Weekly Politics Thread

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[u/RaHarmakis]

I disagree pretty completely with this.

Pre 2020 regulations worked pretty well from a public safety perspective. Having a robust licensing and background checks isgood, and we should be championing them. These regulations are a big part of why we can honestly say we are the most law-abiding segment of Canadian society.

In the end, as a group, we need to appear more sane than those that oppose us. Ranting about 2A style rights, will get us less than nowhere. We need to continue focusing on how safe we are as group, and how regulations don't impact those that make Canadians unsafe.

No one wants the unregulated clusterfuck that some of the USA is, as they see it as significantly less safe than we are.

The Canadian Psyche for good or bad hinges on the idea that we are not/better than the Amaericans.

All of the fights that we are in now are because of the US and the population not wanting us to be like the US. They don't understand the system we had before, but they know they don't want the system in the US that appears to be actively producing mass shootings at an unacceptable rate. Advocating for anything that looks like the US regulatory system will play right into the Liberal hands.

[u/throwa37 → u/RaHarmakis]

Advocating for anything that looks like the US regulatory system will play right into the Liberal hands.

In the short term, arguably. But in the long term, the gun discussion being dominated entirely by the sportsman argument is what got us exactly to where we are today, so it's not like it can get much worse.

Notice that the narrative around C-21 didn't change - and the Liberals had no intention of withdrawing the amendments from C-21 - until the discussion shifted to the rights of rural and indigenous Canadians, and how it would impact the weapons necessary for their way of life. Ultimately, to get to where we want to go, taking the guns has to be seen as a violation of the rights of the people, not a mere revocation of their "sporting privileges". Only now are we starting to move in this direction, and we're already seeing results.

[u/Haybinger949 → u/RaHarmakis]

The thing is, these ideals of licensing and background checks existed for along time, they were literally around before the Firearm's Act even existed. The system used to approve and distribute PALs, while slightly different, was already being used for the FAC pre 1990s.

When considering this is what "everyone loves/appreciates about Canadian common sense gun laws", then suddenly you start to realize that 90% of the laws to follow, are in fact nonsense and only serve as a means to further civil disarmament.

There is a short book, perhaps more of an expanded pamphlet, called: Observations On A One-Way Street: The Canadian Firearm Control Debate. It was presented and distributed by a combination of organizations (NFA, IPSC, CSAAA, etc.) in Canada in the early 1990s as a voice against C-68/The Firearm's Act. You argued:

We need to continue focusing on how safe we are as group, and how regulations don't impact those that make Canadians unsafe.

This book literally made this exact argument, it contains detailed statistics, charts and tables alongside other international examples to parallel Canada. Things we always espouse about our lower crime incidence rate, the minimal quantity of legal guns used in actual crime, plummeting homicide rates outside of organized crime and so on. This has already been the attempted strategy since the beginning of most of the modern gun control movement. And it didn't stop a damn thing.

While I accredit C-68 with *a few* marginal benefits in giving national clarity on regulations, the majority of the bill that wasn't already in some form of law was just laying out firearms prohibitions and the mechanisms to continue to enact them. It's time to push back on a different front, or history will just repeat itself.

[u/RaHarmakis → u/Haybinger949]

I do understand how you feel. I will agree that a line does need to be drawn somewhere where we, as a group, say "no further."

For me, it was the pre-2020 regulations. The, once that line is recovered, we can then work to highlight the parts of the regulations that serve no one. It's a palatable goal that can be sold to the masses without spooking them back to the Liberal camp.

We can agree to disagree where that line is.

My only caution is that Over Reaching is a two-way street that is full of pit falls. This time, the Liberals over reached, but I do think it's very possible for the gun communities to overreach, and the consequences of us over reaching, and fully loosing the support of the majority, will be absolutely catastrophic to us.

[u/RaHarmakis → u/Haybinger949]

Further: This is a debate that we always need to have in a rational way. All sides of the Gun Community need to keep each other honest. If my thoughts set us on a slippery slope, you need to voice that concern, and if your thoughts will set up a critical overreach, then it's up to me to define how! The best path likley lays somewhere between us, and we need to keep looking for that best way.

In the end, we are on the same team fighting the same fight.

[u/[deleted] → u/RaHarmakis]

"Pre 2020 regulations worked pretty well ... having a robust licensing system and background checks is good"

Sure. But they only open up the potential to be abused seeing how C21 is going. It needs to be re-done otherwise we're in for another round of nonsense whenever a Liberal government is re-elected.

"As a group we need to appear more sane than the opposition. Ranting about 2A-style rights will get us nowhere ... we need to emphasize how safe [gun owners] are as a group"

We already do. I can't imagine a more sane group considering we have police chiefs and academics arguing for us but no one seems to listen for more than a few minutes. Secondly, the 2A and gun culture down south are the two reasons as to why guns will never disappear in the US. We don't have the luxury of having our right to bear arms recognized and codified, so it's going to be a constant push and pull (and therefore a political issue) until then.

As for your last point, yeah. We're in this mess because of single celled organisms who import American issues into our border and simultaneously claim they don't want to be American. Again, winning hearts and minds and shifting our gun culture. We can't keep beating the same drum when that drum has been used to hit us in the face. It won't work anymore.