(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Labour MP ejected from the Commons (again) for declaring that the Tories are all cokeheads.

Also,
Best comment ever on the 25th Anniversary of Lennon's death: "Damn. Now there's going to be another special edition of Catcher In the Rye, and I'll have to get this one, too."

Canadian Election news!

Just for aimisdirty, we have firearms news, as Paul Martin is expected to announce a proposed ban on handguns. Don't worry, Hal, they'll probably let you keep yours under some kind of "the Armed Forces *do* need to keep some guns" exception.

NDP promises election reform - byelections for party-jumpers, proportional representation in addition to constituency, and others

The CPC (the West-only, white-only, English-only party)'s campaign to get *something* in Quebec has kicked off: "The Bloc is like a brother-in-law. When things are good, he's there for you. But when you need help to solve a problem or build something, it's funny, he can't do anything for you."

Also,
The Canadian Election FAQ

Finally, from the CBC Election Quotes File:
"What family doesn't look forward to a gathering together on Christmas, sipping on hot chocolate, and sharing the joy of seeing Stephen Harper appear as Scrooge on TV?"
— Liberal Leader Paul Martin on the timing of the election campaign.

NDP communications director Jamey Heath, explaining how if he were making Star Wars, he'd cast Harper as a Stormtrooper: "Lots of fire and brimstone, but in reality stumped by cuddly, two-foot-high Ewoks."

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

"The CPC (the West-only, white-only, English-only party)'s [...]"

This is inaccurate, for all the good it does the CPC. They have non-European MPs and wanna-be MPs. Gurmont Grewal is but one example. The CPC (and the Alliance and Reform before it) know that they have a dubious reputation in this area and from time to time they make gestures, like expelling their more virulent racists or sending around tragically phrased memos.

I suspect this is why they put up with Grewal's antics (which I will point out cost the party a shot at forming a government and at bringing one down). Yes, he's a pain in the ass and an embarassment but if they give him the old heave ho, they run the risk of being accused of racism. He had to make the decision not to run himself.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They have tokens. It's a holdover from the Reform and Canadian Reform Alliance Party days that they're trying to shed - but they make gestures, not progress, because if they really, truly expelled the bigots and didn't make policy based on their desires, they're afraid they'd have no base.

(Witness the current gay marriage debacle)

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

You know, I wasn't aware you had a problem with guns in Canookia. You have an even higher per capita gun ownership ratio than we do up there in the frozen wastes, but you aren't routinely shooting each other over who got which parking space. Has this started to change, or is this handgun ban just a way to make the more sheep-like of your citizens feel safer (ignoring for a moment that banning guns doesn't stop criminals, who by definition won't follow the law anyway)?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Gun violence has been increasing in Toronto, fast. It's still tiny compared to any US city, but it's massive for Canada.

> banning guns doesn't stop criminals

Yes and no. If you get rid of all the guns, criminals can't get them, and they'll be unarmed. The problem is how to get there from here.

And banning handguns means that you don't have people legally having access to portable, easily concealable weapons for whatever use they might want to put them to - and, by extension, lets you make there be a smaller supply of them available (legal and illegal), and put higher penalties with simpler convictions on people who do have them.

I'm not saying I AGREE with the reasoning, but I can see how it comes about.

(Got a neat link the other day on a statistical deconstruction of one of the "More guns equals less crime" wonks from the US, proving that he cooked his data, and the *actual* statistics showed (based on location) no appreciable effect or an increase in gun crime when more guns became available in the system. "Concealed carry" laws reduced the number of crimes by unarmed criminals, but didn't decrease the number of crimes. You can do the math on what that means.)

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that link. I also hit the Freakonomics link from the same entry. Allowing guns means easier access to them for everybody, but in the other direction lies madness. Look at the Brits, contemplating banning large kitchen knives. You can't stop the bad people from being bad. Criminals will use whatever tools are available to them. Guns are just a tool (albeit, an extremely effective and efficient tool). It's probably not rational, but I find banning a tool highly repugnant just because there are people out there who abuse it. Okay, so you get to add a couple extra charges. So what? Those of us who aren't abusing that tool get fucked for no good reason. It's bullshit legal pedantics that penalizes the rest of us.

I'm not some tinfoil hatter building an arsenal in my basement. Hell, I don't own a single gun, but I have friends who do, and I enjoy going out to the range and target shooting with them. It's a damn fine way to spend an afternoon. If I didn't have a kid I probably would go ahead and buy a nice handgun and a decent rifle of my own I could take to the range, but I can do the math, and I'd rather not take the (excruciatingly small) chance that the most likely victim of that theoretical gun, if it were to be used against a person, be one of my family. But goddamnit, that's my choice.

[jerril]

Banning knives is just to get votes. I suspect what you get by restricting ranged weapons is that nice psychological effect where it's harder to dehumanize someone if you have to walk up to them and stick the knife in them and get bled on by them.

The other benefit is that law abiding(ish) individuals suffering a temporary lapse in judgement/sanity/soberiety and assaulting other law abiding(ish) individuals don't have a gun handy to do it with. The assault still gets done, but it's less likely the victim gets killed before the perp comes to his senses. Hitting someone once with a blunt object is dangerous, especially over the head, but not quite as bad as putting a bullet through them, and requires you to go All The Way Over There, giving the victim a chance to realize you really mean it and run like fuck.

Unfortunately, going from Guns to No Guns is really really really hard. It's a nice idea, but once the genie is out of the bottle it's really hard to put it back in again.

England is in an unusual situation in that they managed to jamn the cork in before the genie got all the way out. It's hardly all the way back in again, but it's a much smaller pool of weapons and they're mostly owned by terrorists/"enemy combatants"/IRA members, who are in a different category from your average thief or gang member.

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

I always have such mixed feelings on this subject. On the one hand, I, like Jamie, really enjoyed it when my dad would take us out to the shooting range and let us shoot his rifles and his .38 and all that good stuff, and I have been considering getting a gun of my own recently, for protection (the only reason I haven't, actually, is because of the expense).

On the other hand, it is kind of disturbing to consider that people are aggressively defending their right to carry handguns - weapons which are designed solely for one purpose: killing humans. Looked at from that perspective, I can see why some people believe gun advocates are unequivocal nutbars, even though many of them aren't.

On the other other hand, I'd feel a lot safer if I had a nice little .22 or something in the house.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

There are lots of perfectly legimate uses for handguns: turning off car alarms comes to mind and who hasn't wanted a pistol just in case they can't find the three hole punch?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

"And banning handguns means that you don't have people legally having access to portable, easily concealable weapons for whatever use they might want to put them to - and, by extension, lets you make there be a smaller supply of them available (legal and illegal), and put higher penalties with simpler convictions on people who do have them."

The only possible flaw I can see with this is if we happened to be next to a large nation where guns are as available as VCRs. The odds of that must be pretty high.

Where this glorious plan will go awry is that the same people who will be put in charge of it previously proven that they could not confiscate a bra in a strip joint (at the cost of ten AdScams) but that they were willing to blatently lie to make it seem that they were meeting their goals. Canadian guns are very strange: unlike guns in other countries, ours spontaneously evaporate at the just the right rate for the RCMP to meet their goals.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I didn't say I agreed with the reasoning, nor do I necessarily think it's PRACTICAL reasoning.

But I can *see* where the reasoning is coming from.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I hate it when the Liberals make it harder for me to vote for them... since there's no other party with a platform I'd touch with a 3-meter lead-insulated pole.

-- Steve was a member of his university Rifle and Pistol club, dammit. No firearms owned, but a symbolic (and expensive, and ineffective) banning of pistols just grates.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I've found the NDP platform being supprisingly sane this election.

Not that I believe that platforms have much to do with what the party would do if it was in power, mind you.