LGR Advocates, You Have Some 'Splainin' To Do

Long gun registry not the life-saver they claim it is

With Canada's far-left scrambling to save the long gun registry by any means necessary, it seems the facts just aren't lining up to support their arguments.

When the Globe and Mail put crime data recently released by Stats Canada into a chart, the conclusions became unavoidable. Those who claim the long gun registry saves lives -- as former Liberal MP Mark Holland used to delight in doing -- have some serious explaining to do.

The chart reveals that the last time more long guns than hand guns were used in homicides was waaaaaay back in 1990. (The L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre happened the previous year.) The bill authorizing the long gun registry was passed in Parliament in 1995, and the registry itself was established in 1996.

There's good reason for this. As the numbers have it, murders involving long guns have been steadily declining in Canada since 1984 -- twelve years before the LGR ever existed. There were occasional spikes in homicides involving long guns, but the general trend has been a decline since 1984.

During the same period of time, murders involving handguns -- which the law has required to be registered since World War Two -- have remained stable.

This is very clearly a difficult question the champions of the LGR desperately need to answer. They have relentlessly attributed the reduction in homicides involving long guns to the registry. Yet not only does the decline pre-date the registry, the handgun registry has no noticeable effect.

It's clear that registration has not had the magical properties LGR advocates have attributed to it. They have some serious questions to answer, some serious explaining to do -- although previous experience with these individuals suggests they will simply decline.

There Is Something Deeply Wrong With Some of These People...

If you were to ask any of them to their face, the far-left in Canada are the champions of rainbows and puppydogs. Their leaders are all "inspirational", and their causes in the best interests of "99%".

But scratch the surface of some of these individuals, and what is left underneath is a complete lunatic. Stark, raving, mad. And brutish to the core.

For evidence one needs look no further than the individual who identifies himself as @HarrisAJackson. The "A" apparently stands for "Ace".

Okay then.

As it turns out, Ace is an advocate for the long gun registry. There's very little wrong with that, in and of itself. But how Ace deals with political defeat leaves a lot to be desired. He tweeted:

"Wonder how many hard core Cons will think deregulation of the long gun is a good idea, when they're [sic] son or daughter ends up dead? We can only hope its a conservative victim, since those with brains and national pride are fighting to keep it alive."

Ace subsequently insisted he didn't wish gun violence on anyone, but screencaps have the final say:

(Following several Tweets of this image directly to him, Ace still couldn't figure it out.)

Even while objecting that he hadn't wished gun violence on anyone, he literally couldn't stop. Couldn't help himself.

This issue has keenly focused the mania of individuals like our dear Ace. Irrational rage that would otherwise have thrashed helplessly across the Twitterverse is now brought to bear on this singular issue. For the first time, we can see just how disturbed these people are.

And Harris Ace Jackson is very disturbed indeed. The civilized approach to the issue of the long gun registry is -- whether one supports it or opposes it -- to wish for no gun violence. Ace has adopted a very different approach: he simply wishes the gun violence to be aimed at a very specific group of people.

It's sick. It's evil. It's reflective of someone crying out for help.

His LinkedIn profile identifies him as "Senior Analyst at UFO Investigator Citizen Reporter". He lives in the Vancouver area.

If you, or anyone you know, knows Harris Ace Jackson, reach out. Let him know about any mental health resources in his area, and urge him to seek help before he does something he may not be mentally healthy enough to regret.

Don't Circle the Wagons Now, Jimmy... Redux

The longer the Occupy movement -- spawned by Occupy Wall Street, and imitated and co-opted by now-countless others -- goes on, the more necessary the comparisons between it and the Tea Party become.

It's on this note that the Occupy movement has now reached two key milestones that were used by far-left antagonists to condemn the Tea Party.

The first is the participation in an Arizona Occupation rally of JT Ready, an infamous Arizona neo-Nazi. He brought his militia, the Arizona Border Guard, to Occupy Phoenix rally. More frighteningly, they came armed with AR-15 assault rifles.

Desperate to mitigate the damage, some contemporaries of the Occupy movement attempted to describe Ready's participation as a "counter-protest". Ready himself, as well as the Arizona Border Guard made themselves clear: they were there to -- in their words -- "use their second-amendment rights to protect the first-amendment rights of Occupy Phoenix".

Once one has it directly from the horse's mouth, one quickly becomes relieved that most of the participants at the Occupy Phoenix rally asked Ready and his militia to leave. Some, however, attempted to "reach out" to Ready, feeling a sense of socialist-to-socialist solidarity with Ready.

One elderly woman present was reported to have remarked "I kind of like socialism."

Okay then.

The other incident also involves an armed individual, but fortunately does not involve Nazis. A man was spotted at Occupy Atlanta with an AK-47 assault rifle, which prompted the city to order to crowd to disperse.

Some may remember the infamy of racebaitgate, in which MSNBC selectively edited footage from a Phoenix Tea Party event in order to portray a black man with an AR-15 assault rifle as a white man bent on assassinating the President for racial reasons.

(Contessa Brewer has since been dismissed from MSNBC. Dylan Ratigan, sadly, remains.)

Some may also remember a ThinkProgress video which fabricated evidence of Tea Party racism. Among them was a man proudly extolling his devotion to Nazism.

When the source video was identified, it was revealed that the video was actually of this man being chased out of a Tea Party rally. Think Progress shamelessly stood by the video despite the extent to which it was discredited.

Now, no one should expect Occupy Phoenix to physically chase armed militiamen away from their rally. The reasons are obvious.

But the mixture of armed individuals and a movement that promises to occupy public space over the long-term -- permanently, if need be -- is an alarming development, and should be alarming even to the most devoted Occupation enthusiasts.

Simply put, what started out as a laudably-peaceful protest is now taking on the vestiges of an actual armed occupation.

This is where the input of the aforementioned Occupation enthusiasts becomes so necessary.

Jim Parrot -- who by now needs no further introduction around these parts -- is as dedicated an Occupation enthusiast as they come. He even renamed his blog "Occupy Let Freedom Rain" at one point, likely until he finally realized he had always occupied that space.

He also previously promised that he won't circle the wagons to protect his own when they are wrong.

Having so deeply embraced the Occupation movement, he has made it his own. Perhaps he'll have something to say about this.

His previous forays into not circling the wagons were less than successful. But perhaps he'll do better this time.

Maybe. Just maybe.

Making Guns Uncool

In Guns are Cool, novelist Courttia Newland confronts the glamourization of guns through venues such as video games, movies and gangsta rap.

Clearly, Newland seems to think of himself as a black Michael Moore; Newland goes so far as to place an on-camera call to Nike to complain about 50 Cent's lyrics. But beyond that, Guns are Cool raises some important questions, while largely ignoring others.

Newland points out that, like in Canada and the United States, the black community in Britain is disproportionately affected by gun crime. Newland insists that this is because black communities are "socially deprived" (which seems to be a rather left-ish method of saying they're impoverished).

Newland suggests that the identification of "black on black" crime as black on black is, in itself, a form of soft racism. But the film declines to confront the question of why so many black Britons target one another as the victims of their crimes.

The idea of creating a nationwide stigma against gun crime, however, promises a method of gun control that would be more effective in the long term than some of the methods of gun control currently being used -- such as the handgun ban that deprives Britons who would use such weapons for self-defense rather than for crime.

Balancing Gun Ownership & Public Safety A Matter Of Perspective

In Michael & Me, Phil Elder makes his case against Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine, and the arguments Moore makes in that film.

Like Father, Like Son -- The Disingenuous Justin Trudeau

Considering the depths the Liberal Party sunk to in order to divide Canadians over the long-gun registry -- invoking support for the registry in urban regions over opposition in rural regions -- one should find it utterly comical to hear Liberal MP Justin Trudeau lecturing protesters about the Liberal Party's desires to "bring Canada together instead of allowing us to be driven apart".

The extent to which Trudeau -- like so many proponents of the long-gun registry -- chooses to argue in absence of fact is truly remarkable. When his "uniting Canadians" rhetoric falls flat and Trudeau is called upon to name a single Canadian saved by the long-gun registry, Trudeau insists that the registry has saved "many" Canadians, and refers to suicide statistics.

Trudeau is clearly ignorant of the statistics regarding suicide in Canada, and perhaps wilfully so.

As Dr Gary Mauser points out, the reduction in suicide with firearms -- actually the result of licensing and screening processes, rather than the registry -- has been accompanied by increasing rates of suicide by other means.

"Suicide rates have slowly declined over two decades. Firearm suicides have declined as well, but suicides by hanging have soared," Dr Mauser notes. "Some call this a success. In 1991, 3,500 people took their own life; in 2005, 3,700. The long-gun registry has not saved any lives."

Not only can Trudeau not present one single fact supporting maintaining the long-gun registry, but he refuses to acknowledge any fact that challenges his views.

For example, Trudeau mentions the support of the long-gun registry by the Canadian Association of Chiefss of Police. When asked about the CACP accepting a $115,000 donation from the CGI Group, the company that produces the software for the long-gun registry.

Trudeau suggests that "you're giving me facts that may or may not be true".

Not only is this fact true, but one of CACP's chief ethicists, Dr John Jones, resigned from the group's ethics committee over this and other matters.

With his brief attempt to divert into arguing based on facts falling flat, Trudeau instead reverts back to his disingenuous "dividing Canadians" tripe. What he didn't account for was that he was speaking to a group of urban long-gun registry opponents.

Oops.

Upon being confronted with this fact, Trudeau then attempts to fall back on arguments related to domestic violence. When asked why resources used to fund the long-gun registry aren't used to fund women's shelters instead, Trudeau simply retreats altogether.

Fortunately, the issue of the long-gun registry isn't going to go away, no matter how badly Trudeau and his fellow Liberals would like it to. Justin Trudeau will have plenty of opportunities to use this issue to demonstrate that he is every bit as disingenuous as his father was.

The Turning of Peter Stoffer

NDP MP under fire in riding over LGR vote

With debate in Canada continuing to simmer following the vote to kill Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner's long-gun registry bill, it seems that some of the rural MPs who voted in favour of that motion may not be as safe as they thought they would be.

Following his decision to about-face on the registry, Sackville-Eastern Shore MP (representing the NDP) Peter Stoffer's office was deluged with angry phone calls from constituents. Reportedly, he's still sorting through all the calls.

“I don’t use the Internet so I called every single person back,” Stoffer said. “There is no question a fair number of people have expressed their severe disappointment in me.”

Stoffer's riding has now been added to the list of rural ridings effectively on a watch-list of constituencies that have just become vulnerable.

“I can’t tell how it’s going to go. I’ll put my name on the ballot and the people will determine if I’m worthy or not,” he continued. “When you reverse a decision, a lot of people think you’ve let them down. That’s a fair comment to make.”

Interestingly, as one examines some of the other details to emerge in regard to Stoffer's strange change of heart, one wonders if perhaps that's what Stoffer's vote was actually about: keeping his name on the ballot.

Reportedly, Stoffer received calls from former NDP leaders Ed Broadbent and Alexa McDonough in the days preceding his decision.

"They did call me and offer me advice," Stoffer explained. "They basically said you should really consider what the leader is trying to do, which is find common ground. They both said that."

Stoffer insists that NDP leader Jack Layton put no pressure on him to change his vote.

"There’s no question about that, but at the same time, there’s other people who you have huge respect for saying something completely different, and that is taken into account as well," Stoffer continued.

Then again, whether or not one actually believes such an account is another matter altogether.

The public assumption when dealing with the NDP has classically been to assume that they are the "nice guys" of Canadian politics; that no one in the NDP would offer thinly-veiled suggestions that if Stoffer declined to support the long-gun registry he might find himself losing his nomination for the NDP in Sackville-Eastern Shore.

This would cost him his seat just as easily as upsetting any non-NDP-affiliated constituents who may have supported him in the last election, and may not support him the next time out.

"There are some people that have indicated they will do everything they can to defeat me," Stoffer admitted. "There is no question that personal friends that I had before may not be friends anymore. I understand that."

At least Stoffer seems content to take whatever lumps may be coming his way in the next election.

"It’s fair to say I’ve reversed my position. I’m not hiding from that," Stoffer said. "The people in my riding, in the next election, which is going to come soon, are going to determine whether they accept that or not."

It's a laudable democratic sentiment from someone who made an extremely un-laudable decision.

The Long-Gun Registry and the Triumph of Divisive Politics

Opposition uses long-gun registry as wedge issue

With Ajax-Pickering MP Mark Holland's bill to kill Candice Hoeppner's bill to scrap the long-gun registry adpoted by the House of Commons, the opposition is waxing triumphally.

They're accusing the Conservative Party of divisive politics, while they themselves divide Canadians.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff hasn't been the worst of them -- it's tough to decide whether to impart that distinction on Holland or on the Bloc Quebecoi's Maria Mourani -- but he hasn't shied away from it, either.

"We stood with victims, we stood with emergency room doctors, we stood with the police and the Mounties, all of whom say we need a long-gun registry for the public security of Canadians," Ignatieff insisted. "If you care about public safety in this country, you want a gun registry. Period."

If only it were really so.

Ignatieff and his fellow proponents of the long-gun registry emotionally blackmailed Canadians by insisting that the long-gun registry was a "memorial" to the L'Ecole Polytechnique victims. He stood on-side with police chiefs who accepted a $115,000 donation from the company that produces the software for the long-gun registry, and with the RCMP who possessed a clear incentive to describe the registry as a success under their administration.

Moreover, Canadians who legitimately care about public safety in Canada fully understand that the long-gun registry doesn't serve public safety. It has never prevented gun crimes, and hasn't saved a single life.

Moreover, it's entirely useless to police -- and nearly any front-line police officer in Canada will tell you that.

When it becomes clear that there is not even one single, solitary fact that supports maintaining the long-gun registry, it becomes clear what the proponents of the registry are doing: they're using it as a wedge issue to divide Canadians.

Nearly all of them are extremely eager to accuse the Conservatives of doing the same. But it's an incredibly disingenuous argument.

It's been proponents of the registry that have crowed about its importance to urban Canadians. It's been the proponents of the registry that have tried to guilt Canadians into supporting it by reminding them of past tragedies that not only would the long-gun registry not have prevented, but the long-gun registry hasn't prevented repeats.

The facts speak for themselves. But proponents of the long-gun registry won't tolerate to have the facts debated.

They'd rather divide Canadians and reap the rewards for themselves. But rural Liberal and NDP MPs may find themselves instead paying the price in an upcoming election.

The Utter Cluelessness of Jack Layton & the NDP

Conservatives can't work with NDP on long-gun registry

When it appeared that Candice Hoeppner's private members bill would find enough support from the NDP to pass, NDP leader Jack Layton went to work to find enough votes to keep the registry alive.

He didn't whip the vote, as many advocates of the long-gun regsitry insisted he should, but he seems to have found the votes.

Yet, as it turns out, Layton's fantasies don't end with the alleged necessity of maintaining the registry. Layton continues to fantasize that the Conservative Party would be able to work with him to "fix" the registry.

"I said to the Prime Minister today as well as in a conversation last week, ‘Why don't we work together here? You haven't got the numbers now to simply eliminate it,'" Layton said. "'So let's work to try to fix it and address some of those legitimate issues that are being raised by people who are law-abiding gun owners and hunters and farmers.'"

What Layton clearly doesn't understand is that, as pertains to gun control and the long-gun registry, there's nothing to talk about. There is simply no way that the Conservative Party -- who acknowledge reality as it relates to the long-gun registry -- could work wirh the NDP on the matter, who do not.

It's as simple as that.

Particularly, the Conservatives cannot be expected to work with people who won't debate the matter in good faith.

Layton and the other supporters of the long-gun registry have long realized that there are no facts that support maintaining the registry: not a single, solitary, one.

They can't afford to publicly admit that the long-gun registry has never prevented a single crime, and has never saved a single life. Not one.

Instead, proponents of the long-gun registry have relied on fear mongering, emotional blackmail, and smear tactics in order to make their case.


Consider the following exchanges from the very same meeting of the Public Safety Committee in which Dr Gary Mauser utterly demolished defenses of the long-gun registry.

The first is between Dr Mauser and Marlene Jennings:

"Jennings - ...Have you received funding from the NRA for any of your studies or research work?

Dr Mauser - Yes, I have. When I first began researching--

Jennings - Thank you.

Dr Mauser - I got $400.

Jennings - Have you contributed to the Conservative Party of Canada, or its predecessor the Canadian Alliance, or its predecessor the Reform Party of Canada?

Dr Mauser - I have contributed to the Conservative Party, the Reform Party, the NDP, and the Liberals."

Jennings attempts a rather blatant guilt-by-association argument. She knows her base well, and must imagine that a donation to the Reform Party, and the receipt of a donation from the NRA would be rather damning for Dr Mauser.

Unfortunately for Jennings, what she uncovered was a donation scarcely sufficient to keep the lights on for a major research project, and a former Reform Party donor who had also given to her own party.

In the midst of a debate that is supposed to be contested based on facts, this is far from a significant bombshell.

But Jennings' buffoonery nothing compared to that of Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani:

"Mourani - Mr Mauser, I would like short answers please. Is this in fact you in this photograph, with a handgun?

Dr Mauser - That's me and that's my handgun.

Mourani - What kind of gun is it?

Dr Mauser - It is a Smith & Wesson revolver.

Mourani - Is it registered?

Dr Mauser - Well, of course.

Mourani - How many weapons do you own?

Dr Mauser - I'm not sure. It varies.

Mourani - You do not remember how many guns you own? How many long guns do you own?

Dr Mauser - I don't remember. It varies.

Mourani - All right, you own firearms, but you do not remember how many you have?

Dr Mauser - I'm getting old.

Mourani - You are not, however, too old to carry such a gun.

Dr Mauser - That would be a few more years from now.

Mourani - Where was this photograph taken?

Dr Mauser - About 20 years ago.

Mourani - But where?

Dr Mauser - You can see that I'm a lot younger there.

Mourani - Yes, but where? Was it at home? It looks like it was at home, not at a firing range or at a shooting school. Am I right? It is at your house.

Dr Mauser - That's my house.

Mourani - Excellent. And what were you shooting at? What were you having fun shooting at? Who were you putting on this show for?

The Chair - Mrs Mourani, you have to relate this to the long-gun registry.

Mourani - I apologize, Mr Chairman. Mr Chairman, I will explain why.

Dr Mauser - You will notice, first of all, that I'm not firing. Secondly, the finger is not in the trigger guard. Thirdly, the photographer asked me to pose like this and I resisted, but obviously I should have resisted harder.

Mourani - You did put up a struggle, my dear sir. But, you are the expert advisor as far as firearms are concerned. I must admit to you that I am scared."

In all fairness, Maria Mourani does seem like the sensitive type: sensitive enough to be frightened by a 20-year-old photograph. That, seeing as how she introduced it into committee, one could presume she herself dug up for that purpose.

And evidently sensitive enough to stoop to ad hominem attacks on an expert at whose assessment of the facts she seems to despair.

Which reminds one what this is allegedly supposed to be about: it's supposed to be about the facts. Mark Holland insists that the Conservatives simply don't care about them.

Yet when a doctor of criminology shows up to the Public Safety Committee and lays out facts that are extremely inconvenient for proponents of the long-gun registry, the facts seem to be the last thing Holland, Jennings, Mourani et al are concerned with:

Their language becomes not that of a factual debate, but that of vindictive personal attack, vicious character assasination, and shameless melodrama.

There is a reason for this: the facts simply do not favour their cause. It doesn't prevent gun crime. It doesn't save lives. It's a cosmetic gun control measure that demonstrably doesn't protect Canadians.

Truthfully speaking, the long gun registry has become the cause celibre of far-left demagogues who can't bring themselves to get tough on crime, so instead opt to get tough on the law-abiding.

Jack Layton has, unsurprisingly, decided to throw in with that lot. The Conservatives couldn't work with him on this issue, even if they wanted to.

David McGuinty Comes Through... For the Tories

McGuinty plays wedge politics while accusing Tories of wedge politics... brilliant!

One thing about the Liberal party, in its currently-weakened state, is that it has forgotten one of the most basic precepts of day-to-day life:

Look both ways before crossing.

This is something Liberal House Leader David McGuinty almost certainly failed to do when he accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of using the long-gun registry for wedge politics.

Hilariously enough, while doing this McGuinty invoked the Liberal Party's own favourite wedge: the American Republican Party.

“Mr Harper is having a wedge politics debate," McGuinty insisted. "It’s the worst of right-wing Republican wedge politics.”

"You pick an issue, you sensationalize the issue, you try to remain above the fray ... and you keep everyone else distracted with debates that are divisive,” he continued.

McGuinty clearly didn't bother to check what's actually going on in the United States before he made these comments. President Barack Obama, who came to power with massive majorities in both houses of Congress, is on his way to experiencing the swiftest political turnaround in US history.

The Democrat response to this has been to attempt to utilize wedge issues to divide Americans against the Republican Party, and Republicans against one another; blatant wedge issues like racism, weaponized for petty political gain.

McGuinty also frantically pointed to an equally-frantic CBC report that the National Rifle Association has been active in the debate over the long-gun registry.

Mc Guinty's description of the report is actually misleading. The CBC reports that the NRA has given "logistical and tactical support" to the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action, a group dedicated to abolishing the long-gun registry.

Moreover, members of the CILA have reciprocated that support by appearing in televised messages for the NRA.

The story also features former Ontario Governor General Michael Bryant -- whose "No Gun, No Funeral" campaign arguably violated election law -- raising the alarm about NRA involvement in Canada.

"I got elected in 1999 and I became aware soon after of the NRA's involvement in the debate — not in a huge way, but in a significant way," Bryant explained.

"For a lot of people in Canada, if they knew that the NRA was part of the effort to get rid of the gun registry, they would think more about their views," he said. "And they would think, 'well, wait a minute, I thought this was about, you know, wasting taxpayer dollars. The NRA's involved? Really? That makes me very uncomfortable … '"

The problem for Bryant and other proponents of the long-gun registry is that the NRA's involvement hardly changes the facts about the registry.

Not only is the NRA merely a political wedge the Liberal Party wishes to use to divide Canadians, it's also a distraction tactic they use to give themselves an excuse to ignore the facts.

Facts such as the fact that the long-gun registry has never prevented a single gun crime, or saved a single life. Facts such as the fact that front-line officers denounce the registry as useless to them. Facts such as the fact that the registry itself is an absolute mess.

“We are a sovereign country,” McGuinty concluded. “If the NRA wants to fight its good fight over its views on guns it should do so in the United States. We do not need an expansionist NRA on Canadian soil.”

If the NRA were directly involved in the debate, McGuinty may have a point. But he's mischaracterizing the NRA's involvement.

After all, the NRA is not directly involved in this debate. The CILA is. The CILA asked the NRA for strategic support, and the NRA provided it.

If David McGuinty really objects to wedge politics, one would suggest that he should avoid relying on them himself -- particularly when his would-be wedge is on the right side of the issues, and he himself is so very, very wrong.

Oh, the Sounds of Ending Debate

Former RCMP Superintendent denounces long-gun registry

Poor Mark Holland.

The Ajax-Pickering MP insists that the debate on the long-gun registry is over when the debate over the long-gun registry is, in fact, hotter than it's ever been.

The most recent individual to enter the debate is former RCMP Supertintendent Keith Thompson, who has declared the long-gun registry to be useless.

Thompson is well-poised to know full well the comparative merits of the long-gun registry. He formerly commanded the RCMP's emergency response team in southern Alberta.

"I think it is a waste, and most importantly, if we think about the safety of our citizens, it gives them a false sense of its importance," Thompson wrote in a letter to Members of Parliament.

"In my various roles, I attended too many scenes of hostage-taking, murder/suicides, barricaded persons, etc, and know of no lives that could have been saved with such a fully functioning registry," he continued.

Thompson not only pointed out that the long-gun registry hasn't saved any lives -- contrary to a recent report by the RCMP that was, oddly enough, glowing about the RCMP's own administration of the long-gun registry -- but also that it doesn't help police officers, either.

To rely on the long-gun registry -- or the gun registry period -- to provide information about weapons present would be a rookie mistake, and potentially a deadly one.

"Assume that there would be guns regardless of what the registry implied," Thompson asserted. "The bottom line is 'is the long-gun registry a benefit to the street officer? I think it's unequivocally no.'"

"Who is it a benefit to?," he asks. "Does it make the citizens of Canada safer? I don't think so."

"So why maintain it?"

There's a reason why people like Holland want to maintain the long-gun registry: as ideological boilerplate. Nothing more, and nothing else.

However desperately Mark Holland may want the debate to end, it's far from over. Holland and his cohorts can produce the same talking points and pass them off as conclusive studies to their heart's content.

It won't change what nearly every front-line police officer in the country already knows: the long-gun registry doesn't save lives, it cannot save lives, and so should be abolished.

Mark Holland, the RCMP, and "Penultimate Reports"

Long-gun registry advocates have yet to produce one

Ajax-Pickering MP -- and Ottawa's resident village idiot -- Mark Holland recently pretended to be rather vindicated with the RCMP produced a report claiming that the long-gun registry was efficient and cost-effective.

Portage-Lisgar MP Candice Hoeppner is far less than convinced.

"My position remains steadfast as does our party's position," she said. "We believe the long-gun registry needs to end. As legislators, that's our job, to look at policy, to decide what's in the best interests of Canadians and make those decisions. So, nothing has changed."

Hoeppner went on to explain that stronger pre-licensing screening protocols are needed in order to actually keep guns out of the hands of people likely to use them to do harm.

In the bizarre world of Mark Holland, a preference for actual, real gun control rather than cosmetic legislation is "ideological".

"The Conservatives have wanted to scrap this for ideology," Holand declared. "Facts will not move them."

"They don't care about facts," he continued. "You could present the penultimate report, and they would ignore it."

The problem for Holland is that neither he nor any of the other proponents of the long-gun registry have produced anything even remotely resembling a "penultimate report". The recent report released by the RCMP doesn't even come close.

The RCMP has different motivations for wanting to declare the long-gun registry to be successful. After all, the gun registry is currently administered by the RCMP itself.

Currently, the RCMP is a troubled institution. Questions regarding the conduct of its officers abound. The institution continues to face questions about irregularities in its pension fund.

The RCMP is an institution desperately in need of some good news. An internal audit of a program they themselves administer is the perfect opportunity to produce precisely that.

Holland must certainly understand the folly of citing this report as if it were the final word on the long-gun registry. (The detail that it was the Conservative party who placed the registry under RCMP administration after the bureaucrats the Liberal Party hired to administer the program ran it deep into the depths of wastefulness is really just the icing on the cake.)

Even Holland's favourite talking point -- the support for the program by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police -- has absorbed a black eye recently, as it was revealed that the organization accepted a donation of $115,000 from the CGI group of companies.

The CGI group produces the software for the gun registry.

That makes for a massive conflict of interest, and raises questions of whether or not any conditions were placed on the donation.

Moreover, if there ever were a penultimate report on the long-gun registry, it absolutely would not support maintaining it.

“It is difficult to understand why the chiefs of police support the long-gun registry,” Simon Fraser University Criminologist Dr Gary Mauser once remarked. “[It] has so many errors that relying upon it puts the lives of rank-and-file police members at risk. This is a classic database problem: garbage in, gospel out. The police should know better."

"Millions of entries are incorrect or missing," he continued. “Most striking, less than half of all long guns in Canada are in the registry."

"The long-gun registry does worse – it misdirects the police," he said. "People who have registered their firearms are less likely to be violent than Canadians who don’t even own firearms. They should be. Gun owners have been screened by the police since 1979."

"We are told that 15 percent of the guns used in homicides are long guns," he briefly conceded. "What is not said is that virtually none were registered. How does the gun registry help? When I spoke at the Ontario Police College, one of the instructors told me privately that trusting the registry was a way to get good police officers killed."

Those are some very sobering facts -- they should be doubly so for proponents of the long-gun registry.

Where did Dr Mauser make these remarks?

Before the Public Safety Committee, of which Mark Holland is not only a member, but Vice-Chair.

Was he simply absent the day that Dr Mauser gave these remarks? Or did he disregard them because they weren't ideologically soothing enough for his tastes?

It seems that the answer is almost certainly the latter. Holland doesn't care about the facts, and he doesn't seem afraid to lie about them.

This is not a terribly new act for Holland, or for any other proponents of the long-gun registry. When they aren't attempting to justify the long-gun registry by waging a campaign of ideological emotional blackmail (centred around the L'Ecole Polytechnique shootings), they're deceiving Canadians by using pictures of assault rifles in media stories promoting their agenda.

(Under Canadian law, assault rifles aren't long guns, they're restricted or prohibited weapons -- different category, one that will remain unaffected by Hoeppner's bill.)

Reality is not kind to Mark Holland, nor to the long-gun registry. When real life finally releases its "penultimate report" on the long-gun registry, it will almost certainly favour its abolition.

Don't You Love it When a Plan Comes Together?

Especially when that plan is Mark Holland's ineptitude

As debate surrounding Canada's long-gun registry continues to heat up, the governing Conservative Party has pointed out a little detail about Michael Ignatieff's proposal to make possession of an unregistered long-gun a ticketable -- as opposd to criminal -- offence:

It's actually unconstitutional.

"What he [Ignatieff] has proposed stomps on jurisdictional powers under the constitution -- it's absolutely unconstitutional," explained Conservative MP Shelly Glover. "The provinces would have to buy in and we already know there are three attorneys general who have spoken out very clearly they're not buying in.”

For his own part, however, Public Safety Critic Mark Holland isn't convinced -- and doesn't seem terribly concerned about the Constitution.

"It is true that it would require co-operation on the part of the provinces," Holland retorted. "We would have to work collaboratively with the provinces, but there isn't a necessity for a constitutional change."

"You'd need to have the charge laid under a different [provincial] act," Holland concluded.

And, as Glover has already pointed out, therein lies the rub.

In order to effectively abolish the gun registry within their own provinces, all any one province -- Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba -- would have to do is not pass a provincial law.

This would force a Liberal party federal government to either step in more forcefully and trample provincial jurisdiction -- as they have often done in the past, so it isn't out of the question -- or accept the de facto abolition of the long-gun registry in those provinces.

Tgnatieff's proposal would thus make the registration of long-guns a matter of provincial jurisdiction. It's on that note that the Tories would be well-advised to consider adopting it -- and not for the reasons Mark Holland would prefer.

Holland, after all, seems to think that this proposal would preserve the long-gun registry across the entire country. This proposal should be considered because it simply won't.

Holland goes on to accuse the Conservatives of wanting to "confuse" Canadians. Yet it's clear that it's Holland himself who is confused.

"I think they're losing the battle and they're getting desperate to create facts," Holland mused, in a bout of his typical demagoguery. "They're trying to use the boogeyman of the Constitution in a last-ditch effort to torque the debate."

Yet it's individuals like Holland who have done anything possible to create facts to support the long-gun registry, which they cannot show to have prevented a single crime, and they cannot show to have saved so much as a single, solitary life -- and it can be shown to have failed to do either on numerous occasions.

Michael Ignatieff's and Mark Holland's plans seem to be coming together nicely. Unfortuantely bor both, the plan seems to be complete and utter ineptitude.

The Hysterics of the Far-Left Anti-Gun Lobby

It's useless to speak logic to those who will not reciprocate

Following news that NDP leader Jack Layton will not whip his MPs to oppose a private member's bill that would abolish the long gun registry, Canada's far-left anti-gun lobby is ratcheting up the pressure on Layton.

As usual, they don't bother to offer any logical arguments -- instead, they insist on appealing to the emotions of Canadians.

At a recent event, Dawson College shooting victim Hayder Khadim, among others, spoke out in frustration.

"It makes me feel like he is playing a political game," Khadim complained. "I mean, in front of us, he is a completely strong advocate of gun control — someone who you feel would be one of the strongest to impose a party line or anything like that, to make sure the gun registry would be saved."

Khadim naturally failed to mention that the weapon Kimveer Gil used to shoot him was a registered firearm. He declined to mention this for an important reason:

Regardless of what Khadim has to say about it, the gun registry didn't prevent Kimveer Gil from planning his assault on Dawson College. It didn't prevent him from clicking the safety off, or pulling the trigger. Nor did help police prevent the shooting, because the shooting was not prevented.

One certainly remembers that the left-wing anti-gun lobby insists that the long gun registry has saved lives. Yet neither they, nor the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, can name a single incident in which the long gun registry prevented a gun crime.

Not one single, solitary case.

Front-line police officers -- who actually respond to and investigate violent crimes -- know this.

The troubling thing is that it should be surprising to find that Hayder Khadim doesn't know this either. After all, the bullet that struck him in the neck -- fired from the barrel of a registered firearm -- should have been a massive reality check for him.

Somehow, it wasn't.

Nor do these facts seemt to sink far into the head of NDP MP Thomas Mulcair.

"I know, as does Mr Layton, that to destroy the gun registry is to destroy lives, so we don't need to be convinced on this," Mulcair announced.

But the tipping point for Mulcair's argument -- and sadly, it tips away from reality -- is that if the long gun registry has never saved a life (although some other measures introduced at the same time as the registry have clearly prevented some gun crimes), then the abolition of the registry cannot be found to destroy lives.

It's merely another emotion-based argument from someone who clearly has little interest in considering this issue logically.

Much like the L'Ecole Polytechnique victims and families, who insist that the long gun registry is a monument to them and their loved ones. Canadians who are interested in discussing gun control logically, however, will offer them a deal.

Build another real monument to the L'Ecole Polytechnique victims, as well as to the Dawson College victims. It will be a real gun control that actually controls guns.

Maybe then these people will finally shut up about their precious long gun registry.

Typical Zerb, Typical Sleaze

Antonia Zerbisias concocts imaginary world in which gun registry saved OPP officer

With the tragedy that befell Ontario Provincial Police Constable Vu Pham still fresh in the minds of Canadians, it should be considered unsurprising that Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias intends to take full advantage.

Zerbisias, as many should recall, has a significant obsession with the long gun registry. Her numerous columns on the topic are a continual re-hash of poorly-conceived and largely-undefended arguments in favour of the long gun registry that, although they are tailor-made to be ideologically soothing to supporters of the registry, don't hold much basis in logic.

Among the various instances of anti-Conservative grandstanding, however, Zerbisias offers this particular nugget:

"Candice Hoeppner, the Manitoba Conservative MP who last May introduced the bill to kill the registry, would write, in an opinion piece published by the London Free Press, 'The long-gun registry is a massive Liberal policy failure and it needs to end. It makes no sense to force law-abiding individuals with firearms licences to register their long-guns. It makes no sense to believe the registry will prevent a gun crime from taking place.'

Well, that's true. It certainly didn't save Constable Vu Pham, who died just northwest of London."

It's remarkable that Zerbisias would spare such candor in her writing -- it certainly doesn't happen very often.

But if one wonders precisely why Zerbsias would insist that the gun registry must be maintained even if it doesn't prevent crime, one may lose their mind at the logical inconsistency of Zerbisias' next remark:

"But it may have saved Barbara Preston, the wife of the accused killer, Fred Preston, 70, who died last night.

Numerous news reports and sources indicate that Fred Preston, despondent over the separation last year from his childhood sweetheart, had headed out to find her.

What happened on that lonely back road on Monday is still unclear. What is known is, Pham, on his way to that 'domestic' call, was shot when he attempted to stop a white pick-up truck. A gun fight broke out, killing Pham and, eventually, Preston."

Zerbisias then goes on to insist that gun control is a matter of gender politics -- which is a canard of magnificent proportions.

First off, gun control is not an issue of gender politics. Secondly, the long gun registry is not actually a tool of gun control.

But even beyond that, Zerbisias' "logic" resembles nothing of the sort. If the long gun registry failed to prevent Fred Preston from driving out to confront his wife with a gun, and failed to prevent the death of Constable Pham, then one may wonder how Zerbisias expects anyone to believe that it would have prevented the death of Barbara Preston.

No. It was the intervention of Constable Vu Pham that saved the life of Barbara Preston.

Antonia Zerbisias oddly doesn't seem to care about that particular detail. Rather, all she seems to be interested in is using Pham's death for some anti-conservative grand standing.

It makes one wonders precisely what standard of editorial scrutiny Zerbisias' work is subjected to at the Star. When this kind of lunacy can so easily be published in the Lifestyles section of that paper, it makes one suspect that the answer is "not much".

How to Play to Your Base (At The Expense of Truth and Logic)

Antonia Zerbisias recycles discredited rhetoric

If there's anything that Canadians can learn from observing the most fervently ideological amongst its media personalities, it's that virtually anything can be treated as true, so long as it's repeated often and insistently enough.

The most recent case in point has been the exaggerated controversy over the Conservative Party's move to -- with the support of MPs from the Liberal Party and the NDP -- abolish the federal long gun registry.

Antonia Zerbisias has gone particularly ape shit over the matter. Zerbisias, along with Heather Mallick and a few public activists, has pretended that the issue is actually one of gender politics, not one of an ineffectual public safety policy being committed to its rightful place on the ash heap of history.

In a column recently published in the Toronto Star, Zerbisias practically labels Minister for the Status of Women Helena Guergis and Candice Hoeppner as traitors to their gender:

"If it weren't so hypocritical, it would be hysterical.

On Wednesday, at a Parliament Hill ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Dec. 6 massacre at Montreal's L'École Polytechnique, Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner co-starred in Status of Women minister Helena Guergis's show of sympathy.

Bad enough that, last month, Guergis voted for Bill C-391, the legislation that aims to kill the long-gun registry and Hoeppner was the one to introduce it in the House."

For Zerbisias, this almost certainly isn't bad enough. It's just one sign of Guergis, Hoeppner and the Conservative Party rejecting the colonization of government policy by gender/identity politics.

"No wonder that Status of Women committee members Anita Neville (L-Winnipeg South Centre), Irene Mathyssen (NDP-London- Fanshawe) and the Bloc's warrior queen of women's rights, Nicole Demers (Laval), boycotted the ceremony.

As Neville told me Wednesday, 'The Conservatives' record on women has just been abominable.'"

And of course if Anita Neville says it, it simply must be true! After all, it isn't as if the Liberal Party critic for the Status of Women has anything to gain politically from criticizing the Conservative government, even on something as fundamental as a memorial service.

"Never mind that, since the registry was introduced in the mid-'90s, the number of women killed by their rifle-wielding partners has dropped significantly. But, even with the registry, Statistics Canada reports, one out of three femicide victims is still killed by a rifle-wielding partner."

At this point, there is simply no way that Zerbisias and her compatriots don't know full well that they can demonstrate no causal link between the long gun registry and this decrease in homicides involving guns.

There is simply no way that Zerbisias and her compatriots don't know full well that what they are making here is a correlational argument, and that correlation itself is not causation.

The decrease in these homicides could be just as easily linked to anything else that took place in the years since 1995, when the federal Firearms Act was passed. Such as the other measures passed at the same time.

One of the things that Zerbisias and her compatriots tend to omit when discussing the long gun registry is the institution of what was then harsher penalties for crimes involving guns, and the institution of Possession and Acquisition Licenses, that put further requirements in place for gun ownership, and made it more possible to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals.

The gun registry merely kept a record of who could own guns. It did nothing to prevent an unbalanced individual from pointing their gun at a human being -- male or female -- and pulling the trigger.

This became painfully evident on September 13, 2006 when Kimveer Gill stormed Montreal's Dawson College and shot 19 people, one of whom died. Gill perpetrated that shooting with a registered gun.

Oddly enough, Neville voted against a bill that would have toughened the penalties for gun crime even further.

One shouldn't expect these little factoids to appear to Zerbisias. She's too busy using the memories of those killed in the L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre to promote the long gun registry as a matter of gender politics.

"For a frigid few days, I followed the panel around rural Quebec, where it heard horror stories from women whose partners took advantage of their isolation to terrorize and torture them.

There were testimonies from local social services groups recounting terrible murders. Meanwhile, back in the Montreal area, women were being picked off at an alarming rate by former spouses, even those served with restraining orders."

Once again, this is the kind of thing the long gun registry has done nothing to prevent. Although putting more police officers on Canadian streets certainly could.

"One of the things that many of the gun nuts espouse is more guns – for women. As they say, "You can't rape a .38.''

That may be true if you're walking your dog or coming home from work late at night, but it's going to land you a murder charge if you pull the trigger while being 'date raped.'"

This is easily the most provocative statement Zerbisias makes in the course of this column. She neglects to mention that such an act would quickly (and rightly) be ruled to have been committed in self-defense. No proper-thinking judge or jury in the country would dare convict. (Unless that judge was liberal supporter. Thankfully, they don't appoint people that stupid to the bench. -ed)

"n any case, it's pretty tough to be packing, say, in an aerobics class, especially when the assassin sneaks in, turns off the lights and starts firing – which is what happened in Pittsburgh this summer when three women were killed and many others injured.

What's more, there's no guarantee that an abused wife could actually get a gun, or not get it used against her.

Research shows that the determining factor in preventing most violence against women is helping them to be economically independent, through secure employment with appropriate benefits and fair wages, or decent rates of welfare, adequate social housing and daycare."

Zerbisias also neglects to mention -- or simply fails to understand -- that women in social housing, or on welfare, are not economically independent. But that's only one of the failures in basic logic Zerbisias commits in her column.

"Little of which is forthcoming from the Conservative government."

On the contrary, the Conservative government put far more of these things in place, when they shifted the Status of Women's mandate away from reasearch and advocacy and toward providing actual services -- like job training -- to women in their communities.

"That said, it has bumped up funding to some shelters this year. But that does nothing to head off violence."

Neither does the long gun registry.

"In fact, according to Neville, 'Their whole focus on violence against women is what one colleague refers to as `after the gavel.' That means putting more people in jail, harsher sentences, mandatory minimums, that kind of thing.'"

This is still a superior approach than the preceding approach, which largely focused on using cosmetic legislation as a bullwark around which they could build an ideological program -- one that even some of the most fervent supporters of the long gun registry admit is purely symbolic.

"Or as Hoeppner recently said in committee: 'The best thing we can do to protect women is to make sure that people who commit crimes against them go to jail and stay there for as long as they need to.' Which, not only closes the slammer door after the deed has been done, it does nothing to get women out of dangerous situations and into self-sufficient lives."

Interestingly enough, neither do social housing or welfare. Once again, what Zerbisias makes up for in ideology, she lacks in basic reasoning skills.

"As for Guergis, well, although her resumé includes many years of volunteering at Barrie's Rape Crisis Centre, she just tiptoes the party line.

With girlfriends like these, who needs enemies?"

Maybe the answer to this question doesn't truly matter. Ideologues specialize in attracting and inventing enemies.

Antonia Zerbisias would have invented herself an enemy, one way or another. It just helps that there are some women willing to reject Zerbisias' absurd concept of gender politics.

L'Ecole Polytechnique: Martyrs To An Embedded Ideology?

Opposition MPs boycott remembrance ceremony

One would expect that any of Canada's MPs would be eager to take any opportunity to respect the memory of the 14 women killed by Marc Lepine during the 1989 L'Ecole Polytechnique shootings.

But apparently, not so much. Numerous female MPs from the NDP, Liberal Party and Bloc Quebecois opted to skip a recent non-partisan memorial for the victims of the shooting over their outrage at the Conservative Party eliminating various ideological elements of Canadian policy.

The Conservative Party eliminated the Court Challenges Program, shifted the mandate of the Status Of Women away from research and advocacy (and toward providing actual services for women), and recently passed legislation -- with the help of numerous Liberal and NDP MPs -- to abolish the long gun registry.

The missing MPs excused their absence by citing their outrage at these moves.

"We consider this a hypocritical gesture because her government has shown itself from the beginning to be hostile to all women's demands," complained Bloc MP Nicole Demers.

"I find it difficult to stand beside a minister who chooses not to advocate for women, who chooses to follow the party line, who chooses to endorse the elimination of the long-gun registry." added Liberal MP Anita Neville.

Of course, what Demers declines to consider is that the demands of the groups funded by the Status of Women hardly represent the desires of all women, and what Neville declines to consider is that the long-gun registry has failed to keep guns out of the hands of unstable individuals like Kimveer Gill, who perpetrated the Dawson College shooting.

It couldn't have kept the hunting rifle out of the hands of Marc Lepine. Because it isn't gun control.

The Harper government's moves outrage individuals like Demers and Neville because it was a refutation of the ideology that lies at the core of what Barry Cooper describes as the embedded state, and with the character of the politics of public virtue that it entails.

Individuals like Demers and Neville seem to feel entitled to government organs designed to advance their particular ideology. But the role of government is not to advance any particular ideology.

In refusing to attend a remembrance ceremony based on these things, Demers, Neville and their fellow absentee MPs have expressed their intent to use the victims of the L'Ecole Polytechnique shootings as martyrs for what they believe should be the embedded ideology of the Canadian state.

That's an excessively poor use for the memory of a national tragedy.

No, It Doesn't -- And It Isn't About Gender

Heather Mallick has a bizarre & inflated sense of gun registry's effectiveness

As the 20th anniversary of the 1989 L'Ecole Polytechnique, the ideological stalwarts of Canada's left wing are milking it for as much as the memory of the 14 killed are worth.

In the case of Heather Mallick, her cause is the long gun registry. In her most recent column published at the CBC website -- which seems to break the moritorium on allowing her to publish there on serious matters following her Mighty Wind debacle -- Mallick reminds readers that Marc Lepine, the perpetrator of the shooting, used a hunting rifle to kill his victims.

"Lépine used a Ruger Mini-14, the kind of gun normally used by hunters to kill gophers, groundhogs and rabbits," Mallick recounts. "It's a comfortable gun, lightweight with little recoil, and it's semi-automatic, which means it fires without complications every time you pull the trigger (especially effective with a larger magazine of 20 bullets). It's very accurate to begin with, but in a classroom, experts say, you couldn't miss if you tried. And Lépine, a hater of all women, especially police officers and prominent successful women, did not."

Mallick's sense of gender self-importance cuts not only to the core of her feelings about L'Ecole Polytechnique (this would be only natural). But her feelings of gender self-importance also seem to cut to the core of the gun registry itself, as she seems to imagine that support for the long gun registry is rooted in machismo.

"The registry requires only this: If you buy or own a gun — and this includes rifles used by farmers and hunters, firing range enthusiasts, etc — it must be registered," Mallick writes. "It won't be confiscated, but law enforcement officials will know you have it. Is this so damaging to one's own personal notion of one's manhood?"

Right. Support for the abolition of the gun registry isn't based on not wanting to see the government continue to waste money on programs, masquerading as gun control, that do absolutely nothing to accomplish their goal, but on male preoccupation with their own masculinity.

Or, there's the matter of shame.

"There's no reason to be ashamed of owning a rifle if you live rurally and make rural excursions, and no reason to object to registering your gun the same way you register your car, house, boat, dog and cat," Mallick continues. "You often register major purchases in case they turn out to be faulty. The city inspects your house to make sure it's reliably built, your life insurer knows your health status, your home insurer prowls around, and doctors regularly probe your cavities and press your tender areas for signs of cancer."

Of course, we don't do any of these things under the false impression that doing so will protect us from crime, or protect others from us. As a matter of fact, the people who Canadians need protection from simply don't register their weapons.

Mallick evidently knows the gun issue as poorly as she knows gun owners.

When appeals to emotion aren't sufficient for Mallick, however, she falls back on twisting or distorting the facts.

"In 2009, police made an average 10,800 calls a day to find out registry information," Mallick writes.

Except, Mallick doesn't mention that police are logged onto the gun registry every time they log onto their onboard computer systems. So while some of the calls to the gun registry may well be to get information about particular guns, calls in which the express purpose of the call number far, far fewer than the nearly 11,000 Mallick claims.

When Mallick fails to impress with her razor-thin emotion-based appeals, she simply shows her contempt for the teeming rural masses.

"As Stephen Hume wrote this month in the Vancouver Sun, the loud, endlessly complaining rural minority doesn't understand the facts about gun deaths," Mallick writes.

But Mallick would be mistaken in suggesting that the gun registry is opposed only by a "rural minority". In fact, only in Quebec do a majority of Canadians favour maintaining the registry.

In fact, as it turns out, it's the pro-registry minority that are loud. And far more often than necessary, they're pretending that the long gun registry is a matter of gender politics.

It's not about gender politics. And individuals like Heather Mallick need to learn that it isn't all about them.

Are They Protesting Because They're Women, or Because They're Civil Servants?

Public Servant Alliance protests abolition of long gun registry

There's something about the long gun registry that renders Canada's left wing entirely irrational.

This was prominently on display recently, as the Public Servant Alliance of Canada protested at the office of Sackville-Eastern Shore MP Peter Stoffer (NDP), who recently voted in favour of abolishing the long gun registry.

The problem is that the small crowd of 25 women -- chanting "we will not be silent," -- pretended they were protesting Stoffer's vote under the pretenses of feminism.

"To think that a woman's life might be worth less than being able to bag a deer easily is unreal and it's a sad state of affairs that we're in this year marking the 20th anniversary of the Montreal massacre by abolishing the long-gun registry," complained Lori Walton, who is also planning a commemorative vigil for the victims of the L'Ecole Polytechnique shooting.

Walton and the PSAC aren't the only ones to try to make this argument. Antonia Zerbisias recently attempted the same feat, less than a month after a column in which she fibbed about the weapons used to kill the Mayerthorpe four.

Zerbisias argued that "Poll after poll has shown that women, including rural women, overwhelmingly supported the long-gun registry."

But polls have also shown that the majority of Canadians favour abolishing the registry. Only in Quebec did a majority favour maintaining it.

And just while only in the minds of Zerbisias and her followers do the various insular activist groups who purport to speak for all Canadian women actually represent all of Canada's women, only in the mind of Zerbisias should a majority of women count for more than the majority of all Canadians.

But even while the protesters at Stoffer's office pretended that they were there as women and not as public servants, they made their true motivations perfectly evident -- all while pretending that the gun registry is actually a tool of gun control.

"Dangerous people are refused their guns, which is what we should be doing. So yes, she does tell me a lot about the good that's coming out of it," said Anne Faban-Wood.

Of course, the fact that the gun registry doesn't keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people -- the perpetrator of the Dawson College shooting perpetrated the act with a registered weapon -- seems entirely lost on these people. But even in the face of this inconsistency, people like Faban-Wood make themelves entirely transparent.

The "she" Wood talks about is actually her sister, who works on the registry.

Which is really what the long gun registry is about to the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

While, to people like Antonia Zerbisias, the long gun registry is a program of left-wing ideological welfare, to the PSAC it's simply a matter of bureaucratic welfare.

Got Yourself a Gun (Registry)

On Rabble.ca, Judy Rebick cries "emergency"!



Rex Murphy also knows better: