Undemocratic assault-style weapons ban puts Canada on a slippery slope
On May 1, the Liberal Party of Canada delivered on its 2015 campaign promise to “get assault weapons off our streets.”
It may seem to most that this would be an obviously effective and necessary measure to enhance public safety. In fact, the results of an Angus Reid poll released on the same day indicated 78 per cent of Canadians support a complete ban of civilian ownership of assault weapons. That is a compelling number, and in any democratic society, where the will of the people has been gauged, if nothing else, follow-through for political reasons appears mandatory.
The late Aaron Levenstein, author and professor of business administration at Baruch College, once said “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” Could there have been anything concealed in the poll results?
To its credit, Angus Reid also published the qualifying data of respondents. Among the various dimensions was a particularly interesting one. Those who admitted they know little to nothing about current Canadian firearms laws, support for the ban was 89 per cent and 88 per cent, respectively. Section 19 of the Criminal Code of Canada states that ignorance of the law by a person who commits an offence is not an excuse for committing the offence. Why then, do we seem to allow ignorance of existing laws and regulations to justify new ones? Can we possibly have a comprehensive understanding of the nature of a problem without knowing how we have tried to address it in the past?
On the firearms file specifically, the Liberals promised to give the
RCMP final say on regulations, rather than maintaining parliamentary oversight. They are the experts, after all.
Without getting into all the details and vagaries of our current classification and licensing systems, firearms that conform to the classically accepted criteria of “assault weapons” have been prohibited in Canada for decades. So why are we now re-banning what we are told are assault weapons? Why, if banning them is such a crucial component of public safety, has it taken the Liberals this long?
This ban comes on the heels of the worst killing spree in Canadian history, carried out with illegal firearms smuggled across the border. It comes when the public is already in fear of a pandemic, reliance on government intervention is at an all-time high, and Parliament’s participation is limited, with little opportunity for debate or opposition, even in a minority government scenario. It comes by means of an Order in Council (OIC), where legislative/democratic procedure is not necessarily required. In this case, the framework to allow it was legislated with Bill C-71 which became law in June 2019.
OICs are regularly used administratively for political appointments and staffing, and legislatively for regulatory amendments, most of them routine. There are, however, a few notable exceptions, not the least of which was OIC P.C. 1486, commonly known as the Japanese Canadian Internment of 1942 which saw 23,000 Japanese Canadians forced from their homes during the Second World War, many into internment camps, for doing nothing wrong, and despite the RCMP perceiving no threat from them.
Bill Blair, now minister of public safety, was asked about possible tougher measures to crack down on gang violence in Toronto in 2019. He is quoted as saying, “Canada is a country governed by the rule of law. While I know too well that some in our society have no respect for those laws, the rest of us should not be robbed of our fundamental rights and freedoms because of the actions of a few.”
What changed? Why is that statement no longer true?
What if radical environmentalism becomes the next election wedge issue? What if one day, an announcement is made that carbon-emitting internal combustion engines, and all vehicles capable of housing them, were banned and only fully electric cars were allowed, so that we might be safe? What if, overnight, you could no longer drive your car, even if a hybrid (being a variant of an IC engine)? What if you could no longer sell it, and you could no longer transfer ownership? What if you were given two years to surrender your car, after which time you would face criminal prosecution? How happy would you be? Do measures like that sound hard to believe and unlikely to happen in any area of Canadian everyday life?
They already have.
Dave Partanen is a member of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights in Canada.
What if one day, an announcement is made that carbon-emitting internal combustion engines, and all vehicles capable of housing them, were banned