Anti-gun Socialists Are no
Different On Either Side of the Border

By Ralph Weller
GunNewsDaily.com
December 15, 2005

First it was Washington DC, followed by Chicago, England, Australia, and a failed attempt in Brazil, and most recently San Francisco among others.  Now, Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin, in the midst of a re-election campaign, has proposed a ban on handgun ownership.  It's quite an unbelievable proposal if you understand Canada's current gun laws.

In a nutshell, to own a handgun in Canada today you must be a target shooter or collector.  You must prove this to authorities before you are allowed to purchase a handgun.  Additionally, you must be licensed as a legal handgun owner with all the obligatory criminal background checks.  Not only must a handgun owner be licensed, but the handgun has its own registration document that must be present with the firearm, for practical purposes, all of the time.  If the firearm is loaned or sold to another licensed gun owner, the handgun registration document must transfer with the firearm.  A licensed gun owner in possession of a handgun that does not have proper registration papers is in violation of Canadian gun laws.  Conversely, an unregistered or registered handgun in the hands of an unlicensed person is also in violation of the law.  In other words, Canadian handgun laws are very strict.

Martin justifies his proposal of a handgun ban by saying it will reduce murders, most notably in Toronto, which has been plagued by gang violence fueled by fights over control of lucrative drug-selling territories.  That certainly sounds familiar to most Americans.  We've been dealing with that nonsense for well over 20 years now.  So, if Canada thinks they will see a reduction in big city violence because of a handgun ban, they haven't seen anything yet.  Fights over control of illegal drug markets are only just beginning in Canada.  Illegal drug trafficking is big business and opportunities abound in unexploited Canadian cities.  And world-wide drug cartels are pushing hard in Australia, England and other countries including Canada to expand their markets.  Guns, shootings, and killings are just part of the drug pushing culture, regardless of whether law-abiding citizens are allowed to own guns or not.

Canadian voters should simply ask Toronto's head cop, or Prime Minister Martin the question that begs to be answered.  How many licensed handgun owners have been arrested for homicides in Toronto, or in any other Canadian city for that matter?  Voters will be greeted with blank stares followed by deafening silence.  It has been proven time and again in the U.S. that legal owners of firearms are not the cause of homicides on the city streets and it's no different in Canada.  But, every good liberal politician needs a scapegoat to weasel their way of a political jam.  And, Martin finds himself in one after Parliament toppled his government late last month in a no confidence vote forcing new elections in January.

But, this story of Canadian gun violence came to a head earlier this year.  While gang warfare escalated in Canadian cities, very nervous Liberal Party leaders in Toronto and Ontario, aided and abetted by the Canadian media, pointed to the U.S. as the cause of their criminal woes.  When data suggested that maybe the U.S. isn't the only source of illegal firearms in Canada, and that maybe their lack of border control might be a major contributor to the problem, Liberal politicians turned their blame internally towards legal gun owners.  And, not surprisingly, it is resonating with members of their party.  Predictably,  the Canadian media who are decidedly liberal for the most part, is jumping on the bandwagon as well.

Martin is using the tried and true U.S. politician's sleazy method of saying, without really saying, that the problem with Canada's crime is a direct result of law-abiding citizens.  And for non-gun owners, they unwittingly buy into it out of sheer ignorance of the facts.  If a liberal is asked directly if the cause of gun crimes in Canada can be attributed to legally licensed gun owners with registered handguns, the answer is almost always no.  But, "if it only saves one life... isn't it worth it?"  they will say.   Their answer is based purely on emotion, not facts.  They're either too lazy or just too stupid to figure it out.  No data exists that prove gun bans reduce homicides.  If it did, Washington D.C. would not have seen their gun homicide rates almost triple since their late 1970's handgun ban went into effect.  Over the more than 25 years since the ban, no other city in the U.S., and quite shockingly, no other country in the world has seen a per capita homicide rate higher than Washington D.C.  Yes, it's even higher than Brazil, almost twice as much per capita.  You are more likely to be shot to death in Washington D.C. than in most any other country in the world.  Yet, no one crows the success of D.C.'s gun ban, most notably American gun control advocates.  It's the gun-banner's dirty little secret and it has been played out over and over again worldwide.  Just ask London residents how their city has changed since their gun ban in U.K.  You are more likely to be a victim of a violent assault in downtown London than in New York City these days, and that's a statistical fact, not emotion.

If the Liberals manage to win power back in January, and they get the handgun ban into Canadian law, provinces can opt out and allow continued handgun ownership.  But this is a dangerous loophole purposely created by Martin as an insurance policy to save his political hide further down the road if his party is re-elected again this time around.

Alberta, one of Canada's western states, has already indicated they will not ban handgun ownership.  And, when it's found the handgun ban in the rest of Canada is failing to reduce gang warfare in Toronto, which will certainly be the case, the Liberals will once again turn inward to find blame.  Alberta, and other provinces that fail to ban handguns, will be the next "cause of Toronto's violence", despite being more than a thousand miles away.  They will point to lax handgun laws and trafficking from other provinces as the cause of violence on their city streets.  Trust me on this one, it happens every day in the U.S.  Just ask the mayor of Boston or New Jersey politicians what they think.  New Jersey is convinced if you wiped Pennsylvania off the face of the earth New Jersey would be more like the peaceful state of Maine.  If you ask Boston's mayor, he's convinced Maine is the reason why his city has so many murders.  Neither Pennsylvania nor Maine have the rate of murders found in Boston or most New Jersey cities.  Yet both knuckle heads are convinced some kind of sinister 'gun thing' is going on in Maine and Pennsylvania that is causing all their crime problems.  To put it bluntly, their bad management is the problem, not Maine or Pennsylvania gun laws.   This is the kind of nonsense Alberta will be seeing in a year or two.  Liberals will start pointing fingers at other provinces and municipalities because of their own inept management.

The facts are, licensed gun owners comprise a group of people that are far more law-abiding than the general population compared to non-gun owners.  And, it goes without saying, they are exceedingly more law-abiding than gang members in Toronto. 

So, does it make sense to ban ownership of handguns from the segment of population that represents the most law-abiding people in Canada?  Well, it doesn't, but that's what politics are all about, on both sides of the border.  Canadian politicians like to think they're "different" from American politicians, but borders don't change socialists.  It's the same old shell game modernized by the likes of Paul Martin and socialists worldwide. Just keep the people confused, befuddled, and find a scapegoat within the citizenry before the voters figure out the politicians could care less about crime.  In fact, the more crime the merrier as every good socialist would say.  After all, what would liberal politicians do for a living if they actually reduced crime and people felt safe?  The answer is, they would be out of jobs.  That's because liberals exploit and feed on the fears and insecurity of voters, and without it, they have no message to send.  And, if a few good fellow citizens get their rights trampled down along the way, it's all for a good cause to keep the socialists in power.

Prime Minister Martin's proposal will get a lot of Canadians to think whether it's worth putting him and the Liberal Party back into power and end up with a handgun ban, but it won't be enough.  Canada is no Brazil.  Voters there decided the police are too corrupt to be trusted with the only guns in town.  In Canada, the provinces of Ontario and Quebec represent the bulk of Canada's population and they are, for the most part, very liberal in their politics.  It certainly would send a message to the Liberal Party if they lose their power in Parliament.  But alas, the liberals of Ontario and Quebec make San Francisco look like a conservative haven, and the chances of the Liberal Party getting soundly defeated in January is nothing more than wishful thinking.  Something else will have to drive them out of power at this point because it won't be this issue.