in E News TEAM CSSA E-NEWS – October 23, 2013
CANADIAN SHOOTING SPORTS ASSOCIATION / CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION
TEAM CSSA E-NEWS – October 23, 2013
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COMMENTARY: DOES THRONE SPEECH LEAVE GUN OWNERS OUT IN THE COLD?
The Speech from the Throne on October 16 lacked any positive indicators for responsible firearms owners. Hopefully, this is not the shape of things to come?
As time goes on, it becomes clearer that there are many relatively new Conservative M.P.s who don’t really understand firearms issues, and some journeyman M.P.s may have forgotten. That doesn’t bode well for the future of either the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) or firearms owners. As time passes, the CPC seem to be forgetting that we need each other to comfortably coexist.
The CSSA has even taken some heat from a few CPC MPs for our Commentary of September 12. They said they didn’t like being “threatened” into action on the firearms file. It was pretty clear that our Commentary was a prediction, rather than a threat. We wrote: “October 19, 2015. This is the tentative date for the next federal election. Will responsible firearms owners vote Conservative? There is growing evidence that they may not.”
The MPs who didn’t like that prediction are merely shooting the messenger. There were lots of MPs, however, who understood that the CSSA was trying to help the Conservatives by encouraging the government to turn Firearms Act housekeeping legislation into votes on October 2015. Neither Conservatives nor gun owners believe we should have to rot in a jail cell for meaningless “paperwork crimes.”
We draw the line when police are given the legislative tools to lay nuisance charges that cost us thousands in legal fees – even when the verdict is clearly “not guilty.” These are the same minor legislative adjustments that the Prime Minister Harper was gung-ho to introduce when he won his majority. And so we wait.
It’s been seven years. It should come as no surprise that many firearms owners have concluded that the current government is now the owner of the Firearms Act and everything it represents. And we challenged this government to fix it, lest firearms owners stay away from the polls in October 2015. If the CPC is waiting patiently for the Liberals and NDP to split the left-wing vote, it’s a big gamble they need not take.
Is the CSSA threatening the Conservative majority? Nope – there is no firearms organization in Canada powerful enough to deliver the firearms vote if this government ignores gun owners. We are trying to give the Harper government the valuable gift of foresight. We are merely extrapolating the current political climate and pointing at those dark clouds before the storm hits.
The CSSA is not lobbying this government – we’re advising it. It so happens our advice would also be good for our members. But, if the CPC brain trust heeds the ire of a few of their own MPs who refuse to read the tea leaves because they somehow feel threatened, there will be no winners in October 2015 – except perhaps the current opposition parties.
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HELP SUPPORT THE GREAT WORK THE CSSA DOES TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. DONATE HERE
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LOOKOUT AMERICANS: Is healthcare.gov a smoke screen for CGI gun registry built in Canada? Obama may be giving the Canadian company behind healthcare.gov’s glitch-ridden website a pass for reasons other than you may think. CGI is famous in the U.S. as ObamaCare website builders, and infamous in Canada as the company that built the $2.7 billion plus busted gun registry.
Make that the $2.7 billion plus Canadian LIBERAL Government gun registry for which the Canadian taxpayer is still paying through the nose some 20 years later.
President Barack Obama who threw temper tantrums in getting his way on last week’s government shutdown, is curiously calm when it comes to a $292-plus million website that’s still bogged down by a potential 5 million lines of bad code.
Could it be that the website that doesn’t work is a diversion for something else Obama doesn’t want people thinking about, like a computer driven gun registry?
In 1993, the Liberals passed Bill C-68 (the Firearms Act). Over half of all registered handguns in Canada were prohibited without any evidence provided that these handguns had been misused. Almost overnight, owning a firearm, an ordinary rifle or shotgun in The Land of the Maple Leaf became a criminal offence for those not holding a valid licence.
The CGI Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) brought on stream by the Prime Minister Jean Chrétien-led Liberal government was so wrought by delays and cost overruns that it came to the attention of Canada’s Auditor-General Sheila Fraser.
In 2002, the auditor-general revealed that the Liberal created Firearms Centre had grown out of control. (Gary Mauser, Special to the National Post, Dec. 11, 2012).
“Despite political promises that the program would not cost over $2-million, costs were expected to exceed $1-billion by 2005. By 2012, this had ballooned to $2.7-billion. The auditor-general uncovered irregularities including mismanagement and corruption. Her findings stimulated a parliamentary revolt. In 2003, Parliament imposed an annual spending cap. The auditors’ reports led to RCMP investigations of Liberal insiders and contributed to the fall of the Liberal government in 2006.”
Did the U.S. Democrats, who make the protection of women and children the main motive for gun control copycat corrupt Canadian Liberal politicians?
“To this day, it has been claimed that the registry is important in protecting women. But in fact, there is no convincing evidence that registering firearms has been effective in reducing either homicide rates overall, or spousal murders in particular. Even though homicide rates have been gradually falling since the 1970s, a wide variety of researchers have been unable to find solid evidence linking gun laws to this decline. Changing demographics, not firearm laws, better explain the decline in homicides involving long guns over the past 20 years. It is difficult to argue that Canadian gun laws are effective when homicide rates have dropped faster in the United States than in Canada since 1991.”
Citizen hopes ran high when the Stephen Harper Conservative government that took power in 2006 canceled CGI’s gun registry contract, and over time, repealed the Canadian gun registry entirely.
But gun ownership in Canada remains a complicated business , and when the RCMP seized guns from the evacuated homes in the aftermath of flooding in High River, Alta., last June came proof positive that politically correct rules still hold sway on gun ownership.
Meanwhile, many are suspicious that Obama can’t seem to get his signature website up and running. They wonder why the his administration would hire a company whose contracts to build health care databases for diabetic clients in the provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick were cancelled for delays and cost overruns.
Overnight, the CGI Gun Registry tracked gun owners in Canada.
Under the Affordable Health Care Act, doctors are encouraged to ask their patients if they own a gun.
Shouldn’t Americans be getting suspicious by now? (Judi McLeod – Canada Free Press)
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SUN TV’s Brian Lilley talks about CGI’s SCANDALOUS PAST: A history of failure.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/a-history-of-failure/2759577991001
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GUN SHOW This Sunday Oct 27th to be held at Markham Fairgrounds, 10801 McCowen Rd, Markham, On. 7:30 am to 1:00 pm.
For more information please call Allan at 416-579-4944. Other upcoming shows can be seen at www.ontariogunshows.com
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BRITS MASSAGING CRIME STATS TO GIVE GUN CONTROL CREDENCE: A report examining crime in Britain since “restrictive firearm laws virtually banned handguns” in 1997 shows that crime stats have been “massaged” to convince British subjects the gun ban worked, when in fact it may have backfired.
Authored by Dr. Paul Gallant, Dr. Joanne D. Eisen, Alan J. Chwick, and Sherry Gallant, and published at AmmoLand, the report shows that as recently as 2008 “one in three [Brits] had been a victim of crime, or knew someone who had been.” Also in 2008, “nearly half [of survey respondents] knew of someone in their community who had been a victim in the last year.”
How is such crime possible if banning guns produced the utopia CNN’s Piers Morgan repeatedly describes? The report claims the numbers Morgan and others quote are drawn from figures that have been distorted to one extent or another in order to make the gun ban look successful.
The report shows that “the Brits…freely admit to massaging crime figures” and “are vigorously and openly beating their statistics to a bloody pulp, as they have created a stunningly large bureaucracy to deal with crime figures.”
This bureaucracy decides “how…crime will ultimately be reported.” This includes deciding what crimes will or will not be reported as well. They do this through the use of “targets” which guide police in reducing the number of crimes reported.
The Independent reported on the use of “targets” in January, explaining that these represent certain bureaucratically-designated thresholds that a given crime has to meet to even be labeled as “crime” in the first place.
For instance, “just about every single reported theft of a mobile phone is recorded as lost property,” and very few attempted burglaries are recorded as “attempted burglaries because they all get recorded as criminal damage.” In both instances the reason is the same–“lost property” does not drive up crime stats and “criminal damage” is less severe that “attempted burglary.”
So what are the exact crime numbers in Britain? The honest answer is that no one knows because the statistics have been so manipulated, but the evidence suggests such manipulation has resulted in a crime rate that should be higher than gun control proponents have claimed. (By AWR Hawkins – www.breitbart.com — October 18, 2013)
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SHOWING THE BOYS HOW IT’S DONE: Women & The Changing Face Of Shooting Sports, How You Can Help – According to a recent study done by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), “the landscape of target shooters has shifted.
With 20% of current shooters having taken up the sport in just the last five years, a new generation has emerged with a completely different demographic profile.
The study compares established shooters (more than five years of experience) with new shooters and shows that this new wave of shooting enthusiasts is often younger, female, and urban.
Here’s a breakdown of the numbers:
• Younger: 66 percent of new shooters fall into the 18-to-34-year-old category compared to 31 percent in the same age category for established shooters.
• Female: 37 percent of new target shooters are female compared to 22 percent of established target shooters.
• Urban: 47 percent of new target shooters live in urban/suburban settings versus 34 percent of established target shooters.
For owners of shooting ranges and gun shops, this means that it is no longer “business as usual.” As customer demographics change, so must the industry. Innovative shooting ranges and gun shops across the country have taken notice of the trend and are adjusting the way they do business. One such innovator is Miles Hall, owner of H&H Shooting Sports in Oklahoma City.
“Shooting is not a men’s only club anymore,” Hall said. “47 percent of our customer base is women.”
In response to the shift, Hall has made a concerted effort to upgrade his shooting range facilities and provide firearms training that meets the demands of the new generation of shooters.
“There’s a huge audience out there who want to shoot, and you’re going to have to have the right equipment to take care of them,” Hall said. “The shooting sport has changed, and you have to either be changing with it or you’re going to die in the past.” Read more: http://www.ammoland.com/2013/10/women-the-changing-face-of-shooting-sports-how-you-can-help/#ixzz2iB5OOVm0
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QUOTABLE QUOTE: “Anyone know if President Obama intends to perform background checks on the Syrian rebels before providing them weapons?” — Senator Ted Cruz (R – Texas)
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CBC USES NEWFOUNDLAND MAYOR AS GUN CRITIC: Conception Bay South Mayor Ken McDonald said he was shocked to learn that the shooter in last week’s double murder-suicide owned dozens of weapons, including an assault rifle. Brian Dawe, 43, was found with body armour, an AK-47 assault rifle and a handgun when his body was discovered in a cemetery on the outskirts of St. John’s last week, hours after he shot and killed two people. On Tuesday night, Dawe shot his former girlfriend, Juliane Hibbs, 35, and her boyfriend, 45-year-old Vince Dillon, at Villa Nova Plaza in Conception Bay South.
In an interview Monday, McDonald said the community is still reacting to the violent episode, in which the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary initially urged residents to stay indoors while a dragnet searched for Dawe. “I think people are somewhat relieved at the final outcome [because] It wasn’t [a] drug-related, gang-related-type incident. That would have been scary for the entire community,” said McDonald. “Everybody’s saying [there were] three families affected. It’s a shame. Our thoughts and prayers should be with them to deal with this. It’s going to be a long while to get over it.”
McDonald said he was “very surprised” to learn from the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary that officers found 45 separate weapons in Reid’s possession. While the AK-47 and the 9mm handgun were found in his car, the rest – which included seven restricted guns, as well as rifles and others – were in his home. The RNC noted that Reid was in legal possession of each weapon, although they also confiscated illegally obtained ammunition. “I can’t believe that people can own that amount of weaponry, and you’d have a permit for it, and I think that individual had 45 separate weapons, legally,” McDonald said. “I can go do a course today or the weekend, whenever, and then I can start acquiring guns and build them up and build them up,” he said. “You’re not checked on afterwards. You don’t have to do a mental assessment or anything. Once you get that licence, you’re good to buy weapons, and the bullets to go with [them].”… (CBC News — October 21, 2013)
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SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2013: The findings of the Small Arms Survey 2013: Everyday Dangers were presented in New York today at the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations, during the 68th session of the United Nations First Committee. The Small Arms Survey 2013, launched in July at the UN in Geneva, focuses on small arms and armed violence outside war zones, with chapters on organized crime and gang violence, the use of firearms in intimate partner violence, and violent land disputes. Understanding the diverse forms and expressions of non-conflict armed violence, which dwarfs conflict violence worldwide, is crucial to national and multilateral violence prevention and reduction efforts.
A chapter on organized crime and violence in Italy finds that mafia homicides dropped 43 per cent over the period 2007 to 2010. Analysts link the steep reduction to the mafia groups’ increasing interest in legal markets, where murder attracts law enforcement attention, and such attention hinders legitimate business operations. Despite a reduction in lethal violence, mafia groups continue to maintain extensive firearm arsenals. ‘It appears that for most Italian mafia groups the risks of using extreme violence now outweigh the perceived benefits,’ said Small Arms Survey Programme Director Keith Krause. ‘If we are to improve our understanding of this decline, and of the varying patterns of violence among different groups, it is important that researchers gain access to official data on mafia weapons use.’ …
See the whole report at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/?highlight-yb13-NY
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THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
The CSSA is the voice of the sport shooter and firearms enthusiast in Canada. Our national membership supports and promotes Canada’s firearms heritage, traditional target shooting competition, modern action shooting sports, hunting, and archery. We support and sponsor competitions and youth programs that promote these Canadian heritage activities.
To join or donate to the CSSA, visit: http://www.cdnshootingsports.org/membership.html
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CANADIAN SHOOTING SPORTS ASSOCIATION / CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION
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