Zerbisias has her facts -- and logic -- twisted in regards to gun registry
There's something special about guns in the hearts of Ontarian left-wingers.
Former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant famously made waves with his "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign -- which, if one were to argue the matter under the guise of specious hilarity, may have implied that people don't die of natural causes -- in support of a ban on handguns.
When the federal Conservative party declined to jump on board with Bryant's campaign, noting that legal ownership of handguns was already restricted to target shooters, collectors and those who need them for the purpose of their employment, Bryant lashed out rather predictably.
"The Conservatives have long been in the holster of the gun lobby," Bryant fumed. "I say `no gun, no funeral.'"
And he did -- very often.
Despite the fact that the No Gun, No Funeral campaign was operated out of Bryant's campaign office (something his staff had the temerity to deny when contacted), Bryant mustered likewise temerity in insisting that the campaign wasn't part of his reelection bid.
Moreoever than this, however, the No Gun No Funeral campaign was based largely on a very dubious version of the facts regarding handguns, handgun use, and guns in general.
In today's Toronto Star, Antonia Zerbisias took her own turn at offering up specious argumentation in favour of the Liberal party model of gun control.
"The one thing I will never understand about the Conservatives is how they say they can be so down on crime – and yet so up with guns. Some guns, anyway," Zerbisias writes in her op-ed column. "Guns such as that used to murder those four Mounties in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in 2005."
Zerbisias goes on to complain that the Conservative party has moved once again to scrap the federal long gun registry, which would exempt rifles and shotguns from the registry.
Full stop.
God knows that one will never stop Zerbisias from trying to portray the Conservative party as hicks and rednecks, riding in from the cowboy west to force their nefarious gun culture on the rest of the country. But one would think she could at least be a little more honest about the details.
Zerbisias tells Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner to tell the murdered mounties' families that "the long-gun registry unfairly targets our hard-working farmers, hunters and sport shooters, but not criminals."
The problem for Zerbisias is that the Mounties murdered outside of Mayerthorpe by James Roszko weren't murdered using a hunting rifle or a shotgun.
Roszko killed Constables Brock Myrol, Peter Schiemann, Leo Johnston and Anthony Gordon with an HK .308 semi-automatic assault rifle -- the kind of weapon that is already restricted under federal firearms legislation, and will remain restricted even after the long gun registry is repealed.
But if one thought that Zerbisias was being rather liberal about the facts, one just has to wait to see what she does with her logic, when she writes that "fact is, according to Canada's Coalition for Gun Control, one out of three women killed by their husbands is shot, 88 per cent of them by legally owned rifles and shotguns."
Zerbisias declines to note that registering those weapons in no way prevented the murder, lending skepticism to her next claim:
"Fact is, according to Statistics Canada, firearm spousal homicide is down drastically since the gun registry was enforced," seeing as how we've already seen that registration of firearms doesn't prevent them from being used to murder, there is absolutely no justification for parading this particular correlation as proof positive that the gun registry itself has reduced such crimes. The reduction is much more likely due to other forms of gun control introduced since the introduction of the registry, including enforcement tactics.
Antonia Zerbisias may be surprised to find out that many small-c and capital-c conservatives alike support gun control. But, unlike Ontario's power elite and would-be power elite, conservatives prefer methods of gun control that actually protect Canadians, as opposed to metely being a nuisance to law-abiding gun owners.
But don't ask Zerbisias about that. She's still too busy pretending that the Mayerthorpe Four were murdered with a hunting rifle.
Showing posts with label No Gun No Funeral. Show all posts
Showing posts with label No Gun No Funeral. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, April 21, 2008
Elections Canada More (and Less) Transparent Than it Would Like
Little substance to "in and out" scheme, and too many unanswered questions
As more and more details begin to emerge about the recent RCMP raid of the Conservative Party headquarters, the more and more it seems to be a simple rehashing of the same old story: another manufactured scandal with little or no substance behind it.
Logically, the charges by Elections Canada are actually fairly difficult to support. The claim is that the offending ads, paid for by the party which was then reimbursed by local candidates with funds provided by the party in the first place, were actually intended to support the party, as opposed to the candidates.
The ads in question were reportedly mostly identical to the federal party's ads, except with portions endorsing local candidates added to them.
While the back-and-forth transfer of funds -- hence the "in and out" label -- appears at its basest level to be rather suspicious, the charges thin out considerably once one realizes that the charges basically amount to the ads produced for local candidates being too similar to the federal party's ads. Given that the ads, in the end, supported the candidate, Elections Canada's complaints seem to have little substance to them at all.
Furthermore, Elections Canada seems to be overlooking a few intracies about Canadian politics: most importantly, creating an artificial distinction between supporting local candidates and supporting the parties they run for.
A simple fact regarding Canadian politics is that election campaigns tend to be very leader-centered, and thus party-centered. While local candidates inevitably benefit from such partisan consideration, it doesn't change the limited amount of influence many candidates have over their own election.
Certainly, some candidates do have the good fortune to overcome partisanship -- consider the cases of Belinda Stronach and Scott Brison, who have been elected as both Liberals and Conservatives. But the severe glut of so-called "stronghold ridings" where partisan is so entrenched as to ensure the election and reelection of candidates from certain parties suggests that these ridings are fewer and further between than we'd like to think.
Elections Canada's ruling may reflect what many Canadians could be argued to theoretically prefer politically, but preferences do not necessarily constitute reality.
For example, Elections Canada may prefer that local candidates produce their own advertising, in its entirety, but nothing in the law demands that they do this.
Elections Canada's own preferences don't necessarily constitute reality.
Of course, there may be more to Elections Canada's actions than their own publicity suggests. Whether more (or less) cynically-minded observers want to give the presence of Liberal party photographers at the site of the raid the attention it warrants or not, one also has to consider the fact that Elections Canada has, to date, declined to investigate an obvious example of the Ontario Liberal party (another organization awash in cash).
After all, there's little question that "No Gun, No Funeral", considering it's evident purpose, was as much a violation of Election law as anything the Conservative party has done.
The more details of this story emerge, the more one wonders whether or not this really isn't just some Elections Canada bureaucrats trying to enforce their own preferences on Canadian politics.
It is, however, interesting to see how selectively they're doing it.
As more and more details begin to emerge about the recent RCMP raid of the Conservative Party headquarters, the more and more it seems to be a simple rehashing of the same old story: another manufactured scandal with little or no substance behind it.
Logically, the charges by Elections Canada are actually fairly difficult to support. The claim is that the offending ads, paid for by the party which was then reimbursed by local candidates with funds provided by the party in the first place, were actually intended to support the party, as opposed to the candidates.
The ads in question were reportedly mostly identical to the federal party's ads, except with portions endorsing local candidates added to them.
While the back-and-forth transfer of funds -- hence the "in and out" label -- appears at its basest level to be rather suspicious, the charges thin out considerably once one realizes that the charges basically amount to the ads produced for local candidates being too similar to the federal party's ads. Given that the ads, in the end, supported the candidate, Elections Canada's complaints seem to have little substance to them at all.
Furthermore, Elections Canada seems to be overlooking a few intracies about Canadian politics: most importantly, creating an artificial distinction between supporting local candidates and supporting the parties they run for.
A simple fact regarding Canadian politics is that election campaigns tend to be very leader-centered, and thus party-centered. While local candidates inevitably benefit from such partisan consideration, it doesn't change the limited amount of influence many candidates have over their own election.
Certainly, some candidates do have the good fortune to overcome partisanship -- consider the cases of Belinda Stronach and Scott Brison, who have been elected as both Liberals and Conservatives. But the severe glut of so-called "stronghold ridings" where partisan is so entrenched as to ensure the election and reelection of candidates from certain parties suggests that these ridings are fewer and further between than we'd like to think.
Elections Canada's ruling may reflect what many Canadians could be argued to theoretically prefer politically, but preferences do not necessarily constitute reality.
For example, Elections Canada may prefer that local candidates produce their own advertising, in its entirety, but nothing in the law demands that they do this.
Elections Canada's own preferences don't necessarily constitute reality.
Of course, there may be more to Elections Canada's actions than their own publicity suggests. Whether more (or less) cynically-minded observers want to give the presence of Liberal party photographers at the site of the raid the attention it warrants or not, one also has to consider the fact that Elections Canada has, to date, declined to investigate an obvious example of the Ontario Liberal party (another organization awash in cash).
After all, there's little question that "No Gun, No Funeral", considering it's evident purpose, was as much a violation of Election law as anything the Conservative party has done.
The more details of this story emerge, the more one wonders whether or not this really isn't just some Elections Canada bureaucrats trying to enforce their own preferences on Canadian politics.
It is, however, interesting to see how selectively they're doing it.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
No Gun No Funeral Reveals Holes in Election Law
Story raises interesting questions about what should and should not be considered campaign material
The quiet controversy surrounding the No Gun No Funeral website became a little bit clearer yesterday, as Michael Bryant admitted that he is, in fact, the man behind the site.
"It's my pharse; it's my idea; it's my website," Bryant admitted.
Ontario elections anwered an inquiry submitted by Martin Gobin, a candidate for the Libertarian party, by notifying him that the website doesn't meet the definition of political advertising because it doesn't directly promote Bryant or the Liberal party.
Bryant explained that no constituency resources were used to develop the site.
Yet with the Ontario provincial election coming up, the handgun ban just happens to be an issue Bryant has been campaigning on.
While the website may not be officially part of his campaign, it just happens to be a website that Bryant started that also just happens to help his campaign by reinforcing his message.
As such, the website is part of Bryant's campaign, if ony unofficially.
Bryant's website clearly falls into a deep grey area of election law. While it's true that it never mentions Bryant or the Liberal party, it's solidly connected to a campaign that Bryant himself has been running, and has admitted to running, in conjunction with his election campaign.
If one unquestionably accepts Bryant's site as a part of his campaign despite its obvious unofficial status, it opens up a pandora's box of issues that election law has yet to address. For example: the question of whether or not all websites that address an issue that a politician is campaigning on should be considered campaign advertising.
If so, this would categorize a wide variety of websites, from independent advocacy groups, many of whom would pre-date the election call, to blogs.
Consider the definition of third-party advertisers, which are required to register with Elections Canada if they spend $500 or more. While individual blogs certainly fall under the $500 mark, larger blogging groups like the Blogging Tories or Liblogs could certainly qualify, depending upon how much it costs them to maintain their servers.
Consider also that many bloggers don't become officially involved in the campaign, and as such remain unofficial commentators.
Then again, there is a difference: Bryant's website isn't being run by an independent advocacy group, or unofficially involved commentator -- it's being run by himself and the Liberal party. It isn't being run in the mere interest of increasing the profile of a particular issue -- it's being run with the intent of helping to win the election for a specific candidate who is already campaigning on that issue, whether or not that candidate and his party are explicitly mentioned at all.
One can also raise the question of where the funds to maintain and develop the site have come from. While they may not have come from the constituency, they have come from somewhere.
While No Gun No Funeral may not be officially part of Bryant's campaign, it's certainly a political entity. If Bryant and his colleagues are funding the site out-of-pocket that is one thing. But if they're accepting donations from the public for, or donating their own funds to, a separate "No Gun No Funeral" political entity, then they should be subject to the $1,100 contribution limit. If they've already contributed that money to another candidate or organization (perhaps their own), they could find themselves subject to an even greater legal quandry, one that seems ill-defined under current election law.
Whether or not unofficial side campaigns should be considered part of a candidate's election campaign will be an issue for Elections Canada and parliament to decide.
In the meantime, Bryant has managed to find a fairly serious loophole in election law that he's exploiting rather shamelessly, all in the name of deception and disinformation.
The quiet controversy surrounding the No Gun No Funeral website became a little bit clearer yesterday, as Michael Bryant admitted that he is, in fact, the man behind the site.
"It's my pharse; it's my idea; it's my website," Bryant admitted.
Ontario elections anwered an inquiry submitted by Martin Gobin, a candidate for the Libertarian party, by notifying him that the website doesn't meet the definition of political advertising because it doesn't directly promote Bryant or the Liberal party.
Bryant explained that no constituency resources were used to develop the site.
Yet with the Ontario provincial election coming up, the handgun ban just happens to be an issue Bryant has been campaigning on.
While the website may not be officially part of his campaign, it just happens to be a website that Bryant started that also just happens to help his campaign by reinforcing his message.
As such, the website is part of Bryant's campaign, if ony unofficially.
Bryant's website clearly falls into a deep grey area of election law. While it's true that it never mentions Bryant or the Liberal party, it's solidly connected to a campaign that Bryant himself has been running, and has admitted to running, in conjunction with his election campaign.
If one unquestionably accepts Bryant's site as a part of his campaign despite its obvious unofficial status, it opens up a pandora's box of issues that election law has yet to address. For example: the question of whether or not all websites that address an issue that a politician is campaigning on should be considered campaign advertising.
If so, this would categorize a wide variety of websites, from independent advocacy groups, many of whom would pre-date the election call, to blogs.
Consider the definition of third-party advertisers, which are required to register with Elections Canada if they spend $500 or more. While individual blogs certainly fall under the $500 mark, larger blogging groups like the Blogging Tories or Liblogs could certainly qualify, depending upon how much it costs them to maintain their servers.
Consider also that many bloggers don't become officially involved in the campaign, and as such remain unofficial commentators.
Then again, there is a difference: Bryant's website isn't being run by an independent advocacy group, or unofficially involved commentator -- it's being run by himself and the Liberal party. It isn't being run in the mere interest of increasing the profile of a particular issue -- it's being run with the intent of helping to win the election for a specific candidate who is already campaigning on that issue, whether or not that candidate and his party are explicitly mentioned at all.
One can also raise the question of where the funds to maintain and develop the site have come from. While they may not have come from the constituency, they have come from somewhere.
While No Gun No Funeral may not be officially part of Bryant's campaign, it's certainly a political entity. If Bryant and his colleagues are funding the site out-of-pocket that is one thing. But if they're accepting donations from the public for, or donating their own funds to, a separate "No Gun No Funeral" political entity, then they should be subject to the $1,100 contribution limit. If they've already contributed that money to another candidate or organization (perhaps their own), they could find themselves subject to an even greater legal quandry, one that seems ill-defined under current election law.
Whether or not unofficial side campaigns should be considered part of a candidate's election campaign will be an issue for Elections Canada and parliament to decide.
In the meantime, Bryant has managed to find a fairly serious loophole in election law that he's exploiting rather shamelessly, all in the name of deception and disinformation.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Liberal Party Linked to Gun Ban Website, Lies About It
Steve Janke catches the Liberals... uh... red-handed. (Get it? Red-handed? Aw, forget it...)
Thanks to Steve Janke, the suggestions made in an earlier post have been solidly confirmed.
Anyone who visits the No Gun, No Funeral website will quickly notice that the site is red. Really red.
It wasn't at all hard to link the site, it's partisan attacks on Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day and Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant's "No Gun No Funeral" buttons together as a less-than-sophisticated Liberal party campaign ploy.
Janke, however, has produced the straight poop regarding the site, and it takes what was merely speculatory into the realm of the confirmed fact.
According to Janke, the site's registration information links it solidly to two individuals: Glenn Brown and Nikki Holland.
Holland is a member of the "Green Light committee" for the Ontario wing of the federal Liberal party. Brown is the riding association president for St Paul's, which just happens to be Michael Bryant's riding.
The phone number the site is registered to also happens to belong to the St. Paul's Provincial Liberal Association.
According to an unidentified individual at Michael Bryant's campaign office, the website is not part of their campaign. At least not officially. But it is registed to the Bryant campaign's phone number.
So, not only is Michael Bryant using the No Gun, No Funeral website to campaign against his opponent's federal counterparts instead of his actual opponents, but his campaign isn't even admitting to it.
So if the lack of a Liberal party identification on the website isn't dishonest, the refusal of the Liberal party to admit it definitely is.
Thanks to Steve Janke, the suggestions made in an earlier post have been solidly confirmed.
Anyone who visits the No Gun, No Funeral website will quickly notice that the site is red. Really red.
It wasn't at all hard to link the site, it's partisan attacks on Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day and Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant's "No Gun No Funeral" buttons together as a less-than-sophisticated Liberal party campaign ploy.
Janke, however, has produced the straight poop regarding the site, and it takes what was merely speculatory into the realm of the confirmed fact.
According to Janke, the site's registration information links it solidly to two individuals: Glenn Brown and Nikki Holland.
Holland is a member of the "Green Light committee" for the Ontario wing of the federal Liberal party. Brown is the riding association president for St Paul's, which just happens to be Michael Bryant's riding.
The phone number the site is registered to also happens to belong to the St. Paul's Provincial Liberal Association.
According to an unidentified individual at Michael Bryant's campaign office, the website is not part of their campaign. At least not officially. But it is registed to the Bryant campaign's phone number.
So, not only is Michael Bryant using the No Gun, No Funeral website to campaign against his opponent's federal counterparts instead of his actual opponents, but his campaign isn't even admitting to it.
So if the lack of a Liberal party identification on the website isn't dishonest, the refusal of the Liberal party to admit it definitely is.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Sophistry at Work: "No Gun, No Funeral" Site Misses Mark
"No Gun, No Funeral" makes up its own facts
In the never-ending pantheon of lazy-minded solutions to gun crime, the recently-proposed national ban on handguns ranks pretty close to the top of the list with the federal long gun registry.
The website coincides with a new rhetorical tactic launched by Onatrio's Liberal premier Dalton "Flying" McGuinty, using the province's Attorney General, Michael Bryant, as a proxy. Bryant has recently revealled that he's made up "No Gun, No Funeral" buttons that he carries around in his pocket and distributes.
Which is actually so two years ago. Bryant's apparent ability to miss a trend by a full couple of years notwithstanding, one wonders if it's merely coincidental.
The centrepiece of Bryant's "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign is clearly the "No Gun, No Funeral" website. Run by "a group of Canadians dedicated to tougher gun controls in Canada",, the website tries to dispell a number of myths regarding handgun bans and gun control, most of which actually turn out to be... well... true.
The Get the Facts section of the site actually starts off with the following hilarious claim: "About 135 people are murdered every year with a handgun, and many more die as a result of suicide or accidents involving a handgun."
Now, of course what's hilarious isn't that 135 people in Canada are murdered every year with a handgun. What is hilarious is that proponents of the handgun ban apparently want to pretend that banning handguns will prevent people who have decided to kill themselves from doing so, and it probably will prevent them from killing themselves... with a handgun. There are plenty of other methods a person could use to kill someone. (Oops.)
The first piss-poor attempt at mythbusting addresses the idea that "handguns are already virtually banned in Canada", then cites what the site suggests are fairly lax gun control policies: "Anyone who (1) is over 18, (2) passes a safety course and background check, and (3) either has a membership in a gun club OR declares themselves to be a collector, can get a license to buy a handgun."
Of the myths "busted" this one turns out to be closest to being busted, but the website still misses its mark. What it actually demonstrates is that Canadian gun control policy has some very reasonable hoops for prospective gun ownership. On this note, minors and criminals in Canada sure aren't buying them legally, so a handgun ban is really only a legal handgun ban, and focuses on the legal purchase and ownership of handguns, when the real problem is the illegal possession and use of handguns.
Unsurprisingly, this is a point that either escapes the campaign's mangers, or that they merely choose to ignore because they can't counter it.
The second myth "busted" is that "illegal handguns are all smuggled in from the US". The site then claims that "Thousands of legal handguns are stolen each year from Canadian collectors and target shooters. These guns are sold onto the street, and are often used in crimes."
They also cite a study performed by the Toronto Police Service in 2004: "The Toronto Police Service studied 214 handguns recovered by the Guns & Gangs Task Force. They found that almost half (103, or 48%) were from Canadian sources."
Perhaps these guns were indeed from "Canadian sources" but that doesn't necessarily mean they were stolen. Consider a Statistics Canada figure compiled just a year earlier which revealled that only 6% of firearms used to commit a crime had been registered. Thus, 94% of firearms (mostly handguns) used to commit crimes in 2003 were possessed illegally. Meanwhile, an astounding 68% of homicides in Canada during that year involved handguns. Yet, by combining the two statistics, it's revealled that an aggregiate maximum of 6% of those weapons were legally owned.
Of course, the gun crime issue is actually distorted by a single-minded focus on murders. Gun crime is actually a much broader issue, involving assaults, robberies and threats as well.
The third attempt at myth busting deals with a potential claim that "Chicago has a handgun ban, and it doesn’t work." The site claims that Chicago's law outlawing handgun ownership, selling, or possession within its city limits isn't really a ban (although, this is the exact definition of a ban), but merely a "handgun free zone". They note (actually correctly) that anyone in Chicago can leave the city, buy a handgun, then return to the city.
But the same thing could be done in Canada under a nation-wide handgun ban. Prospective illegal handgun owners could cross the border, buy an illegal handgun, smuggle it back across the border, and would get away with it so long as they didn't arouse suspicion.
So when the site owners insist that Chicago doesn't have a handgun ban, and what they have doesn't work, they should have kept in mind that the truth is that Chicago does have a handgun ban and it doesn't work.
The fourth "myth" targeted is that "Australia banned handguns, and crime went up.". The site notes that stringent gun control measures enacted in Australia in 1987 and 1996, respectively, have worked well, eliminating 47% of firearms deaths between 1991 and 2001, although they do admit that property crimes rose.
So basically what they've admitted is "Australia didn't ban handguns, and they still cut their gun-related deaths in half". In other words, gun control measures don't need a handgun ban to work.
But do you know who did attempt a handgun ban? Britain. Guess what happened it Britain: gun crime (particularly handgun crime) increased, instead of decreasing. As of 2001, handgun crime had gone up 40% in two years.
So, what the "No Gun, No Funeral" site owners should be saying is Britain banned handguns, and handgun crimes increased. (Whoops.)
The fifth predictable "myth" busted is "The federal gun registry is a useless waste of cash." Of course, what the site doesn't bother to address at all is that the issue most opponents have with the gun registry actually concerns the longgun registry. While the site claims that "The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police supports it, and says that police across Canada check it more than 5,000 times each day." What they fail to mention is that handguns are the gun of choice for criminals (both worldwide and in Canada), and that the overwhelming majority of those 5,000 gun references involve handguns.
They also fail to recognize that handguns have been required to be registered in Canada since the 1930s.
This is merely a politicized claim -- but more on that later.
The sixth, and final myth-busting attempt deals with claims that "Knife crime is a bigger problem than gun crime." (And if anything, the site's name does suggest that no one, anywhere has ever died except by means of being shot. Ever.)
This attempt at myth-busting only reveals the extent to which advocates of the handgun ban rely on distorting the issue. First off, they admit "On first blush, there are more knife crimes than gun crimes – i.e., knives are used in 27% of aggravated assaults, while guns are used in only 3%"
They later try to dissemble this admission however, when they turn the issue away from aggravated assault (assault intentionally causing bodily harm, often involving a weapon) to murder, as compared to mere common assault. "Look closer – guns are used in 25% of all murders and attempted murders. Why are guns more likely to be used for serious offences like murder, and not lesser offences like assault? Because guns are much more likely to be lethal."
Yet, more murders, attempted murders and aggravated assaults are attempted with knives, blunt weapons, and even fists, which can be every bit as lethal as a gun. But don't tell the "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign organizers that. Better yet, do tell them that, then watch them squirm.
By the logic offered here, we might as well ban baseball bats (sure, they're used recreationally, but they can also be used to hurt people), knives (sure, they're used for culinary purposes, but they can also be used to hurt people), or even hands (hey! we need those!). Not to mention that cars are involved in exponentially more accidental deaths than guns. Better ban them, too.
But the fact is, at the end of the day, the "No Gun, No Funeral" website is merely a not-so-cleverly disguised Liberal party campaign tool. If Bryant wants to pretend the fact that he's distributing buttons featuring the website's slogan is merely a coincidence, he's welcome to, but such a claim (actually as yet unmade) does stretch credulity.
Then one wonders what to make of the following passage: "That’s why we are adding our voice to call on Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, and the rest of the federal government to get out of the holster of the gun lobby, and enact a sensible, overdue ban on privately owned handguns."
In typical Liberal party fashion, the website seems to be less about gun control as a point of principle, and more about gun control as a mere partisan tactic.
The "No Gun, No Handgun" website would really do much better to swap its slogan for "No Brain, No Pain".
In the never-ending pantheon of lazy-minded solutions to gun crime, the recently-proposed national ban on handguns ranks pretty close to the top of the list with the federal long gun registry.
The website coincides with a new rhetorical tactic launched by Onatrio's Liberal premier Dalton "Flying" McGuinty, using the province's Attorney General, Michael Bryant, as a proxy. Bryant has recently revealled that he's made up "No Gun, No Funeral" buttons that he carries around in his pocket and distributes.
Which is actually so two years ago. Bryant's apparent ability to miss a trend by a full couple of years notwithstanding, one wonders if it's merely coincidental.
The centrepiece of Bryant's "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign is clearly the "No Gun, No Funeral" website. Run by "a group of Canadians dedicated to tougher gun controls in Canada",, the website tries to dispell a number of myths regarding handgun bans and gun control, most of which actually turn out to be... well... true.
The Get the Facts section of the site actually starts off with the following hilarious claim: "About 135 people are murdered every year with a handgun, and many more die as a result of suicide or accidents involving a handgun."
Now, of course what's hilarious isn't that 135 people in Canada are murdered every year with a handgun. What is hilarious is that proponents of the handgun ban apparently want to pretend that banning handguns will prevent people who have decided to kill themselves from doing so, and it probably will prevent them from killing themselves... with a handgun. There are plenty of other methods a person could use to kill someone. (Oops.)
The first piss-poor attempt at mythbusting addresses the idea that "handguns are already virtually banned in Canada", then cites what the site suggests are fairly lax gun control policies: "Anyone who (1) is over 18, (2) passes a safety course and background check, and (3) either has a membership in a gun club OR declares themselves to be a collector, can get a license to buy a handgun."
Of the myths "busted" this one turns out to be closest to being busted, but the website still misses its mark. What it actually demonstrates is that Canadian gun control policy has some very reasonable hoops for prospective gun ownership. On this note, minors and criminals in Canada sure aren't buying them legally, so a handgun ban is really only a legal handgun ban, and focuses on the legal purchase and ownership of handguns, when the real problem is the illegal possession and use of handguns.
Unsurprisingly, this is a point that either escapes the campaign's mangers, or that they merely choose to ignore because they can't counter it.
The second myth "busted" is that "illegal handguns are all smuggled in from the US". The site then claims that "Thousands of legal handguns are stolen each year from Canadian collectors and target shooters. These guns are sold onto the street, and are often used in crimes."
They also cite a study performed by the Toronto Police Service in 2004: "The Toronto Police Service studied 214 handguns recovered by the Guns & Gangs Task Force. They found that almost half (103, or 48%) were from Canadian sources."
Perhaps these guns were indeed from "Canadian sources" but that doesn't necessarily mean they were stolen. Consider a Statistics Canada figure compiled just a year earlier which revealled that only 6% of firearms used to commit a crime had been registered. Thus, 94% of firearms (mostly handguns) used to commit crimes in 2003 were possessed illegally. Meanwhile, an astounding 68% of homicides in Canada during that year involved handguns. Yet, by combining the two statistics, it's revealled that an aggregiate maximum of 6% of those weapons were legally owned.
Of course, the gun crime issue is actually distorted by a single-minded focus on murders. Gun crime is actually a much broader issue, involving assaults, robberies and threats as well.
The third attempt at myth busting deals with a potential claim that "Chicago has a handgun ban, and it doesn’t work." The site claims that Chicago's law outlawing handgun ownership, selling, or possession within its city limits isn't really a ban (although, this is the exact definition of a ban), but merely a "handgun free zone". They note (actually correctly) that anyone in Chicago can leave the city, buy a handgun, then return to the city.
But the same thing could be done in Canada under a nation-wide handgun ban. Prospective illegal handgun owners could cross the border, buy an illegal handgun, smuggle it back across the border, and would get away with it so long as they didn't arouse suspicion.
So when the site owners insist that Chicago doesn't have a handgun ban, and what they have doesn't work, they should have kept in mind that the truth is that Chicago does have a handgun ban and it doesn't work.
The fourth "myth" targeted is that "Australia banned handguns, and crime went up.". The site notes that stringent gun control measures enacted in Australia in 1987 and 1996, respectively, have worked well, eliminating 47% of firearms deaths between 1991 and 2001, although they do admit that property crimes rose.
So basically what they've admitted is "Australia didn't ban handguns, and they still cut their gun-related deaths in half". In other words, gun control measures don't need a handgun ban to work.
But do you know who did attempt a handgun ban? Britain. Guess what happened it Britain: gun crime (particularly handgun crime) increased, instead of decreasing. As of 2001, handgun crime had gone up 40% in two years.
So, what the "No Gun, No Funeral" site owners should be saying is Britain banned handguns, and handgun crimes increased. (Whoops.)
The fifth predictable "myth" busted is "The federal gun registry is a useless waste of cash." Of course, what the site doesn't bother to address at all is that the issue most opponents have with the gun registry actually concerns the longgun registry. While the site claims that "The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police supports it, and says that police across Canada check it more than 5,000 times each day." What they fail to mention is that handguns are the gun of choice for criminals (both worldwide and in Canada), and that the overwhelming majority of those 5,000 gun references involve handguns.
They also fail to recognize that handguns have been required to be registered in Canada since the 1930s.
This is merely a politicized claim -- but more on that later.
The sixth, and final myth-busting attempt deals with claims that "Knife crime is a bigger problem than gun crime." (And if anything, the site's name does suggest that no one, anywhere has ever died except by means of being shot. Ever.)
This attempt at myth-busting only reveals the extent to which advocates of the handgun ban rely on distorting the issue. First off, they admit "On first blush, there are more knife crimes than gun crimes – i.e., knives are used in 27% of aggravated assaults, while guns are used in only 3%"
They later try to dissemble this admission however, when they turn the issue away from aggravated assault (assault intentionally causing bodily harm, often involving a weapon) to murder, as compared to mere common assault. "Look closer – guns are used in 25% of all murders and attempted murders. Why are guns more likely to be used for serious offences like murder, and not lesser offences like assault? Because guns are much more likely to be lethal."
Yet, more murders, attempted murders and aggravated assaults are attempted with knives, blunt weapons, and even fists, which can be every bit as lethal as a gun. But don't tell the "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign organizers that. Better yet, do tell them that, then watch them squirm.
By the logic offered here, we might as well ban baseball bats (sure, they're used recreationally, but they can also be used to hurt people), knives (sure, they're used for culinary purposes, but they can also be used to hurt people), or even hands (hey! we need those!). Not to mention that cars are involved in exponentially more accidental deaths than guns. Better ban them, too.
But the fact is, at the end of the day, the "No Gun, No Funeral" website is merely a not-so-cleverly disguised Liberal party campaign tool. If Bryant wants to pretend the fact that he's distributing buttons featuring the website's slogan is merely a coincidence, he's welcome to, but such a claim (actually as yet unmade) does stretch credulity.
Then one wonders what to make of the following passage: "That’s why we are adding our voice to call on Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, and the rest of the federal government to get out of the holster of the gun lobby, and enact a sensible, overdue ban on privately owned handguns."
In typical Liberal party fashion, the website seems to be less about gun control as a point of principle, and more about gun control as a mere partisan tactic.
The "No Gun, No Handgun" website would really do much better to swap its slogan for "No Brain, No Pain".
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