Gun Control? No. Smoke Screen.

So Justin, Bill, Chrystia, Dave and Joel are going to make the streets safe again with their nonsensical and thinly veiled money/ removal of rights grab. It saddens me to know that far too many of my fellow citizens are being hoodwinked by this smoke and mirrors act.

Canadian gun owners – legal gun owners are the most watched/investigated group of Canadians, bar none. Obtaining a license is incredibly difficult and time consuming, as it should be. Oversight does not end with the obtaining of a PAL; gun owners are watched constantly. If any other group were monitored by the police/law enforcement at even a fraction of the extent to which gun owners are monitored, the hue and cry would be deafening.

This is a dangerous, dangerous proposal. It does not address public safety; it simply removes rights from law abiding citizens. This will not stop a 12 year old from being shot at a bus stop in Montreal or a 14 year old shot in her bed, in Toronto. The 22 people murdered by Gabriel Wortman would still be dead, had this legislation already been passed. In fact, this proposal may well serve to increase the number of weapons entering the country.

There was a way to prevent the 14 deaths at Polytechnique by Marc Lepine; there was a way to prevent Kimveer Gill from killing Anastasia De Sousa and mitigate the carnage perpetrated by Valery Fabrikant; the way would not have been through the pathetic attempt to dupe gullible Canadians with a less than useless, dangerous legislation of the type Trudeau and his band of con-artists are proposing.

There was a way to stop Faisal Hussain from murdering 2 innocents and injuring 13 others. It would have been the same way that Alek Minassian could have been stopped before ramming a van into 26 pedestrians, killing 10. But…that way isn’t as glamorous or headline generating as this piece of legislative goop.

Instead of pouring money into an inane buy-back program, instead of blatantly using the anti-gun lobby as election sparkly-shinies – take that money and use it where it may do some good – increased mental health options. Every single one of the killers mentioned above were known to suffer from mental illness. It was their illness that murdered and maimed these innocent Canadians. On any given night, in any given town or city, within Canada – thousands of people with mental illness languish in doorways, die from exposure or substance abuse – that’s the real emergency in Canada, not the removal of the rights of legal gun owners. But the Liberals will not address the problem – the real problem, (and it isn’t guns), the lack of resources, the lack of options when addressing mental illness. No beds, not enough frontline staff. Address those things and perhaps a repeat of Danforth can be avoided.

This legislation will “do something” about gun violence alright; it will increase the black market, making a lot of criminals, a lot of money. Increase the prison time and remove possibility of parole for any crime involving a firearm, might be start – 10 years, automatic addition to a sentence for any crime involving a firearm.

Citing Australia or New Zealand is ridiculous and anyone using these two countries as shining examples of gun legislation needs a slap and an atlas or better yet…a slap with an atlas. Australia and New Zealand do not share borders with any other country(ies), let alone a country with more guns than people, as does Canada and its border with the U.S, a largely, unprotected border, I might add.

The war on illegal guns will be about as successful as the war on drugs. The only winners – organized crime. Gun violence will not go down – probably escalate as the various syndicates fight each other for a larger piece of the illegal gun trade pie.

There are 3 major ports in Canada – the largest being Vancouver. There were over 1 million containers entering our country, through Vancouver, in 2020; a year where the global economy took a major hit due to the pandemic. 1 056 610 to be exact; see the table below. We don’t have enough manpower or equipment to examine even a small fraction of the contents of these containers. Let’s be generous and say that 10% and believe me…that is more than generous, can be thoroughly examined, that leaves 950,949 containers to enter the country, with virtually no oversight. Watch as thousands of illegal firearms find their way onto our streets and into the hands of organized crime, by sea and by land. No handgun ban is going to have any impact, at all, on crime involving guns. Not one iota.

The transborder importation from the U.S. via truck; in 2009 – 5 million trucks crossed the US/Canada border. 5 million. Same problem – not enough customs agents or equipment to examine each and every truck. Rail transport…private vehicles…all of them provide easy-peasy routes for illegal firearms. The organized crime syndicates must be doing happy dances due to this stupid attempt to pacify a, largely, ill-informed public. The desire for firearms won’t be diminished – same principle applied to cigarettes; tax them into oblivion? Nope, turned previously law-abiding Canadians to the black market for their smokes. Take away the right to a firearm, a right acquired by background checks, signed agreements handing over any expectation of personal privacy and a course in the safe use/handling/storage of a gun and those law-abiding citizens will, themselves, turn to the black market.

You are being smoked, Canada by a drama teacher and his entourage. He is using this as a sleight of hand, to keep your eyes off a national debt of historic proportions – a national debt that will impact you, your parents, your kids and their kids; Canada is bankrupt and the Liberals have managed to do this in less than 4 years time. He is using this to draw your attention away from the vaccination debacle. Keep your eyes off his ethics violations and those of his party.

Rumours of an election in June, are floating around; if that’s the case – get rid of them. Turf them out. Feel pity for any party left to clean up the fiscal disaster that idiot trust fund baby and his friends have created. Feel sorry for yourselves…you are going to foot a bill, (today’s date) of $1,059,471,116,209.92 For those of you who failed math? This is 1 TRILLION, 59 million, 116 thousand, 2 hundred and 9 dollars and 92 cents. TRILLION DOLLARS. In 2013, before the wannabe actor took office? The national debt was $584,507,863,014.00 – Trudeau has more than doubled our debt load.

Have you given any thought, any thought at all, as to who will be paying down this debt and how? You will have to re-pay it, your children and their children and probably their children will be re-paying it. Watch as our precious natural resources get sold off to foreign interests. Watch as our country is pieced out and sold abroad. We’re done – Trudeau has destroyed us, as a country. Don’t let this legislation fool you again. Get them out, although…I fear the damage they’ve done? It is, in all probability, already too late.

We Failed Them.

We failed our kids, we failed our grandkids. For all our rhetoric, demonstrations and even riots for change; we failed. Las Vegas, another example of our failure. Sandy Hook, Columbine, Orlando – all of them, glaring examples of our failure. The election of that giant Cheeto to the south of us. The election of that privileged Gen X-er in our parliament. Further examples of failure.

What happened? Did we get too busy trying to achieve that suburban dream? We wanted our kids to live in a world of peace, of brotherhood. Did we come to accept, albeit, bitterly, that this was an unattainable pie-in-the-sky ideal?

Why are we still fighting for equality of the genders, of race, of creed, of religion? Why are our veterans, our elderly suffering and dying due to lack of funding? Why are there aboriginals without access to clean water? Why are there children going to bed hungry in countries of such massive excess? Why is there a debate or even a question regarding equal taxation?

Because, we failed. We tried, we wandered off and ultimately failed. The United States, once the beacon for the world, has fallen, with lightspeed, into a global joke. Relegated by a giant Cheeto to the junk food aisle in the global marketplace.

Canada is lead by a pretty boy, with no notion of what Canadians want and need to move ahead. He’ll go, next election – with his million-dollar smile and vapid comments. Then what? Who is there with the economical and social savvy to govern? Insert the sound of crickets. There is no one. There are no more leaders of true social change; if there ever were. Time has a way of colouring memory.

Why do my children feel that they require firearms? What happened? When did it get this bad?

We failed, my friends. We became tired, we became preoccupied with attaining the media dream of that house with the fence. We fell for the image and we walked away. We failed and now, our kids are paying the price.

The Ukrainian 100

While Trump and the laughter from the Canadian Conservative party, at the working class (see: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/02/18/in-what-world-is-it-laughable-to-drive-a-bus-for-a-living-mallick.html ) make a mockery of democracy?

3 years ago, in Ukraine, people were fighting and dying for the concept. The late fall of 2013 to February 2014, the people of Ukraine – ordinary people, the you and me, the bus drivers, the store clerks, the office workers, took to the streets to protest the actions of the criminal Victor Yanukovych and his equally corrupt cronies.

In Kiev, at Independence Square, on February of 2014, they marched. They were demanding freedom, justice and to be treated with the dignity they deserved as citizens of Ukraine.

In Kiev, at Independence Square, against its own citizens – Yanukovych ordered the army to open fire on the demonstrators. The citizens of Ukraine.

Over 100 Ukrainian men and women were cut down and died. They sacrificed themselves in the fight against political corruption.

This Revolution of Dignity continues. Thousands of Ukrainians – men, women and little children are being maimed and dying as a result of Putin’s megalomaniacal clawing for the old Soviet. He wants what isn’t his and murders to attain it.

Ukraine is fighting for her sovereignty. History repeats itself.

A small musing: What will it take for North Americans to take back their dignity? Or has it been lost forever in the search for the next iPhone, the next video game, cardboard cupped coffee or the next overpriced, useless athlete?