Gun Control Parade.
Posted on 05/16/2006 6:35:55 PM PDT by Northern Alliance
CP) - Having been told that he and the people of Miramichi, N.B., would be better off shovelling cow manure than registering long guns, John McKay has a clear idea of just how contentious the gun registry issue is in Canada.
The main processing office for the Canadian Firearms Centre is located in Miramichi and McKay, the city's mayor, is more worried than ever about the centre's future following the latest revelations of mismanagement by Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
McKay said Tuesday he has received dozens of letters in recent weeks from Western Canadians who feel he has no business defending the roughly 200 jobs created by the gun registry in the economically depressed region.
"It's hate mail," McKay said bitterly.
"These letters are directed at me, the registry employees, the Miramichi community and the Maritimes. The employees have been compared to concentration camp guards. One writer suggested that tabulating polar bear excrement in the North would be a more useful job. Another suggested we could spend our time homogenizing cow manure."
McKay said he always believed there was a disconnect between Western Canada and the East, but the letters he is receiving indicate a depth of hatred and disgust he never would have suspected.
"Because the gun registry is here, they're saying we're less than human."
In a report released Tuesday, Fraser said the former Liberal government cooked the books on the much-maligned gun registry program, ignored legal advice and hid the true cost of it from Parliament.
The auditor's findings give Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative government more ammunition to dismantle the long-gun registry.
However, the Conservatives are promising to maintain jobs in Miramichi, possibly through an expanded handgun registry.
New Brunswick was an unusual choice for the location of the gun registry's primary processing centre.
Roughly 10 per cent of New Brunswickers hunt - the second highest per capita ratio in the provinces after Newfoundland and Labrador.
Larry Whitmore, executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, which opposes the long-gun registry, said urban Canada never understood - and probably never tried to understand - why the gun registry struck such a sour note in rural Canada.
"Take New Brunswick for example - it's a way of life there," Whitmore said of gun ownership.
"But of course in Toronto, which drives the political agenda for the nation, we have urban areas where they are having crime problems with gangs. So they propose to solve that situation by taking guns away from suburban white guys and rural farmers. It's crazy."
Experts say the gun registry became a hot issue for many reasons, including disagreement and misunderstanding between rural and urban areas.
Ontario lawyer Edward L. Burlew, an advocate of gun-owners' rights, said the gun law bred resentment and mistrust because it targeted the wrong people for punitive action.
"Many of the people who are subject to these laws are safe people and they're never going to use their guns wrongfully," Burlew said.
"Spending money to watch people who don't need to be watched just seems to be so silly. People take it personally. It puts them in an edgy situation. If they forget to do something, they become criminals."
Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, said the real problem is that gun control has become a hot-button political issue.
"It is not about safety. It is not even about money. It is just payback to the gun lobby," she said.
Probably unfair, but to be honest, gun owners have been called quite a bit worse than that by elitist snobs back East, and I'm including the United States in that statement. It's also urban/rural and a lot of other things, but people who run an oppressive program must be aware that there will be resentment from the people at whom that program is directed.
No human being would subject himself or herself to the indignities with which Easterners (and people in Vancouver/Victoria) are regularly visited.
Best bet for the Maritimes is they give up pulling down welfare and go somewhere else to get a job.
The criticisms are spot on.
May the good people of Canada prevail in doing away with this pernicious registry.
So the survivors of the concentration camps shouldn't look down their noses at the camp guards who stole their freedom and their lives?
Gun grabbers sub-human? Yep. Spot on.
Functionairies who happily carry out totalitarian dictates from the state are sub-human and need to be treated accordingly.
"targeted the wrong people for punitive action...'
Yeah, the law abiding.
Huh?
It would.
Canada should make every effort to protect them.
If the shoe fits....
L
Seems like an apt comparison to me. One is just a bit further along the totalitarian police state path than the other.
No doube the concentration camp guards resented the fact that their fellow citizens didn't like them too.
See #13; I think that explains it well.
The problem is that the negative personal consequences of gun control are all on one side. If the pro freedom side loses even a bit, the ratchet tightens and we have less freedom. If the state worshipers lose, so what? They haven't lost anything. They just get more money from rich limousine liberals like Arthur Blank (Home Depot), Andrew McKelvy (Monster.com), etc. There is currently no downside for human cockroaches like Cukier, Bloomberg, Brady, Guialani, Kennedy, Schumer, Waxman, etc. I believe it was Claire Wolf said it's too soon to start shooting the bastards, but sooner or later it will be time, and then there will be a downside for them.
Utterly wasting $1billion is good for the economy. It creates jobs. Imagine how many jobs you could create if you utterly wasted $100 billion.
No they shouldn't (They should line them up against the wall and ...)
Gun Control Parade.
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