[Newsbot]

Title: Trudeau on firearms: Canada needs to decide where 'line is going to be'
Category: Law & Order
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2022-12-14 06:43:58
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

If 'society' is to decide, put it to an election. Right now, it's just Trudeau who is the decider, and he's making some really stupid decisions. For example, any firearm poses a danger in the wrong hands. Not just ones that look threatening. If it can kill a moose, it can kill a person.

[Thanos]

It's hard to believe that the government believes in safety when for the better part of the last fifty years both the governing party in power and the Supreme Court have gone out of their way to make it much more difficult for authorities to contain & restrain the dangerously mentally ill who are prone to violence, and at the same time have made it much easier for criminals by reducing prison sentences for violent crime. This year alone we had the Supreme Court abolish the Harper era punishment that gun crime would be punished with a minimum ten year sentence in prison and each & every one of us can bet our last dollar that a Liberal government certainly won't do anything at all to reform that kind of law to bring it back into effect.

Legal gun owners are easy low-hanging fruit for the government to go after in order to politically placate the GTA and Vancouver even though almost none of the crime committed in those places involves a shotgun or long rifle, or even a handgun that was stolen because the owner couldn't be bothered to secure it properly. Illegal handguns brought in from the US by gangsters in a lucrative organized crime venue that the feds have done fuck all about for the better part of the last thirty years. And they'll keep ignoring it because they don't want to risk a second Oka incident by clamping down on guns coming in across First Nations border crossings like with the Mowhawk reserve in Ontario & Quebec.

I give the current Trudeau government a bit of a pass on certain things. Like COVID, especially because the Conservatives are a complete directionless wreck of party right now that offers absolutely no reason for anyone who isn't a Kool-Aid drunk right-wing kook to support them. If we'd have a Conservative government during COVID they would have happily exchanged a half-million dead Canadians in return for not interfering with the precious free market they worship like the Mammonites they truly are. That being said though? A Liberal is always gonna Liberal, and these mendacious mean-spirited shenanigans Trudeau keeps persecuting lawful firearms owners with, none of which will stop a single firearms-involved crime anywhere in this goddamn delusional country, are just proof that none of these political leopards will ever change their spots. Divide and conquer, either regionally or socially, is the Liberal way and always fucking will be.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

This year alone we had the Supreme Court abolish the Harper era punishment that gun crime would be punished with a minimum ten year sentence in prison and each & every one of us can bet our last dollar that a Liberal government certainly won't do anything at all to reform that kind of law to bring it back into effect.

They won't because minimum sentences are unconstitutional. Harper was told that when he passed the law. Forcing a Judge to give person who steals a gun the same sentence as someone who uses a gun to commit a robbery is inherently unfair.

The whole basis of a Justice system is that intent is key to punishing the offence. If you ignore intent by requiring minimum sentences, the justice system becomes arbitrary and unjust.

Edit: The same as these gun bans based on how a firearm looks, when weapons that are functionally identical are not banned. And other guns are banned simply because they share a certain trait with other guns, like a barrel over 20mm wide. They want to ban .50BMG for some reason, but end up banning large gauge shotguns at the same time.

[Thanos]

Harper over-reached. But at least it was in the attempt to punish perpetrators of firearm-involved crimes like drive-bys and mall shootings. "You did this in a crowded place and didn't give a fuck who got hurt? Yeah, you're going away for ten to fifteen minimum, asshole". The letter of the constitution might have prevailed in wrongly (IMO) giving the Supreme Court the excuse to toss this law out but clearly the moral and ethical consideration was on Harper's side. The constitution might say under it's current interpretation that minimum sentences can't be allowed but morally that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed.

And Trudeau wildly over-reaches too, far too often. The most obvious one is this issue, where instead of punishing the perpetrator of a drive-by or mall shooting he's opted to make anyone in possession of a firearm into some sort of quasi-criminal just from the mere act of ownership. And it'll be nothing less than a shame if/when the Supreme Court gives this a stamp of approval simply because the Liberals are cunning enough to word it entirely around the reality that there is no right of ownership of anything (including firearms) in Canada. There's only a privilege of ownership, something that can be abolished overnight if the government of the moment sees it as politically advantageous to them.

I'll also throw in Trudeau's wild over-reaction to the Gerald Stanley verdict in Saskatchewan as proof that he's far more authoritarian and prone to abuse of executive power than Harper ever dreamt of being. Trudeau literally wanted the process of jury selection & trial re-written along racial grounds in order to get verdicts that he deemed just. And he ignored pretty much all the facts that were revealed in the Stanley trial, that it was a clear case of self defense/family defense/home defense and not some horrific racist incident with some Klan-type getting away with it.

A PM in a British-derived democracy has incredible powers, with much less institutional restraint on them than that which curtails the urges or desires of an American president. And it's a very rare person who sits in that office who doesn't go too far multiple times while they're in that seat. What Trudeau's doing with firearms is just a more glaring than usual example of what happens when a PM or party lets their pet peeves dictate their actions on writing law.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

Harper over-reached. But at least it was in the attempt to punish perpetrators of firearm-involved crimes like drive-bys and mall shootings. "You did this in a crowded place and didn't give a fuck who got hurt? Yeah, you're going away for ten to fifteen minimum, asshole".

Harper overreached on everything, which is why the minimum sentence law was the final law of his struck down by the courts, making it 100% of his 'tough on crime' agenda that was declared unconstitutional. All Harper ended up doing was violating people's rights to gain a few temporary political points. He didn't make anyone safer.

Thanos Thanos:

The letter of the constitution might have prevailed in wrongly (IMO) giving the Supreme Court the excuse to toss this law out but clearly the moral and ethical consideration was on Harper's side. The constitution might say under it's current interpretation that minimum sentences can't be allowed but morally that doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed.

Mandatory minimums can never be compatible with a justice system that believes in punishment that fits the offence. For every justified use of such a law, there ends up being an edge case that shows the law is unfair and unjust. The morality that 'ten guilty men should go free, rather that one innocent is punished unjustly' should be what we strive for. Seeking punishment for everything just makes society hate more.

Thanos Thanos:

And Trudeau wildly over-reaches too, far too often. . . . What Trudeau's doing with firearms is just a more glaring than usual example of what happens when a PM or party lets their pet peeves dictate their actions on writing law.

Trudeau is doing the same thing that other politicians have done. They work on outraging their base over something, then try to legislate against that thing. But they mistakenly rally against a symptom, never the problem.

Politicians of old saw problems and correctly identified the cause. The Oil embargo in the 70's led to minimum fuel efficiencies. Car crash deaths for minor traffic incidents let to a complete overhaul of vehicle construction. Acid rain destroying the watershed led to pollution controls on industry.

But Harper and now Trudeau thought guns were causing problems in society, when it's the division that is being sown in society that is causing people to hate and think that violence is the cure for hate. If the perpetrator can't get a gun, they use a vehicle, or a knife. But the hate remains. Politicians are trying to solve a symptom, and ignoring the problem. Guns aren't the cause of domestic violence. Guns aren't responsible for racial hatred, or antisemitism. Australia banned guns decades ago, but just last week they had a mass shooting of police officers that appears to have been planned by a group opposed to government overreach.

You can't treat the symptom and expect that to fix the problem.

[Thanos]

How many other people are obligated to pay the price, often with their lives, when those ten guilty men who just got set free resume the rampaging activities that earned them punishment in the first place? That's the major flaw in this argument, in that for some to feel ethically clean over some utopian concept of a pure justice system a lot of others usually end up as defiled victims who literally lose everything to this sort of fantasy. How about a philosophy that's based in reality instead, in that a bill of rights, a charter of freedoms, or a constitutional foundation shouldn't be turned into some sort of perverse suicide pact where a victim of crime is supposed to meekly stand there and accept their second-class status without complaint when their criminal victimizers go free because of ridiculous technicalities? Isn't that what Donald Trump's done his entire life, evaded justice altogether and basically laughed in contempt at anyone who isn't a criminal like him simply because he employed those smart enough to look for technicalities to exploit? At least a David Milgaard, due to the virtue of there not being a state imposed death penalty to take their life, can receive compensation afterwards if the justice system does him wrong. The person who, as bystander, gets their brains blown out during a mall shooting by robbers usually gets nothing at all, except for some homily about "ten guilty and one innocent" which is at that stage is nothing to them (and their family) the same as "oh well, you gotta break a few eggs to make the perfect omelette".

That a victim or their family should be left in permanent misery while the perpetrator goes free because of overly lenient politicians and judges isn't a virtue in the eyes of everyone the way you assume it to be. If anything it's a perversion that no one in this society should be proud of. Saying it's something to be strived for isn't fairness. If anything it's the total annihilation of fairness entirely, with technicality being worshipped far more than justice ever was.

[DrCaleb]

You know it's an allegorical statement, right? It means that guilt should be absolutely certain, not arbitrary or half-assed. Ten men aren't actually freed. How many innocent people are released after years or decades of detention? How many have been executed?

Now, how many people who have been nothing but compliant with the law will have their property confiscated because of C-21? Just because people who weren't going to comply with the law anyhow, will be slightly inconvenienced in getting guns.

[Thanos]

That's a different issue altogether. The new "guilty" are only in offense because of a politically motivated change in regulations on the part of the Liberals, done in the scummiest way possible through executive order-in-council. It's one of the cheapest of cheap shots I've ever seen a government do in my lifetime and I've been around long enough to see that most politicians of all stripes are nothing but grandstanding scumbags. The vast majority of gun owners simply won't co-operate on this one, and nor should they. They might avoid the firing ranges in case those places are being staked out by undercover RCMP and a lot of them will also quit hunting just to avoid getting ratted out by overly zealous rangers or other government personnel. But hand the guns in meekly? Nah, that's not going to happen. All those rifles and shotguns will be kept inside for home defense, as collections, or as conversation pieces. The Liberals are going to succeed in nothing with this persecution except to cement even further the bitter hatred towards them from those who already regarded them as anaethema already.

Thank fuck Harper got rid of the previous gun registry and (hopefully) had all those records destroyed entirely. And, once again, it's a genuine fucking shame that the current Tories have gone so far into anti-vaxx radicalism and now freely associate with no hesitation with too many other kooks. The gun shenanigans, among other issues, should be the death-knell for the Trudeau government. At least if the world were still normal it very well could be the issue that kills them in an election. Thanks to the ongoing Conservative stupidity though I can see Trudeau winning at least two more elections before he either resigns or finally gets defeated.

And this probably also cements a UCP majority in Alberta too. There's far more gun owners in the cities than the rural areas so the liberal side can't spin it easily as "urban normies vs rural nutcases" the way they can down east. And those urban owners will be just as pissed of at the feds over this as their rural brethren already are. The Smith government came out today and openly said they will have zero participation with any new federal anti-firearms policies and will do nothing to enforce whatever law or regulation changes come out of Ottawa. This will play huge here as some sort of Fort Sumter moment - "nope, we're done with you so piss off". The same thing could happen just as easily in Saskatchewan and Manitoba too, maybe even in Ontario. The only province so far to the left that will gladly help the feds with this nonsense will probably be BC.