Canadian Cincinnatus

Are you a Canadian gun rights activist? Then pat yourself on the back.

On Monday, the far-left (but credible) Toronto Mayoral Candidate, Olivia Chow, called for a handgun ban. Never mind that the only people targeted by such a law have nothing whatsoever to do with Chow’s tragic examples, or the people who actually killed them, or the people who will go on to create other murder victims. Never mind that and pay attention to what happened next:

The other two leading candidates, John Tory and Rob Ford, but came out against the ban.

Think about this: in Toronto, the stronghold of the Liberal Party of Canada – even there – a handgun ban is controversial. 

Who do we have to thank for that? Canada’s gun rights activists, that’s who. Think about how far they have moved this issue, and with what little resources.

In 1989 when the Progressive Conservative Justice Minister, Doug Lewis, first proposed a handgun ban, Canadian gun owners were disorganized and friendless. We had no money, no power, no media allies, no influence, and no friends in politics. Indeed, the one political party that should have been our natural ally – the Progressive Conservative Party – was our prime enemy.

Look at where we are today: we have political allies at all levels of government; we have important – and outspoken - friends in the media, and have won significant political battles. How did we accomplish this, with next to no resources? 

We did two things right: we engaged in vigorous debate, where we unapologetically conceded no ground; and we were persistent. Through thick and thin, we stood our ground. By following these two principles, we were able to move mountain towards us. As a result, we are at the point where, even in the Great Satan of Canadian politics – Toronto, our opinion is respected.

Draconian gun laws and celebrity privilege in the District of Columbia

According to the Washington Times:

“A year ago this month, the attorney general for the District of Columbia let NBC News anchor David Gregory off scot-free for possession of a “high capacity” magazine because doing so “would not promote public safety.”

Now, Irvin Nathan refuses to use that same prosecutorial discretion for an average citizen who violated a bizarre technicality that makes empty casings and shells a crime as serious as having an illegal firearm.”

“Mr. Witaschek, a successful financial adviser with no criminal history, is the first known case of a citizen being prosecuted in D.C. for inoperable ammunition. Washington police and prosecutors have spent a year and a half trying to nail him for the possession of so-called unregistered ammunition.  

A hunter and gun owner, Mr. Witaschek has always kept his firearms at his sister’s house in Virginia. If convicted, he faces a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for having a single, inoperable shotgun shell in his home. The jury trial starts on Feb. 11.” 

This sort of idiocy is very familiar to Canadian gun owners. The number of stories of prosecutorial abuse – where perfectly harmless individuals are persecuted for miniscule violations of nonsensical regulations – is legion in Canada. When non-gun owning Canadians - i.e. people who have no clue about our gun laws - say that guns should be registered like cars, I reply: Great, I would be perfectly happy if guns were treated as sanely by the law as motor vehicles. These people, relying on the MSM for their knowledge about firearms laws, have no clue about the legal idiocy that exists around them.

I remember the David Gregory incident very well. In the media hysteria following the Newtown Massacre, Meet the Press host David Gregory waved a 30 round AR-15 mag on his show. His show was filmed in DC. The possession of a high-capacity magazine is illegal in the District of Columbia. Gregory was not even investigated, much less charged.

American gun owners should insist, if perfectly innocent nobodies like Mark Witaschek are put though the ringer for picayune offences, then so should TV celebrities.

Bend over and cough, David. Time for your strip search.

Gun crime soars in the land of no handguns

According to the Daily Mail:

“The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.

Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362. It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.”

Perhaps the UK should ban handguns. Just look at Jamaica! Oh well. But if Jamaica were an island nation with no land borders, maybe a gun ban would have worked there.

“Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.”

Oh oh.

“Unadjusted figures showed overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3%, but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.”

The government response?

“With new recording procedures taken into account the actual overall rise was just 2%, the Home Office said.”

In other words, statistical trickery. 

“Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin said: "These figures are truly terrible.

"Despite the street crime initiative, robbery is massively up. So are gun-related crimes, domestic burglary, retail burglary, and drug offences. 

"The only word for this is failure: the Government's response of knee-jerk reactions, gimmicks and initiatives is not working and confused signals on sentences for burglary will not help either.” 

Perhaps if the Conservatives ran Britain, there would be a more substantive response to the crime problem.

Oh…

Punching back twice as hard against the thought-police

According to the Washington Times:

“A West Virginia teen who was arrested and suspended for wearing a National Rifle Association T-shirt to school returned to class Monday wearing the same shirt that got him into trouble. 

Jared Marcum, 14, was joined by about 100 other students across Logan County who wore shirts with a similar gun rights theme in a show of support for free speech.”

“Ben White, the Charleston lawyer representing the Logan eighth-grader, said the Sons of the Second Amendment, a gun rights group, purchased and distributed the shirts.

Jared, a student at Logan Middle School, was arrested and suspended Thursday after he was pulled from a cafeteria line and told to remove or turn his shirt inside-out an order he refused.”

“School officials told the eighth-grader Monday that his one-day suspension was appropriate because he was being disruptive.

Mr. White said Jared was exercising his right to free speech and did not disrupt anything.

‘I think the disruption came from the teacher,’ Mr. White said.”

If you want to advance The Cause, you have to stand your ground and fight – hard and unapologetically. Appeasement, apologies and ‘not making waves’ is for Red Tory losers.

Way to go, kid!

 

Hat tip Instapundit.

An unarmed society is an impolite society: According to an Iraqi immigrant, Cool Britannia is “more dangerous here than Iraq”

According to the Daily Mail:

“A shopkeeper who fought off two armed robbers said the streets around his inner city Birmingham store were ‘more violent’ than his native Iraq.

Kochar Rasul, 30, made a new life for himself and his family in Britain after fleeing from Kurdistan to escape Saddam Hussein’s evil regime.

But he was forced to defend himself using a shop sign when two gunmen pounced as he locked up his shop in Handsworth, Birmingham, just before midnight on Monday.”

“Mr Rasul came to Britain in 2003 when the Kurds were being persecuted in their native Iraq.

‘I thought it would be safe here, but it isn’t, it’s very dangerous with crime always going on and lots of bad people around,’ he said.

‘It’s more dangerous here than Iraq because at least there, you knew who your enemies are.’

Detective Constable Phil Langstone, from Force CID in Harborne, praised Mr Rasul’s courage.

‘The victim was very brave in his attempt to fight off the attackers and the fact that armed officers just happened to be passing at that particular moment was a case of being in the right place at the right time,’ he said.’”

It must be noted that handguns and all semi-auto rifles have been banned in the UK since the mid-nineties, and homeowners who defend themselves against violent intruders are often mercilessly prosecuted by the Leviathan.

An Idaho resident is glad that his state doesn’t have “Canadian-style” murder rates

Here’s what a man from Idaho has discovered in his research:

“It is certainly true that for Canada as a whole, murder rates are still considerably lower than for the United States as a whole. For 2011, Canada had 1.73 homicides per 100,000 people; the United States had 4.8 murders and non-negligent homicides per 100,000 people.  What I find fascinating, however, is to look at murder rates for Canadian provinces and compare them to their immediate American state neighbors.”

“For example, I live in Idaho.  In 2011, our murder rate was 2.3 per 100,000 people.  We have almost no gun-control laws here. …  We are subject to the federal background check on firearms, but otherwise there are no restrictions. Do you want a machine gun? And yes, I mean a real machine gun, not a semiautomatic AR-15. There is the federal paperwork required, but the state imposes no licensing of its own.”

“Surely with such lax gun-control laws, our murder rate must be much higher than our Canadian counterparts’ rate. But this is not the case: I was surprised to find that not only Nunavut (21.01) and the Northwest Territories (6.87) in Canada had much higher murder rates than Idaho, but even Nova Scotia (2.33), Manitoba (4.24), Saskatchewan (3.59), and Alberta (2.88) had higher murder rates.  (Okay, Nova Scotia is just a teensy-weensy bit higher than Idaho for 2011.)

What about Minnesota? It had 1.4 murders per 100,000 in 2011, lower than not only all those prairie provinces, but even lower than Canada as a whole.  Montana had 2.8 murders per 100,000, still better than for Canadian provinces and one Canadian territory.  When you get to North Dakota, another one of these American states with far less gun control than Canada, the murder rate is 3.5 per 100,000, still lower than Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.  And let me emphasize that Minnesota, Montana, and North Dakota, like Idaho, are all shall-issue concealed-weapon permit states: nearly any adult without a felony conviction or a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction can obtain a concealed weapon permit with little or no effort.

At this point, you’re going to point out that there are many American states that have very high murder rates, especially in the South, and on the coasts. This is certainly true, but irrelevant to the question of whether gun-control laws reduce murder rates. If gun availability or a lack of restrictive gun-control laws was sufficient to explain any substantial part of murder rates, then these low restriction states should have higher murder rates than their Canadian neighbors, and yet if anything, the situation is the reverse: the Canadian provinces often have higher murder rate than their low gun-control American counterparts.”

Interesting. So gun control is not correlated with murder rates, at least not very well.

I add that the murder rate for Vermont (the state with the most liberal guns laws in the Union) and New Hampshire (the “live free or die” state) is 1.3.

Unfortunately, these crime stats pose more questions than they answer. Questions like: if gun control doesn’t cause high murder rates, then what does? And why are the murder rates of the prairie provinces so much higher than for central Canada, PEI, New Brunswick and Newfoundland? And why are the murder rates for Canada’s northern territories higher still? It also begs the question, why are the murder rates for those northern plains states so much lower than for the southern and coastal states? And why are the two highest murder rates that are recorded for all states, provinces and territories found in Puerto Rico followed by Nunavut?

Do I know the answer? Nope. Not me. No sirree, Bob. For me it’s aaall just a big mystery. Haven’t got a clue. And don’t let anybody tell you any differently.

Political overreach: Dianne Feinstein edition

The nice thing about Dianne Feinstein’s proposal to ban up to 150 named firearms, hi-cap mags, etc. is that it isn’t going anywhere. Not even in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The Dem’s control it 55 to 45, but there are seven Democrat senators from red states, which Romney won by large margin, who are up for reelection next year. Not only that, but the Senate is controlled by NRA A-rated Harry Reid, who as I have already mentioned, didn’t get his A-rating because his constituents like gun control. He might cave. But it will be painful for him. On a side note, Harry Reid just announced that he is not prepared to get rid of the 60-vote filibuster rule. And then there is the House…

If Feinstein were smart, which she isn’t, she would have come up with a more modest proposal, one that would have been unpalatable for the pro-freedom crowd, but which wouldn’t have raised such a clamor, and would therefore have been more difficult for pro-gun Congressmen to oppose.

The problem for her is that the current hoo-ha is based on the Newtown massacre, where an AR-15 clone was used. So, the logical thing would be to ban AR’s, except that the AR-15 and its clones are now the most popular rifle in America. Therefore, it is hard for Feinstein to divide and conquer. 

The other thing is that, since the 90’s, the world has changed. The popularity of gun control is much lower today than in the past. This is largely because of the success of the concealed carry movement, whose principal political side effect was to make a completely new segment of the American populace see firearms as tools for self-defense. 

Another thing that changed is that the political class (of the left and right) have a more realistic appreciation of the importance of Second Amendment rights among the voters. For years, Bill Clinton has been counseling Democrats to beware of the gun control issue, that the House takeover of 94 was largely driven by the pro-freedom crowd (OK, he didn’t quite use that terminology). At the time, this fact was unappreciated by even the conservative intelligentsia. In the 90’s, I subscribed to National Review. In their post-mortem to the 94 midterms, they posited many reasons for conservative success. Rarely was gun control mentioned, even though it was a much more important motive force than all the other causes that they did recognized.

I have also been predicting since Obama’s reelection that his second term will fail largely because, in his arrogance, he will overreach. It is now becoming clear that gun control is the issue that will precipitate his downfall.

Let Obama ban guns by executive order and see what happens

According to the Weekly Standard:

"The president is going to act," said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. "There are executive orders, there's executive action that can be taken. We haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required."

You know what? The freedom activist in me is actually looking forward to this.

I have been arguing since the election that Obama will fail by overreaching. Any move that affects people on such a personal level, so widely, that has to be enacted by executive order because it can’t get through Congress will end up being a big Charlie Foxtrot.

It will stink of illegitimacy; it will inspire civil disobedience on a large scale; it will create a firestorm of legal challenges; and it will put Obama’s red state congressional allies in a very difficult spot (and this includes NRA A-rated Senate majority leader Harry Reid). Long after the Newtown massacre recedes into history as another heinous criminal act in a long line of heinous criminal acts, the furor such an action will inspire will be going strong.

So go ahead Barack, make my day.

 

Obama overreach: gun control edition

In the immediate aftermath of the November debacle, I pointed out several possible mechanisms for conservative revitalization. I argued that mainstream media truimphalism would fire up the Tea Party once again. I also argued that Obama’s undoing would be his political overreach, driven by his reelection euphoria. In writing these articles, I had assumed the time scale of around a year or more, certainly at least several months.

When I wrote those words, I did not realize how right my predictions would become, but how much my timing would be off. The overreach took weeks not months or years to manifest itself. Consider this recent Washington Post article that reports Obama is planning comprehensive gun control legislation.

If I am right, this is a major mistake in the making for him. I base this assessment partly on the strength of pro-gun forces (a byproduct of the shall-issue concealed carry movement – going strong for twenty years now), and the fact that his reelection gave him no mandate for controlling guns. Not only were gun owners lulled into false sense of security by the hoplophobes’ tepid response to the Aurora shooting (I believe this was deliberate - to make sure gun owners did not come out and vote), but Obama himself told gun owners that they have nothing to fear from him.

Also, by the time any legislation is introduced, it will have been over a month since the Newtown massacre and every day the shock of that horrible day grows fainter. An important roadblock to legislations is the Republican control of the House. It is not that I believe John Boehner has a titanium baseball bat for a spine, but that grassroots efforts by gun owners will make sure that GOP congresscritters do develop a backbone.

Finally, there are many anti-gun Democrat senators. Men like Joe Manchin and NRA A-rated Harry Reid. These people are the canary in the coalmine. If they don’t buck, Obama’s gun control efforts will fizzle because the GOP House will have nothing to vote down. After initially going wobbly, rifle-totin’ Joe Manchin has been loudly hostile to gun control efforts. And Harry Reid did not get his A rating from the NRA because gun control is popular in his home state of Nevada. It will be interesting to see what influences Reid more: Obama, Pelosi and the Democrat establishment, or his own voters. According to Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner, there are 7 red state Democrat Senators up for reelection in 2014. This does not include Manchin and Reid.

Of course, if I am wrong and President Obama pulls a gun control rabbit out of the hat, then it will truly be bad news. Not only for advocates of freedom, but for the GOP. Any legislation that passes with even partial support from House Republicans (as it must) will cleave the conservative and establishmentarian factions of the GOP into two. 

Right-wing vote splitting is a phenomenon Canadian conservatives are well acquainted with.

Big victory for civil rights in Canada

A couple of years ago, a Welland man Ian Thompson defended his home against attack by multiple armed men. As I reported at the time:

Ian Thomson, who was charged with using a firearm, “namely a handgun” “without lawful excuse”. His crime was to defend his property and his life when three masked men assaulted his house in the middle of the night with Molotov cocktails while yelling death threats. He came out of his house armed with a handgun while his house burned.

Good news! Ian Thompson was acquitted over the last of the charges that were hanging over his head. As Matt Gurney, of the National Post, reports:

Mr. Thomson was charged with four crimes: careless use of a firearm, pointing a firearm and two charges of careless storage of a firearm, one for each of the pistols he had removed from his gun safe (the second, a 9mm pistol, was never fired during the incident). The first two charges were dropped — it’s hard to imagine a more cut-and-dry case of lawful self defence than firing on men trying to burn down your home while you’re inside it. But the Crown insisted on pursuing the charges of careless storage.

On Friday, an Ontario judge acquitted Mr. Thomson of both those charges.

For those who don’t know Canadian gun laws, careless storage of firearms and careless storage of ammunition are the sort of specious charges that police and prosecutors lay if they want to persecute a gun owner but the gun owner has done nothing really illegal. Thank goodness the judge bought none of it this time around.

As I have pointed out in the past, self-defence is our most basic right. It is good to see Canada’s justice system slowly coming around to the same conclusion.

Let freedom ring!