Obama Is A Fine Actor; Consdiering The Evolution Of Gun Control In Canada

Obama really wants to pass gun control and he won't stop at anything to get it. He'll cry, he'll Town Hall, he'll borrow climate-system change jargon (apparently there is 'consensus' on what guns do), he'll pester and he'll make shit up if he has to.

Just like global warming, the human species demands it and despite the fact Americans for most part oppose it, he knows better than these 'folks'.

Executive order it is. However ineffective theater it may be.

One can take comfort that executive action doesn't necessarily mean concrete law but what is worrisome is the narrative is set to move on to more disturbing laws.

I'll let Reason magazine explain why everything people think about guns is wrong. It's been my personal experience the average person doesn't know all that much about guns (and cares even less to learn) and because they're ignorant about it apparently it follows they can impose restrictions on those who do. Not to mention they can't understand why anyone should have one to begin with.

With such a mindset it's easy to see why they support government action on the issue - statistics be damned. In any event, there's a huge inventory of literature out there that should make people ponder deeper what's being reported about gun control.

There are many angles gun-control supporters use and have used in the past but a recent trend has been to focus on the mentally ill.

Interesting, that such people probably are the first to tell others to be more 'nuanced' and see the 'big picture' are suddenly willing to lump the mentally ill into one gigantic one-size fits all government database.

It's all for the best. And besides, you have nothing to worry about, right?

Right.

It's not like the government doesn't misuse and abuse its powers or loses millions of archives with sensitive information. I mean, they have the security of Americans at heart.

I personally can't comprehend why anyone can't see how problematic and dangerous this latest development is. It's a slippery slope that probably end with a new class of people getting their rights curbed or perhaps being criminalized.

The lines of what type of mental illness will blur so as to not distinguish between, for example, what is depression and PTSD. It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere down the line the government will reclassify and redefine what constitutes 'mentally ill' and widen in scope.

They can rework the clinical definitions - like they do for climate-change, gun control, diet etc. -  however they choose. However, it doesn't mean people shouldn't oppose it.

These days, we're generally more educated about mental illness. Yet, it's troubling to observe we're prepared to deny them their civil liberties.

I think I should note of course where obvious cases of mental illness are present such people shouldn't have guns but my argument here is a government with such sweeping powers will inevitably include non-violent persons.

We already see examples of this in public discourse. Believing that the government does not have the best interests of citizens in mind at all times, for example, "severe paranoid delusions". Or if you're a skeptic on political responses to climate change it's asserted you suffer from "chronic delusional psychosis".

In this case, thinking you need a gun to be safe is a sign of unfounded paranoia and should disqualify you from owning a gun.

Now we want to make this law.

Nurse Ratchet is wet all over.

Government and law enforcement will not treat this in any sensitive manner because their job will be to protect Americans from guns. You were arrested and convicted for smoking weed when you were 18? Too bad. Fuck you. No gun. You went to fight in Iraq but now have PTSD? Aw. Too bad. Fuck you. You can't have the gun even though you killed for Uncle Sam. Thanks for your service though!

The worse part of what Obama is doing - remember, he's supposed to be enlightened - is he seems to be encouraging a culture for doctors to snitch on their patients without due process (something the President knows all too well with his drone program of killing American citizens without due process).

Like Obamacare, where the end-game was socialized medicine (single payer) all along, Obama knows exactly what he's doing. He's just laying down the tracks for what one day will be a debate on full ban or confiscation.

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Which made me wonder about Canada. What happened in Canada that led to us being highly restrictive about guns?

Canada shared in the same notion of keeping a population proficient with arms that guarded Western civilization for centuries. The idea that a citizen can't protect their property, community and ultimately - if need be - country was regarded (rightfully) as strange if not absurd.

Consider:

"...The parliamentary debate over Blake's legislation has a remarkable resemblance to firearm control arguments heard one hundred years later. MP's viewed the world as divided into criminals, whose access to handguns needed to be prohibited, and the law-abiding, whose right to carry guns for self-protection should not be restricted. This dichotomy continues to frame discussions on the ‘gun control' issue. Even Sir John A. Macdonald criticised the proposed legislation as having the effect of “. . . disarming the person who ought to be armed, and arming the rowdies.” 

Yet, here we are. After repeated warnings of not letting the government know where the guns are, they not only know but have decided best it be restricted. The evolution of gun laws in this country has led us to a highly restrictive one. At each turn, adding a layer that removed a right to bear arms. A practice not uncommon in Canada; home to one of the most rigid public health care systems in the world.

The idea of course is buried in the psyche that guns are bad and lead to unrestrained murder. I mean America, right?

Yet, once emotionally removed from this notion, the statistics are quite clear that it's not so. They reveal the exact opposite of what Obama calls 'consensus science' or the prevailing perception that it works in the matter. But what if, as we shall see later, there wasn't a problem with homicides with guns?

This shouldn't surprise anyone endowed with a healthy skepticism. Government wants to control your well-being; a society with a voluntary avenue to its well-being is a threat to a monopoly of force.

In Canada, one-off events like the Fenian attacks, Metis Rebellion, 1920 Winnipeg strikes, mob violence in the 1930s and 40s, conflation of American society ((see below: "By the 1960s, American urban ghettos were in upheaval and gun violence ran rampant, helping to change the dynamics in urban Canada. Only then did a new argument surface –that all firearms, including rifles and shotguns, were dangerous weapons needing regulation") and even the FLQ (where civil liberties through Marshall Lawwere suspended because of a handful of asshole, murderous separatist terrorists) were all used as springboards to restrict gun ownership at the individual level.

Each were based on events and not reflective of the general population at large.

Anyway, too often when looking at gun control in Canada we get a itemized, formulaic picture. Rarely are we given the context to which those laws came into play.

More intriguing, gun control really has little to do with citizens and everything to do with the internal paranoia of government. Official and its supporters claim ordinary people from paranoia when it comes to guns but in reality, upon closer inspection, we find our own government suffers from it.

It's the ultimate projection. 

Cont'd excerpts from link above:

"...The western democracies, particularly the British Commonwealth, greet the Russian revolution of 1917 and labour unrest following WW1 with a flurry of ‘gun control' initiatives aimed at preventing the spread of “red revolution.” Britain introduces universal gun registration and owner licensing in what is viewed by most scholars as the ‘first step' in virtually eliminating their “right to bear arms.”

"...Government paranoia over a possible Bolshevik revolution peaks in July 1920. The federal government orders the licensing of gun owners and the registration of rifles. In the government's view, shotguns are “. . . not used in times of trouble as the rifle is,” and British subjects (remember that Canadians are British subjects until 1947) who own shotguns are exempt. Widespread opposition from firearm owners and rural MP's forces the government to repeal the legislation in June 1921..."

"...National handgun registration is born in the context of the social and political upheavals of the Great Depression. It is passed on 3 July 1934, having been rushed through Parliament in only ten days. The law appears motivated by a fear of insurrection after Tim Buck, the popular leader of Canada's Communist Party..." 

"...The federal government places handgun registration under authority of the RCMP. This is done, not because the Mounties are more efficient than local police forces at processing applications (provincial and municipal police services had been registering handguns under authority of the 1913 legislation), but because the RCMP is, according to Lorne and Caroline Brown's An Unauthorized History of the RCMP, the federal government's first line of defence against internal disorder and is considered..."

"...Confiscating firearms from ethnic minorities, even those individuals who emigrated from nations that Canada was not at war with, was common during the First and Second World Wars. In WW2, registered firearms were confiscated from Japanese-Canadians early in 1940, long before Canada was at war with Japan...."

"...William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal government feared both “fifth column” activity among Canada's “enemy ethnic” communities, and more importantly, insurrection in Quebec over the conscription issue. On 2 August 1940, Montreal Mayor Camillien Houde publicly urges male Quebeckers to refuse registering for mandatory military service. The following day the federal government issues an order-in-council under authority of the Defence of Canada Regulations requiring the registration of all rifles and shotguns."

"...Like Bill C-68, long gun registration in WW2 appears to have accomplished nothing but to foster widespread noncompliance while criminalising a substantial portion of an otherwise law-abiding population. There is no evidence presented in the RCMP's Annual Reports suggesting that registration of either handguns or long guns had been used to solve crimes, or that it did anything except divert resources from the war effort...."

"...Universal firearm registration would be rejected by successive Canadian governments and law enforcement agencies for the next fifty years. With this historical experience ignored just half a century after the entire concept had proven itself a failure, universal registration and gun owner licensing will be born again as Bill C-68."

As you can see, in addition to discussed above, Canadians seem unaware that our gun-control policy was never the result of general irresponsibility or violence by the populace at large but by organized groups, overall general unrest and even government paranoia.

Yet, despite the apparent and expensive ineffectiveness of gun laws, the people continue to suffer from its prejudice. 

Which is why Blake Brown's Arming and Disarming is such an important book. Our ignorance about guns only leaves us in an irrational state of fear often leading us down unnecessary paths which usually end up with less liberty.

Interview with Brown here:

"...Brown, a soft spoken Saint Mary’s University history professor, was a little puzzled by the angle taken in the CBC Radio interview. “I was probably there to provide a little Canadian context,” he told me recently, but he was left with the distinct impression that “the show’s producers found it surprising”  that “the gun control debate had a long history before the 1989 Montreal massacre of young women.”

'...Heated public debates over gun control tend to be little more than a skirmish on the borderlands in a much larger battle over gun violence, shootings, and the right to bear arms in the United States.  Since the passage of the 1995 Canadian Firearms Act and the $1 billion spent on a national long gun registry, opposition to gun regulation has actually risen, especially in rural and small town Canada. Our national gun control debates, Brown points out, demonstrated “a remarkable lack of awareness of how and why Canada regulated firearms in the past.” It is precisely that gaping hole which his book most effectively fills..."

"...The largely untold history is fascinating.  Public perceptions of high crime and periodic spikes in crime, along with the introduction of more dangerous weapons, nudged Canada to gradually adopt a legislative framework stricter than most jurisdictions in the United States.  While Canadians stocked up on shotguns and rifles, handguns and semi-automatic weapons were far less prevalent."

Exactly. We already were a rather stable bunch to begin with so why such draconian measures? Part of it was paranoia as noted up above on the part of the government. 

This is why, friends, I went from "who would want to own a gun?" to "gun ownership is a rational and fundamental and human right". 

I reject the authoritarian reasons about the right to bear arms I've been fed over the years. Not because I'm a gun nut or plan to build an army but on the grounds of my right to make this choice; the decision to own arms.

You can read more about gun control's policy history here.

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As it pertains to the United States there seems to be a war for the language of the second amendment. I don't know why because I believe it says what it's meant to say. It's my opinion the contemporary interpretation is more concerned with refitting its past to its contemporary notions and not the other way around.

In fact, it's astounding the 'well-regulated militia' and 'right to bear arms' part of the 2A is even a debate. All this crap about they 'could never conceive of AK-47s' and that it was enacted 'specifically for war and never intended to arm people' and other specious claims misses the entire, undeniable purpose of the 2A.

Notably, the idea was to keep the citizens well-trained and proficient with arms in the event of invasion and as such we shall not infringe their right to bear arms.

Which is directly in line with antiquity.

It's disingenuous to claim now it's not needed because no nation can threaten the United States with invasion. It doesn't mean it can't happen in the future; heck, the laws and patterns of history actually make it likely. The army is one thing but the base root of any functional and strong nation is its free citizens.

I really don't see what's A) so evil in this claim that disturbs contemporary progressives and B) complicated to understand. There's nothing abnormal in it. In fact, it's abnormal to obsess over gun-control and the idea of disarming law-abiding citizens and preventing future citizens from obtaining arms.

"In contrast to these rights, the right to keep and bear arms can claim an ancestry stretching for well over a millennium. The antiquity of the right is so great that it is all but impossible to document its actual beginning. It is fairly clear that its origin lay in the customs of Germanic tribes, under which arms bearing was a right and a duty of free men; in fact, the ceremony for giving freedom to a slave required that the former slave be presented with the armament of a free man.[4] He then acquired the duty to serve in an equivalent of a citizen army. These customs were brought into England by the earliest Saxons. The first mention of the citizen army, or the "fyrd" is found in documents dating to 690 A.D., but scholars have concluded that the duty to serve in such with personal armament "is older than our oldest records." (Not knowing of the earlier records, 18th century legal historians including the great Blackstone attributed the origin of the English system to Alfred the Great, who ruled in the late 9th century A.D.)[5]

This viewpoint of individual armament and duty differed greatly from the feudal system which were coming into existence in Europe. The feudal system presupposed that the vast bulk of fighting duties would fall to a small warrior caste, composed primarily of the mounted knight. These individuals held the primary political and military power. Thus peasant armament was a threat to the political status quo. In England, on the other hand, a system evolved whereby peasant armament became the great underpinning of the status quo and individual armament became viewed as a right rather than a threat.

In other words, they knew exactly what they wanted it to be.

This is not to say nations have never tried to control arms, they have and do. Nor is it a case to have no gun control; although there's a strong case to be made it's not necessary. Rather, it's to point out in classical times they rarely tried to outright infringe on the rights of people to have arms. It was a Rubicon they could and would not cross.

Modern progressive and liberals are the ones who are completely in the wrong with their interpretations of the 2A including the outrageous claim to repeal it. You repeal the 2A you destroy the human right to bear arms.

Simple as that.

http://www.guncite.com/journals/senrpt/senhardy.html

So I ask, who is trying to rewrite history?

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