Weekly Politics Thread

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[u/drain-angel]

So for those following the CPC race, Aitchison recently sent out an e-mail regarding his positions (although this position isn't publicized anywhere).

The bottom line:

I’ve long defended the rights of legal firearms owners. Under my leadership, we would simplify Canada’s firearms classification system, scrap this ridiculous freeze, and stop playing politics with public safety.

This leaves only Charest - who explicitly said he would not do anything about guns & Baber - who hasn't said much on the issue.

[u/[deleted] → u/drain-angel]

My vote has been solidified. Charest will be a principled, reasonable conservative that will help draw in the moderate and liberal vote. Assault weapons do not belong in Canadian hands.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You're probably aware of some, if not all of this but I think it's worth saying it anyway. Assault rifles have been banned in Canada for decades. What civilians have or had access to in Canada are simply look like assault rifles. Civilians can't legally own assault rifles in Canada under any circumstances. In order to use a real assault rifle, you would have to join the Canadian Armed Forces and even as a member of the CAF, you still don't own the rifle. Civilian rifles are essentially replicas. The military grade rifles are functionally different than anything regular people have access to in Canada. Civilian rifles in Canada are limited to five rounds, the military grade version has no limit. Civilian rifles are semi-automatic and specifically designed not to be convertible to fully automatic. Three round bursts aren't even legal in Canada. Civilian rifles in Canada get one round per trigger pull, end of story. Civilian rifles aren't built to the same standards as military grade rifles and are a different caliber than their military counterparts. The military caliber isn't legally available to the general public. Despite looking like assault rifles, the civilian versions in Canada offer none of the advantages of military grade assault rifles and are no more deadly than a typical hunting rifle. Even the infamous SKS is semi-automatic only and limited to five rounds. If the government and the news media would take steps to clarify all of this and help people understand that we aren't using assault rifles as civilians in Canada and we can't even own them, it would go a long way to putting an end to this nonsense. Unfortunately, making the general public aware of Canada's gun laws and the functional differences between civilian firearms and military firearms doesn't give the Liberal party a campaign platform.

As for Charest and the idea that going with Charest will open the door to bringing more Liberal voters over to the CPC, his response to the student protests in Quebec would likely chase more Liberal voters away than bring them in. He hardly has a track record as reasonable, that's not my opinion just what's been said about him multiple times over. In fact, his alleged refusal to open dialogue with student groups in Quebec is credited as being the catalyst for the student protests. There are a host of other issues that Liberal voters see as contentious that he has supported in the past and is known for that would probably do more harm than good unless Liberal voters have changed drastically in the past ten years. I can't imagine how him leading the CPC into the election would help anything.