June 22, 2000
Controlling our guns - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- The recent uproar, this past week, was the ranting and bitching propagated by the right-wing rabble rousers in this country regarding the movements within the gun registry, a registry that the Chrétien Liberals have just set up.
My party, the Canadian Alliance, has been quoted in recent days as absolutely against this form of gun control. Yet, none of the candidates have put forth any plausable and or clear solutions.
I happen to agree that the registry in its current form is costly, ineffective and a terrible waste of the public purse. But, I also have to reject the hues and cries of the right-wing bastards who call on their own to flood the registry with mucked up forms to further muck up the registry and their efforts to register weapons.
That is absurd.
The Liberals are, for one, pandering to the bleeding hearts who want to see guns controlled. The CA, for another, are simply pandering to their hick constituency who, like the good ol’ Americans feel compelled to pack heat.
I certainly believe that Canadians should, they desire, be able to have guns. What I reject wholeheartedly are those guns being held by gang types or criminals and used by anybody in an agressive way. If hick-man wants a shotgun for critters and a couple of other mothers for show or whatever the hell hick-man wants them for, then I fall into a conscious dilemma. There is no way that hick-man will feel compelled to registering his weapons, and I see no way that the bureaucrats in the justice department are going to travel to hick-man and his fellow hickers’ farms and seek to register those said weapons.
It’s a catch-22. I think the Liberals should find a way in keeping the same controls, perhaps strengthening them. The current provisions held in controlling the use of firearms in society, aren’t perfect so attention should be placed there. I think, what can also occur is the strengthening of laws in the purchase and dispensing of arms to the citizen by dealers in and outside of the nation.
In terms of registering weapons now, there’s no hope in hell in getting hick-man to filling out Minister McLellan’s forms.
At the end of the day, all should rejoice we haven’t got a bugger like Chuck Heston telling us Canadians what we should do. Mostly, thank goodness that we ain’t American.
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