next thing you know they’ll undo the no-fault divorce system and end the Child Support Crusade and place fathers back in place as rightful parents. They might even put the miles back on their road signs as an indication they no longer believe in one-world government but prefer to be an independent sovereign nation looking out for the interests of its citizens and placing the interests of such PEOPLE ahead of the interests of the cheap labor exploiters.
They might even reform their immigration laws and thereby protect us from Ahman Rassams trying to come across our border with trunkloads of explosives.
One can always dream.