The Utter Paranoia (or Slothfulness) of the Gun Nuts

Stockwell Day has decided to quietly do away with a perfectly sensible gun importation regulation. The rule that he has ditched would have required firearms importers to put an imprint on every gun legally imported into this country. The police are in favour of this move as it allows them to better track how guns are falling into the wrong hands.

Now why would the gun lobby oppose such a sensible measure? Either following this rule is somehow too arduous (though I doubt that) or they are completely paranoid. Every attempt to register and track guns is fought tooth and nail by these people. I doubt very much the same people would support the notion of unlicensed motor vehicles or aircraft, but for whatever reason they cannot tolerate the anyone knowing anything about how many guns they have, where they put them, what types they are, or where they came from.

Guns are magical secret toys for this bunch. I don't think any of them take pains to oppose licensing cats, anglers, automobiles or anything else, but the second that someone tries to keep track of guns it's Nazi Germany all over for this bunch (whether or not their claims have any basis in reality is another matter).

Sure. And when the tanks come rolling through, a bunch of rotund hunters used to slathering themselves in deer piss and sitting in a tree will arm themselves with shotguns to stop them. Bullshit. I mean the gun lobby is actually craziest lobby out there in terms of paranoia if they believe in the logical implications of their talking points.

Wasting Parliament's Time

The Conservatives know that the three opposition parties support the gun registry. Nonetheless they will introduce a bill to appease their base that they reasonably ought to know will fail. How much time will parliament spend defeating this stupid bill? How much will this cost taxpayers to stroke the egos of some gun-nuts. For crying out loud, if I have to register my car with the government, you can damn well register your gun. Thanks for wasting my tax dollars, Conservative gun nuts.

Guns in Schools

It now appears that the kids that are being charged for the murder of 15 year-old Jordan Manners last week were probably friends of Jordan and not gangland thugs carrying out an execution to protect their drug racket or whatever gangs want to protect.

It's too soon know if these kids had prior brushes with the law, but assuming they didn't, we have a case where you have two law-abiding (albeit evidently stupid if this was their friend they killed) kids in a dangerous school (C.W. Jeffreys does not enjoy a good reputation in Toronto) arming themselves. Isn't this what the John Lotts of the world want?

Always keep it loaded!!!

I was thinking about the predictable response of the gun lobby what happened at Virginia Tech. The argument goes roughly like this: Nothing terrible will happen so long as law-abiding gun owners are packing heat.

Leaving aside the question of whether that makes Iraq or Afghanistan the world's safest society by this logic, we have a problem with this premise. One of the few things that we do know about the shooter in this case is that he was a resident alien in the US on a student visa. Since I'm pretty sure that a felony is probably one of the easier ways to get such a visa revoked, up until two days ago, this individual was most likely a "law-abiding gun owner."

But what if there were other law abiding gun owners that didn't all go bonkers on the same day that this guy did? Well, it's one thing to own a gun, it's another to know how to use it. Sure you might go to a target range every week, but shooting a human being is not the same as shooting a paper target. For another gun owner to stop this sort of assault they need to be prepared to use deadly force.

Now maybe you're thinking that yeah, you could kill if it was to stop a murderous rampage, but are you ready to die? You'd be risking your life here too.

So, the profile of the sort of person who ought to be armed to prevent this (other than off-duty cops or soldiers - two special cases where I'd say specific training makes them effective) is the type that can use a firearm in a dynamic real-world environment, is not squeamish about killing, and has a disregard for his or her own life.

What's the profile of a school shooter again?