Negligent Discharges

On May 1st, 2020, the Liberal Party of Canada delivered on their 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% 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 the credit of Angus Reid, they also published the qualifying data of respondents . Among the various dimensions of respondents was a particularly interesting one. Among those who admitted they know little to nothing about current Canadian firearms laws, support for the ban was 89% and 88%, 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 credibly support new measures without knowing existing 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? Can we accurately predict any new measure’s likelihood of success without knowing either?

Granted, what is currently enshrined in Canadian law by means of the Firearms Act is often vague. Interpreting certain sections can prove to be a daunting task of consolidating ambiguities and self-contradictions. The related regulations are often even more confusing, where consistency seems to not have the importance it logically should. Unless one is a legal professional specializing in this particular Act, or a firearms owner who is affected daily by it, familiarizing oneself with its complexities seems a needlessly frustrating exercise. To further complicate the probability of any proposed solution’s efficacy, we must also consider the myriad socioeconomic, ideological, and psychiatric issues that contribute to the behavioural escalation trajectories of those willing to commit violent acts, regardless of instrument used, if any. It is far less cognitively and philosophically taxing to defer to the judgment of those we elect to represent us in Parliament to sort these things out; to let the experts decide.

Perhaps that’s part of the problem. With very few exceptions, there are not many bona fide experts overseeing the Ministerial operations under their watch. Furthermore, politicians are expected to evaluate each and every Bill and either escort them through normal parliamentary procedures and protocols to eventually receive Royal Assent to become law, or to abandon them on the floor of the House of Commons or the Senate, regardless of their knowledge or level of experience and expertise. Most seasoned lawyers don’t even have that depth of knowledge to be considered experts on all of them, but Members of Parliament, from all walks of life and professional backgrounds are presumed to. To whom do they defer or rely on advice from to make the most prudent decisions?

On the firearms file specifically, the Liberal Party of Canada 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 licencing 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? Our licencing system is intensive, including mandatory safety classes, spousal consent, along with any recent conjugal partners, criminal records check, medical records check, daily screening, etc. Why, if these firearms in the hands of RCMP-vetted and monitored legal owners are such a clear and present danger, and if banning them is such a crucial component of public safety, has it taken the Liberal Party of Canada nearly five years to do so?

One of the biggest reasons, aside from them already being banned, could be that the evidence clearly indicates that the vast majority of firearms used in violent and criminal incidents are smuggled across the longest demilitarized border in the world, from the highest firearm population density in the world where classifications are sometimes less restrictive around size and function. What may be legally acquirable there may not be here. Circumventing Canada’s stringent regulatory environment provides enormously lucrative rewards for those willing to take on the risks. Another reason could be that among those that do use their firearms with nefarious intent, the percentage of licence-holding offenders is so insignificant that, as general practice, no law enforcement service in the country even bothers to track it.

This seems a very inconvenient truth to the narrative being pushed, doesn’t it?

This ban comes on the heels of the worst killing spree in Canadian history, with illegal firearms smuggled from 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 World War 2, many into internment camps, for doing nothing wrong, and despite the RCMP perceiving no threat from them.

This coincided with and was both facilitated and mutually strengthened by the War Measures Act of 1914. That Act has been replaced with the current Emergencies Act , the same one that keeps coming up during the COVID-19 havoc. The same one that coincided with the ban announcement. It’s worth reading the referenced historical summary and drawing current parallels.

If there has been any comfort in recent times, at least as far as optics go from the government, it has been that racism has no place in Canada, and for that I applaud them. One would hope that the same mindset that breeds racism, one that adopts stereotypical generalizations on external appearance and internal ignorance, would never make it to government and would certainly not be in a position to repeat history.

Bill Blair, now Minister of Public Safety, the Minister under who the ban was implemented, was asked about possible tougher and wider measures to crack down on the gang violence problem 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.”

So what changed? Why is that statement no longer true?

The three most-signed electronic Parliamentary petitions in the history of electronic Parliamentary petitions all oppose this enormous and misguided overreach, two specifically through this method (OIC) and ask for it to be reversed. This is a dangerous precedent to be setting. While it could be firearms today, and Canadians of Japanese descent in years gone by, tomorrow it could be something that affects you.

What if radical environmentalism becomes the next opportunity to virtue signal to the world and become an 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 in any way? 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 events like that sound hard to believe and unlikely to happen in any area of Canadian everyday life?

They already have.

Why?