Weekly Politics Thread

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[u/Doctor_Dabmeister]

I think the Liberals are now just speedrunning trying to stop the growth of legal gun owners in Canada. We legal gun owners are also quite unfairly stigmatized by many Canadians, especially the ones living in cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and also their surrounding suburbs (basically the people who have the most say in an election). Here are my thoughts on what should be done in order to help change our public perception. u/Kerfaf also posted some good points about winning over urban Canadians and not copying the strategies of 2A activists in the US so please give their comment a read too.

We as individuals should do our best to have good faith conversations about guns with trusted friends and family, especially the anti-guns ones. We should mainly focus on activities like target shooting and hunting. We can also correct any common misconceptions they bring up about firearms in Canada. Sometimes, it may be best to just offer to take your anti-gun friends/family to a range or Crown Land. Giving them 20 minutes to plink with a .22 rifle may do more to change their mind about guns than debating them for 2 hours. We must also have realistic expectations though, one range trip or discussion about guns will not completely change their mind but it will get them thinking that legal gun owners are not as bad as society would like them to believe.

When discussing guns with friends/family, I would avoid politics initially but if it does come up, we shouldn't resort to name calling when it comes to the Liberals or any anti-gun groups. If you have to bring up Trudeau, just call him Trudeau, if you have to bring up the Liberal Party, just say the Liberals. As a general rule, don't use any language US Republicans use to refer to their political opponents. Also on the topic of the US, we should distance ourselves as much as we can from the US gun rights movement, especially the Republican ones. Much of Canada is rightfully disgusted with the Republican party. Associating ourselves with them will only hurt us in the long run. US gun rights mainly focuses on guns as a self-defense tool, I don't think most Canadians are comfortable with that idea yet.

I think Canadians deserve better firearm advocacy groups. I've only had an RPAL for 3 years and live in Ontario so please correct me if I'm wrong on certain things. I think our current advocacy groups have spent too much time preaching to the choir and not enough with public outreach. Have they advertised any sort of public outreach or events before the May 2020 OIC? Even after the OIC, all I remember they did was organize a small protest and they organized the Range Day this past weekend but barely any ranges in my area was participating. Do y'all wonder what they're doing with your donations? Some of the groups could benefit from a change in senior leadership too...

Lastly I want to bring up the Conservative Party. Even as a left-wing Canadian who has voted NDP, I've accepted the fact that I may have to vote CPC if I don't want to see my guns confiscated or "bought back" for pennies. This sucks a lot for me personally since I literally only agree with the CPC on the topic of guns.

The CPC and their voters need to realize that they must become more socially progressive, even more than O'Toole, if they want a chance at forming government in the present day. The CPC may be more socially progressive than they were 15 years ago or compared to US Republicans (the bar is so low when is comes to the Republican party it might as well be on the ground) but I'd say thats not enough for most Canadians. Lets go with the example of abortion which has many Canadians worried due to whats happening in the US. Its not enough for CPC leaders to be pro-choice, they should at the very least prevent their MPs from tabling any bills which may restrict abortion. Anti-abortion groups almost never seem to endorse Liberal or NDP MPs. Being condemned by anti-abortion groups should be seen as a badge of honour.

Even if the CPC does win the next election, there is a high likelihood it will be a minority government. I can't see the Liberals and CPC working together so they would need to form alliances with parties even more left to get a chance at passing anything. I remember Singh saying that he absolutely will not work with Scheer if he won a minority government but didn't say the same about O'Toole.

[u/drain-angel → u/Doctor_Dabmeister]

Complete lack of electoral & general basis for this entire comment aside, it's funny how you can say that gun owners should give up on issues such as 2A/self-defense/codification and then on abortion, despite by your own admission of all major parties holding a pro-choice position, is something that is completely infallible and that the party should go as far as whipping MPs over bills that weren't going to pass anyways to gain your personal approval (and somehow construe that as political reality).

[u/Doctor_Dabmeister → u/drain-angel]

I'm not asking gun owners in Canada to give up on issues of self-defense. I've posted replies in this post and previous posts where I said that I support the use of guns for self defense.

In my last post, I'm suggesting that gun owners initially avoid discussing self-defense when talking with anti-gun people. We'll have a hard time convincing those people guns should be used for self-defense when they get scared by just the sight of a .22 rifle. To be honest, I didn't want to write an entire essay with my views on firearms in Canada after work on a Monday.

Correct me if I'm wrong but all the other major political parties in Canada already forbid their MPs from tabling bills that restrict abortion. No reason why the CPC can't do that.

I'm no political expert, I'm just a Canadian posting about changes I would like to see. I've had people tell me here before that I should become a single issue voter just so we can all keep our guns. If they're expecting left wing Canadians to sacrifice their beliefs and vote CPC, the CPC should be willing to sacrifice some of their beliefs as well

[u/drain-angel → u/Doctor_Dabmeister]

The other guy made some pretty decent points about the self-defence thing so I'm going to address the latter half.

Correct me if I'm wrong but all the other major political parties in Canada already forbid their MPs from tabling bills that restrict abortion. No reason why the CPC can't do that.

Shitting on the representatives of a very solid base of support to make gains to people who already deem their support as wholly conditional on an objective measure of needing to whip the party on social issues that the party already holds the same opinion on is naive at best. Also no, Liberal MPs in the 2000s also did the same (tabling some bills regarding restrictions), and I should mention that under a literal evangelical neocon (Harper) with a majority, abortion wasn't even touched at all. If not touching abortion while in power for that long and holding a pro-choice position isn't sufficient enough then nothing ever will be, given the "pro-life" position is - on a relative scale- globally pro-choice in places like Europe.

I'm no political expert, I'm just a Canadian posting about changes I would like to see. I've had people tell me here before that I should become a single issue voter just so we can all keep our guns. If they're expecting left wing Canadians to sacrifice their beliefs and vote CPC, the CPC should be willing to sacrifice some of their beliefs as well

And this is the opinion presented as political reality. What lost the CPC in 2021 isn't enough keeling over (and this is coming from someone who thought O'Toole deserved a 2nd chance), it's PPC vote splitting. Although the CPC had some marginal vote share gains in the 905/GVA, it costed them dearly in some urban ridings in the Prairies and those very same suburban ridings where PPC vote splitting was enough to not only eliminate all those gains, but also costed about 20-25 ridings on top of that. If just a third of the PPC vote transferred back (polling shows this is the amount of people who defected in 2021), it could've changed the way 2021 happened entirely. The CPC is polling on pre-election highs and that's not factoring for typical pollster house errors, with the PPC down. It's very clear that the strategy on the way forward is to rally and re-mobilize the base for electoral success, and it's working.

Why bother keeling over further in social issues just to risk getting flanked by the PPC again in tight ridings and not being sufficient enough for those who will always hold an unreasonable standard for a position they already agree on?

Personally, I don't care for the culture war shit. But there's political reality backed by data and it contradicts a lot of opinions here who then try to push it as a political necessity for survival.