Despite threats of decade-long prison terms, thousands of Canadian gun-owners are flouting a Jan. 1, 2003, deadline to register their firearms.
One man, a 70-year-old Korean War vet named Oscar Lacombe, stood in front of the Alberta legislature, sporting a proud chest of medals and an unregistered .22 rifle, daring the lawmakers to toss him in the pokey. “Come and arrest me,” he defied them, openly declaring the law “unjust and dangerous.”
How dangerous? “Critics of gun control in Canada, where some 20 percent of households own a firearm, argue that the registry is a step toward government confiscation – as happened in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia,” reported the Christian Science Monitor earlier this week. Hitler and Little Joe were pretty dangerous fellows.
Dead numb to the perceived threat, however, Canadian officials are stumped by the civil disobedience, characterizing their people as normally docile and go-alongish about their sensitive statism and tender tyranny.
Parliamentarian Garry Breitkreuz – who wants to defeat the registry via political means – expressed concerns that his countrymen are “developing an attitude toward the law which strikes at the very heart of a civilized society.” Inflating government-approved stats on the likely number (“tens of thousands”) of lawbreakers, Breitkreuz says that as many as 500,000 Canadians are breaking the law. He cites the figure to show the law is unweildy and unworkable.
While he’s right, the non-value added number is bad enough for the enforcers of the program.
The truth is, smart Canadians can look across the ocean to see where gun control leads. Her Majesty’s mess in Britain is truly colossal. After hyping the importance of outlawing firearms as a tack to pop the crime balloon, Brits are finding it was a bunch of John Bull.
Instead of gun crime deflating in Britain as was promised by the gun-banners, gun crime has actually boosted 35 percent in Britain, according to government figures. “That represents an average of 27 offenses involving firearms every day in England,” reported the BBC, “with guns fired in nearly a quarter of cases.” Of 18 industrialized countries surveyed, a recent U.N. study pegs England and Wales as worst-off crime-wise, according to Bentley College historian and author Joyce Lee Malcolm in recent BBC commentary. Since 1997, when the Labor Party took power, gun crimes have more than doubled.
“The only word for this is failure,” said Conservative Party Parliamentarian Oliver Letwin.
There is one other word, too, as Malcolm demonstrates: Predictable.
She calls the government’s desire to monopolize force “unrealistic.” Not only is it impossible for a police force to protect everyone, but the available man hours that could go to chasing hoodlums and ne’er-do-wells are nicked down while an ever increasing sum of time (“hundreds of thousands of police hours”) are spent enforcing gun laws. Attention is taken away from the burglar and ruffian and placed on your mild-mannered Uncle Nigel who may have an antique pistol hidden in his boot-polish kit.
Said English jurist A.V. Dicey, as quoted by Malcolm, “Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians.” Welcome to Britain, circa 2003. And, mind-bogglingly enough, the boilerplate answer of British authorities is to simply crack down further. That helps the way three more shots of Beefeater takes care of the downsides of inebriation.
Now Canada is moving the same direction as Jolly Old England (and, unfortunately, so is the U.S.). But its citizens apparently aren’t going silently into the night. The first step toward the total outlawing and eventual confiscation of firearms is registration; after all, the government can’t take what it can’t locate or doesn’t know exists. Statists intent on gaining control of their citizens’ ownership of guns always move to register them. Just ask Adolf and Joe – they were experts.
Back to Breitkreuz’s 500,000 figure. It’s too bad this number isn’t true. Breitkreuz points to the problem of having half a million lawbreakers running around, but, looked a different way, that’s a boon. Such a tally of resisters would mean enforcing the law would be basically impossible, saving our Northern neighbors great crime and strife. I have little faith in dashing the registry by political means; governments like gun control too much to let go.
As Richard Poe writes in “The Seven Myths of Gun Control,” “By disarming honest citizens, these countries have emboldened the criminals, who now go about their business without fear.”
So while Canadians may be breaking the law by the tens of thousands, contrasted with Britain, such a move might actually be the most responsible thing to do.
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