Québec wins temporary injunction to keep gun registry

Unionist wrote:

I'd appreciate if the gun lovers went and practised their NRA talking points in the other threads which are active and relevant to that question. This thread is about Québec, and its struggle to maintain and improve gun control. Thanks.

 

I'm sure you would appreciate posters who disagree with your views on Quebec's registry not posting in this thread, but seeing how you can't pick and choose who contributes I suppose you can just ignore posters or take 3rd person shots from the side.

As far as relevance, maybe the article I posted makes me a "gun lover" but I know if I was a Quebec resident who has registered my firearms I would be concerned that the police could, without a warrant, raid my house and confiscate my properity if my town was evacuated due to forest fires, floods, solarflares.  I know I wouldn't trust the police not to touch anything else in the house or "take notes"..

Paladin1 wrote:

Francesca Allan wrote:

 I hate guns (and the mentality that goes with them).

Would you mind explaining to me exactly what type of mentality goes along with guns?

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I was thinking of kind of a right-wing tough guy with an "every man for himself" outlook. That's a ridiculous caricature. 

Francesca Allan wrote:

 I was thinking of kind of a right-wing tough guy with an "every man for himself" outlook. That's a ridiculous caricature. 

Oh, totally agree with you there! Always a case of the nutjobs ruining it for responsible types.

Just curious. Was mental illness something that the applicant voluntarily declared or was that information gathered from some other source? I wonder if it was police records (as opposed to criminal records) indicating provincial Mental Health Act interactions. Sidebar: You can appeal a conviction but digital police records are forever. You have no right to defend yourself in Court from, for instance, allegations made by a third party.

The two motions for leave to intervene which were dismissed were for an intervention on the stay of execution (of the Court of appeal decision), which was granted at the same time as leave for appeal was granted. They may still present a motion for leave to intervene in the appeal.

That said, the legal questions in this file are essentially federalism issues — not issues of security of the person, etc. This might lead the Supreme Court not to grant leave to intervene two the two groups. Or it might not.

Well, on the one hand, the Supreme Court has emphasized in several recent decisions the importance of cooperative federalism and so forth. On the other hand, one has to push this notion pretty far (farther than it's ever been pushed) in order to found upon it the conclusion that the section providing for the destruction of the data is constitutionally invalid. That's one of the main takeaways of the Court of appeal decision: cooperative federalism is an interpretive principle, not a juridical ground upon which a legislative provision can be declared invalid. (To brutally summarize things.)

The other argument, that the section of the Act providing for destruction of the data so encroaches upon provincial powers that it is ultra vires (beyond) the (fed) criminal legislative power, has even less chance of success IMO.

So, yeah, I'd be surprised if the Quebec attorney general wins.

Paladin1 wrote:

If that's the worst of the comments then I should check the place out. HuffingtonPost and other sites had people insulting Ericka Clarkes looks (mostly women), wishing her children are shot and saying they hope he gets sexually assaulted just to show her that guns won't protect her.

That's awful but it sounds like right-wing trolls or MRA types trying to give the left a bad name.

Paladin1 wrote:

I'd love to buy my daughter a semi-automatic rifle for Christmas but my father already bought her a bolt action rifle, she wanted (and got) a kids bow and arrow aaaaaaand I think I should buy myself one instead.

I think you presented this information in a negative way inviting criticism. I feel like you should have ended your sentence with "so there".

The automatic reaction is to think of guns as killing tools being given on a holiday that has come to represent peace and good will.  Even wars have stopped on Christmas day.

If you wanted the public to see guns and other weapons more as recreational items to use for target practice, like extreme dart throwing, this undermines your efforts. Peace activists could not have designed a better advertisment for gun control.

Paladin1 wrote:

It's possibly but the left can be just as scathing and hateful as the right, you've seen that. Neither side needs hidden spies to give the other side a bad name.

Good point but I suspect they exist anyway. I have a lurking suspicion that the people sending complaints about silly things to the Office of the French Language are not French language activists.

Paladin1 wrote:

I agree with the sentiment of their statement mission accomplished because they got exactly what they wanted.   What they don't want, or care about, is wether or not peace activists conceed any points to them.

They are offending more moderate people, the people both sides are trying to win over. This advertisement will be of enormous help to peace activists. They don't need to create an advertising campaign with the gun lobby providing prepared materials and paying for distribution.

With the aniversary of Sandy Hook and the Polytechnique on people's minds, the two recent ambushes of military personel, and the slaughter of school children in Pakistan, that advertisment looks like the root of all evil, propaganda twisting children's minds and turning them into monsters, kids filled with bloodlust. It's like an advertisment for a horror movie not just to peace activists but to moderates.

Moderates support the rights of reasonable adults to access reasonable firearms. Many could relate to a hunter or marksman teaching their children to shoot in a serious and responsible manner. None see a gun as a Christmas toy or something a child should own. Isn't it illegal for children to own guns?

Peace activists should sent gun advocates a thank-you note.

P.S. so there! :)

Paladin1 wrote:

I think moderates have all kinds of different views and degrees on what they believe is acceptable. Hypothetically speaking just because a gun is given to a child as a present it doesnt mean it's going to be kept in the childs toybox.

This is true but most advertisments are designed to appeal to emotion not reason and that is certainly true in this case.

There is no concerned parent in the picture warning junior that they can't use it alone or that it isn't a toy. The Santa jokingly says "don't shoot your eye out" as though it's the equivalent of skipping school on a sunny day.

It gives the impression that gun owners don't think owning guns is a big deal and that they do regard it as a toy even if it's a dangerous one.

A far better image would be a farmer teaching two kids, a girl and a boy, how to shoot, while telling them a story about the time a fox got into the hen house, or how he had to sit up all night for a week because something was killing the cows. 

Maybe show a mother teaching her kids the harm guns can do by shooting pumpkins and running them through the safety precautions, locking them up after use. A mom saying, "I'm raising country kids, this is part of our heritage and a skill that they will need."

Maybe some interviews with the hunters in northern towns that are going after wolfs that threaten school children along with a picture of vicious wolves tearing something apart.

Instead the gun lobby puts out advertisments that make them look like gun nuts who would let a kid keep a gun in their toy box.

Most non-gun owners don't think that anyone would be safer if more civilians were carrying concealed weapons. Non-gun owners are more likely to support ownership on the basis of civil liberties but with caution. Many are on the fence about allowing semi-automatic weapons for adults. Putting one in the hands of a child and suggesting it's a good Christmas gift does not reassure people that gun owners are capable of acting responsibly. Instead it reinforces the gun nut theory.

Edited for tangent

Pondering wrote:

Paladin, I've been wanting to ask you if you would accept a registry with a modest fee that only required updating if the gun was sold. Something without criminal penalties unless the gun were used in a crime and it hadn't been reported sold or stolen and there wasn't a reasonable reason for the owner not to know it was missing.

Check mate for you Pondering ;)

Sorry I'm going to be a bit wordy.

As a parent and law abiding citizen I would be in favor of a system that records anytime a firearm is sold or exchanges hands. I don't believe that falls under a registry however.   I think people are confused over how the registry works and what it's capable of doing, I'll explain.

Right now in order for me to purchase a firearm from Canadian tire I need a firearms licence. they record my licence information and what I'm purchasing.  If my firearm is used in a crime the police punch in the serial number and it gets traced back to me purchasing it from Canadian Tire.  Half of my firearms are restricted there for registered to me. If I want to sell you a hand gun I call the RCMP and wait on the phone for an hour or two (seriously, longest it took me was 2 hours 45 minutes) and I tell them i want to transfer a restricted firearm to you.  After I give them the information you call them and go through the same thing except they also confirm you belong to a gun club. Once that's approved we wait for a week to 3 months for them to call me back and say the transfer is approved and give me an Authorization To Transport (ATT) which is a 8 digit number (give or take) and now I can legally transport the firearm 2 blocks up the road to your house.  You have to get an ATT to bring your new gun from your house to the shooting range.

The issue here is that with non-restricted firearms (think grandpas shotgun)  if I want to sell you the gun the onus is on me to confirm that you have a valid firearms licence.  There is nothing stopping me from selling you a gun without you havuing a licence save for the threat of breaking the law.

You being required by law to register your firearms doesn't prevent me from selling you that gun illegally.  If my shotgun is registered to me and I sell it to you then the onus would be on you to register your new gun, it has nothing to do with me anymore. I can't make you fill out the paperwork and send it to the government.  The only thing now is if you use it in a crime, or the 7th person who it's sold to, my name pops up.

The registry is just a secondary tracking system that people choose whether or not they partake in.

Here is some issues I  have with the previous gun registry and a possibly new one.

1. It was supposed to cost a few million dollars, it ended up costing over 2 billion dollars and was rising.

2. We registered our firearms, after about 4 or 5 times of sending our information to the government and having it come back all messed up we gave up on trying to get the correct information on the cards.  The whole premise was a gun owner would have a card with his or her information on it and the firearms information on it which would match what's on the gun.  2 billion dollars and they couldn't even get the serial numbers correct.

3. Under the current rules for restricted weapons I have little cards with the same infromation that was supposed to be on the registry cards- they're perfect no mistakes.

4. There were quite a few stories and problems with corruption in the firearms registry program where people were making money off it or whatever.

5. There were cases where hackers accessed the firearms registry, which was poorly maintained, and got access to private information. Now said hacker/criminal knows you have 4 handguns and 6 rifles at your house. It's like an online shopping list for them. I haven't heard of the RCMPs site being hacked but I conceed it's still a possibility)

6. Many feel, including myself, that the registry program was an attempt by the RCMP to keep track of who owned what guns for other purposes than crime fighting.  If they decide over night that a certain firearm was now illegal, they would have your address.  This actually happened with the Swissarms rifle just this year.  The RCMP decided a style of gun illegal over night and despite that firearm never being used in a crime in Canada over the last 10 years it was in the country, law abiding citizens were now criminals and had to  turn their $3000-$4000 firearms in to the RCMP to be destroyed without being compensated. (before the gov't stopped it).  Now it's kind of in limbo where owners of the gun aren't really criminals or they're criminals but not being charged, but they can't use or sell their property.

7.  Finishing with a bit of a tangent. Highriver Alberta.  The long gun registry was supposed to be destroyed however the RCMP went door to door "looking for people" except they knew which houses had firarms, which they confiscated despite being propperly and legally stored. In at least one case they went back to the same house 3 times "to look for people" and on the 3rd time they found well hidden legally owned and stored firearms which they confiscated.

Quote:

From what you said it seems the gun lobby group isn't interested in actually changing public perception or acceptance of firearms. They exist to fund themselves. Gun advocates should "fire them" and found a new group promoting responsible gun ownership that would reassure the public rather than giving us visions of Sandy Hook. I read the gun the kid is holding is similar to the one used in the massacre there. Mommy bought that shooter his gun too and he shot her with it.

The gun in the picture is similar to the one in the Sandy Hook shooting yes. It's also similar to this

Which is a BB gun that shoots the same type of bullet that the kid in the origional Christmas story got for Christmas.  The rifle in the "christmas card picture" could very well be the BB gun pictured above, but I agree their intent was to portray an AR15 (M16) and piss people off.

In the Sandy Hook shooting the shooter shot his mom with a bolt action .22 rifle. He then stole her gun (AR15) and went to the school with it.

With regard to the recent shooting in Alberta, I'm tracking that the hand gun used was registered in 1994 or 1997.  It was stolen in 2005 or 2006 and it turned up when it was used in a crime.  The firearm being registered didn't prevent it from being stolen or apparently aid it in being found.  The last legal owner if the firearm was someone who reported it being stolen almost  a decade in the past- doesn't seem very helpful.  Definitly not worth 2 billion dollars.

The court said it had nothing to do with the merits of the registry, but rather jurisdiction.

It is of no concern to any of us who don't plan on hauling guns into Quebec, so what are you talking about victory? People in that province largely support the registry, and the feds went out of their way to stop that. I see no reason to crow about this.

An Albertan gun nut? Didn't see that coming.

Hurtin Albertan wrote:

A nous la victoire!! Vive le NFA et le CSSA!!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/quebec-vows-to-create-its-own-long-gun-registry-despite-supreme-court-ruling-1.3011843

Feds can shred their old registry data, Quebec vows to create their own registry anyways and laughingly claims it will "only" cost 30 million bucks.

Comparing the actual cost of the Federal registry with the initial estimates that number is a laugher.

I don't support the gun registry but if the majority of Quebecers do then starting from scratch is probably a good idea.  The last registry was a flop and absolutely full of mistakes.

If Quebec used the data from the previous gun registry then they would probably be spending even more on correcting the previous ones mistakes. 

6079_Smith_W wrote:

And of course, he has a record of destroying public information.

The federal gun registry information was used by the RCMP after Harper ordered it destroyed. I don't have a lot of confidence of it being destroyed.

In partial response to post #87 and its scoffing at the estimates on the costs of the Quebec registry, I would like to remind the poster that no small part of the ballooning costs that accompanied the initial, national, registry were the result of the oppostion to and the pattern of non-cooperation on the part of the provincial governments of Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. I have heard first hand of the bureaucratic incompetence of the registry (immediate family members being long gun owners) - but even they are willing to acknowledge that they experienced no undue hardship by having to comply with regulations, just annoyance over how they were handled.

Hats off to Quebec for making the effort, even if they are stuck bordering two of the jurisdictions who did almost everything in the power to stymie the original implementation of the national registry. As for the selfish actions of those who celebrate the death of the national registry, I hope the next time there is another murder of a woman by firearm in a "domestic dispute", a Polytechnique, or Mayerthorpe, or Moncton style shooting they come forward to demonstrate how that could never, ever have been averted by police being able to ascertain who has access to what weapon....