TEAM CSSA E-NEWS – June 16, 2014

TEAM CSSA E-NEWS – June 16, 2014

COMMENTARY: RON CHARACH – FROM RIDICULOUS TO IRREPONSIBLE

Responsible firearms owners continue to read in disbelief the absurd newspaper op-eds and letters to the editor from Toronto psychiatrist Ron Charach.

Charach’s anti-gun and anti-government rants might be amusing if they weren’t so immorally out-to-lunch. He claims that all gun violence could be eradicated by taking guns away from responsible gun owners with more legislation. It’s unsettling when a so-called psych professional advocates that sanity can be legislated. One is tempted to warn Charach’s patients that their doctor is a magical mystery tour pilot in a world that doesn’t exist.

At some point, however, a line needs to be drawn when authority figures abuse public trust. And here’s the line – this shrill shrink has assumed the role of judge and jury following the Moncton RCMP shootings. Charach’s recent media ranting has convicted the person who stands accused in Moncton. And there’s more – he diagnosed the accused as “paranoid” based merely on news reports and a Facebook page that anyone could have written.

What to say about a psychiatrist who makes a long-distance diagnosis and then professes the man charged is guilty without trial? Responsible psychiatrists require personal interaction with an individual before offering a diagnosis as complex as paranoia. Even for Charach this is a new low. Furthermore, he paints all gun owners with having mental illness potential, too.

Check this sample of Charach’s post-Moncton newspaper twaddle: “The paranoid Justin Bourque, a rebel without a cause, feared and loathed the Russians, but like his predecessor mass killer Marc Gharby Lepine, he might just as well have hated women, or Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, blacks or gays. We can’t really know how many more there are like him among the community of ‘legal gun owners’ – actually, he may have been one of the many granted an amnesty by Harper for failing to register all his weapons or even to renew his gun licenses.”

Ron Charach should be hauled on the carpet for malpractice. As one of The Toronto Star’s favourite anti-gun “experts,” the editorial staff should be pilloried for unleashing Charach’s half-baked conclusions into an unsuspecting public. The Star has long used its pages to sell anti-gun propaganda and Charach is their partner in deceit. He is akin to the TV actor who gains fake authenticity by wearing the white lab coat in toothpaste commercials. The public is conditioned to believe the testimonials of those in authority – even when they shouldn’t.

We have reprinted portions of Charach’s op-ed below to illustrate what can happen when the fantastical and the fanatical meet in one mind. It is difficult to imagine so much misinformation and hatred for gun owners and government in one essay. If people listen to Charach, the truth is in great peril. The Toronto Star and its stable of public safety “hactivists” have managed to morph the anti-gun catch-phrase “if it saves just one life” into “if it fools just one reader.”

Here’s an action item for gun owners – tell the media you caught them spreading lies.

——-

“Allan Rock said he came to Ottawa with the belief that only the police and military should have firearms. I believe that firearms ownership is a right, but a right that comes with responsibilities” – the Hon. Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety

HELP SUPPORT THE GREAT WORK THE CSSA DOES TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. DONATE HERE

——-

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES

CHARACH’S OVER-THE-TOP POST-MONCTON RANT: There are ways to stop killing sprees like the one in Moncton that ended with three dead RCMP officers.

You don’t have to contribute regularly to the Coalition for Gun Control for the past 20 years, as I have, to know that the six-year war on gun control in Canada waged by Stephen Harper and Vic Toews would result in U.S.-style mass shootings.

The paranoid Justin Bourque, a rebel without a cause, feared and loathed the Russians, but like his predecessor mass killer Marc Gharby Lepine, he might just as well have hated women, or Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, blacks or gays. We can’t really know how many more there are like him among the community of ‘legal gun owners’ – actually, he may have been one of the many granted an amnesty by Harper for failing to register all his weapons or even to renew his gun licenses.

All it took was one confused young man to end the lives of three RCMP officers and enormously complicate the lives of two others. It is chilling that on D-Day, which honors our fallen heroes, we had to be kept in terrorized thrall by this self-made hero and pretend-soldier. The cruel efficiency with which he ended other peoples’ lives speaks to how cheaply he must have come to holding his own obsessive life.

The time has come for Prime Minister Harper to allow his newly minted Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney to urgently propose amendments to the foolhardy law C-19. Like so many of their laws, the Conservatives spurned the opinion of experts in enacting it, experts like the country’s police chiefs, experts in public safety, medical and mental health experts, and groups who advocate for abused and threatened women.

Step one surely must involve a moratorium on the continued importation of semiautomatic rifles for civilian sale, especially cheap knock-offs like the one used by Bourque. This is the equivalent of banning Saturday night specials formerly pumped out in huge quantity by the “ring of fire” companies in the Western U.S. C-19 must be urgently reviewed, and semiautomatic rifles re-classified, either as Prohibited or at the very least, Restricted weapons treated the exact same way as handguns.

Another step would be to ban the storage or “collection” of any kind of semiautomatic weapon within city limits. To facilitate this, our federal government, which loves guns so much, will have to build or improve on existing new facilities where people who want to collect such weaponry can store them. These facilities should have individualized lockers and state-of-the-art facilities.

There needs to be far more surveillance of the country’s more than 300 annual gun shows. In fact, there needs to be a culling of licensing for such events, perhaps down to a more manageable three or four gun shows per province, so that what goes on at such events can be thoroughly monitored…

Then there is the problem of gun ranges, like the one at which Justin Bourque was a regular. At the present time all that is needed to train on any kind of semiautomatic or even fully automatic weapon is a piece of photo ID and proof of residence. This is a recipe for disaster, especially if we are to take seriously claims by CSIS that there is a growing number of homegrown terrorists who pose a potential threat to Canadians.

An absolute ban on urban gun collecting may take time to phase in, and will naturally cost the taxpayer some money. Restoring the long-gun registry will also be expensive – former Public Safety Minister Vic Toews made sure of that, by destroying the data before he left, though I would bet that someone might have played Edward Snowden and illegally copied those records before they were vaporized.

Justin Bourque’s calmly executed crime could inspire me-too crimes, and it gives us yet another anniversary of a tragedy of which we have to be wary each year. I truly believe the Canadian voter will punish the Conservatives if they don’t get out of bed with the gun lobby and start acting in the real interest of public safety. Just a week earlier, Canadians were sympathizing with the citizens of Santa Barbara, Calif., for what they endured from a women-hating shooter who was also “dead in the eyes.” Now we are the top story on CNN, for something that will hardly attract us American tourists fleeing their own firearms mayhem.

I would rather we could say: Welcome to Canada: enjoy our gun-free environment.

Ron Charach is a psychiatrist and the author of Cowboys and Bleeding Hearts, essays on gun violence, mental health and ethnicity, published by Wolsak and Wynn

(By Ron Charach – The Toronto Star – June 6, 2014)

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/06/06/after_the_moncton_shootings_a_public_safety_wish_list.html

——-

I’LL SEE YOUR CHARACH AND RAISE YOU A RATHJEN: …While gun enthusiasts know a lot about guns, they are not experts in public safety — just as the tobacco industry is no expert in public health. The real public-safety experts include police officers, and their respective organizations, which are not only tasked with protecting the public, but also themselves in the course of their duties. Unfortunately, in Canada as in the United States, the howls of the gun lobby have drowned out the voice of the experts. All major police organizations were strong supporters of the long-gun registry, but the Harper government did away with it anyway.

The Conservative government also ignored the numerous public statements and testimonials from police asking it to address the growing availability of particularly dangerous weapons. Last September, for example, senior RCMP officials invited Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney to a briefing in order to reiterate their concerns regarding .50-calibre rifles. Weapons of this calibre are so powerful that they can pierce military aircraft and light-armoured vehicles, and even more easily the strongest bulletproof vests worn by police….

Heidi Rathjen is a 1990 graduate of Montreal’s ÉcolePolytechnique, where 14 women were killed in a 1989 mass shooting. She is also a spokesperson for Polysesouvient: Students and Graduates of Polytechnique for Gun Control. (By Heidi Rathjen – Montreal Gazette – June 13, 2014)

LETTER WRITER CHALLENGES RATHJENS “EXPERT” STATUS:

Dear Sir/Madame,

Heidi Rathjen opines “While gun enthusiasts know a lot about guns, they are not experts in public safety”. With all due respect to Ms. Rathjen, neither does her graduation from Ecole Politechnique make her an expert. What gun owners have become very good at, is recognizing public policy measures intended simply to end responsible firearm ownership without regard to improving public safety. The Canadian Firearms Act (CFA), created with the consultation of Ms. Rathjen and others of her ilk has introduced no real public safety measures over and above the very effective Firearms Acquisition Certificate regime which proceeded it. Each and every measure introduced by the Act and its regulations were designed from the outset to remove firearms from civilian ownership over a succession of “progressive” governments, and had nothing to do with the public safety. Her gun control rhetoric is as empty as her antipathy towards law abiding firearm owners is misplaced.

Sincerely,
Robert S. Sciuk

——-

MASSIVE MOOSE AND MOUNTAIN CARIBOU: Paul Beasley heads into the mountains of British Columbia with friends Chad Westbrook and Steve James. They have moose and caribou tags to fill and 10 days to do it in. They encounter some of the most breath-taking scenery and mountain wildlife that British Columbia has to offer. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEXUTwUcbu8

——-

NO NEED FOR GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS? JUST HUDDLE AND COVER: An Oklahoma company that sells a blanket to protect children from gunfire has seen its business grow after a spate of U.S. school shootings has left parents and educators on edge.

ProTecht of Oklahoma originally developed its “Body Guard” blanket product to keep children safe from high-speed debris flying through the air from the tornadoes that frequently hit the state, but many parents see it as armor against bullets, the company said on Thursday.

“The government is not going to do anything in law about guns, and there is nothing else out there to protect the children,” said Stan Schone, who helped develop the blanket.

The 5/16th-inch (7.9 millimeter) pad is made from bullet-resistant materials that can be folded and strapped on the back and then unfurled to hide under in emergency situations. The blankets sell for about $1,000.

The company declined to provide sales figures. Co-developer Steve Walker, an Oklahoma podiatrist, came up with the idea of a protective blanket after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in late 2012 and a tornado a few months later that killed 24 people in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, including seven children at school.

Since Sandy Hook, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at the school in Connecticut, scores of school shootings have occurred in the United States. The most recent was in Oregon this week when a teenage gunman shot a student to death and then killed himself.

In ProTecht’s home state of Oklahoma, most schools are interested in the product for tornado protection, but orders were also coming from Canada, France, Germany, South Korea and other countries.

“I’m glad we can make a difference in helping keep kids safe, but it’s a sad thing that we need a product like this,” Schone said. (Yahoo News – Reuters – June 12, 2014)

(ED. NOTE: Sigh. Teaching children to be sitting ducks under blankets? No thanks.)

——-

U.S. MILITARY BUYING FRANGIBLE AMMO: Winchester Ammunition was awarded a $27.6 million contract with various branches of the U.S. military to produce 9mm ammo. The Naval Surface Warfare Center processed the contract and awarded it to the Olin Corp., the parent company of Winchester Ammo, on June 2.

Winchester will provide 9mm frangible ammo to the Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy so troops can train for indoor and outdoor close quarters battle. Stock analysts warn that Olin, which owns two chemical plants in addition to Winchester, is a risky investment, due to poor earnings quality and slow growth. While the ammo plant has been booming over the last year and a half, the expects the unusually high demand is expected to peter off and return to a normal level.

In May, the U.S. Army awarded a five-year contract with Alliant Techsystems to supply .300 Winchester Magnum ammunition. Although Olin is headquartered in East Alton, Illinois, the work will be done in Oxford, Mississippi, completed by June 2019. (guns.com – June 12, 2014)

——-

JOHN LOTT HAS MORE PROOF THAT GUN-FREE ZONES ATTRACT KILLERS: The shootings last week at Seattle Pacific University and on Tuesday at a high school near Portland, Ore., both occurred at places that banned guns – gun-free zones. The shooting last Wednesday in Canada also took place where citizens were not allowed to carry guns.

Time after time these killers pick places where civilian guns are banned. Around the world, virtually all the attacks where at least four people have been shot to death occurred where civilians were not able to use guns to defend themselves.

Gun-control advocates claim that would-be killers don’t care about whether victims can defend themselves with a gun. After all, they reason, these killers are irrational and want to die anyway.

Elliot Rodger, who shot to death three people in Santa Barbara a couple of weeks ago, explained why he picked his target. His 141-page “manifesto” makes it clear that he feared someone with a gun would stop him before he was able to kill enough people. He wrote:

“Another option was Deltopia, a day in which many young people pour in from all over the state to have a spring break party on Del Playa Street. I figured this would be the perfect day to attack Isla Vista, but after watching YouTube videos of previous Deltopia parties, I saw that there were way too many cops walking around on such an event. It would be impossible to kill enough of my enemies before being dispatched by those damnable cops.”

The Canadian mass shooter, Justin Bourque, also understood the importance of gun-free zones. On his Facebook page, Bourque posted comics poking fun at how gun-free zones make these crimes possible. One depicted a completely defenseless victim pleading with a man pointing a gun at him: “But wait … there’s a GUN BAN in this city … you can’t do this, we passed a law!” The gunman is shown thinking to himself: “Great, another one of these fruit loops.”

Bourque knew that no civilians would be able to legally carry a gun to stop him. Since the 1970s, Canada has banned permitted concealed handguns.

The contrast on Sunday in Las Vegas couldn’t have been starker. Two killers shot two police officers to death. After they stole the officers’ guns and ammo, they proceeded to a nearby crowded Walmart. However, one customer, a concealed-carry permit holder, confronted the attackers and delayed them, giving other customers a chance to escape. Although the permit holder was killed, shortly after that the killers committed suicide.

All too frequently, mass killers can choose between many similar movie theaters or malls to attack. But they pick the one where victims can’t defend themselves.

The killer at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting in July 2012 lived within a 20-minute drive of seven movie theaters that were showing the premier of the Batman movie. He could have simply chosen the theater that was closest to his apartment or the one with the largest auditoriums in the state. Instead, he picked the single theater where guns were banned and the victims would be defenseless.

And take Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine killers. He had been closely following and strongly opposed Colorado legislation that would have let citizens carry a concealed handgun. In fact, the Columbine attack occurred on the very day the bill was scheduled for final passage. Presumably, Klebold feared being stopped during his attack by someone with a weapon.

Unfortunately, gun-control advocates refuse to admit how effective concealed carry can be in defending against mass slaughter. This past Saturday, Shannon Watts, the president of Michael Bloomberg’s antigun group Moms Demand Action, was asked on CNN if there were even one time “where a bad guy with a gun has been stopped in any other way or by a person other than a law enforcement officer with a gun or by killing himself?” Watts replied: “This has never happened.”

She is simply wrong.

Attacks have been stopped at schools before police arrived. That includes shootings in Pearl, Miss., and Edinboro, Pa., and colleges like the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. It has happened in busy downtowns such as Memphis; in churches such as the New Life Church in Colorado Springs; in malls in Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City; and outside an apartment building in Oklahoma.

Deterrence matters. Letting people defend themselves prevents attacks, and it also limits the harm should the attack occur. It might be one of the reasons that Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts both have armed bodyguards. (By John R. Lott Jr. – www.CrimeResearch.org – June 13, 2014)

——

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
——
To subscribe to the CSSA-CILA E-NEWS, send email to: [email protected] or visit http://lists.cssa-cila.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cssa-cila-e-news.
To unsubscribe send email to: [email protected]
To change your address or manage your subscription options, visit: http://lists.cssa-cila.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/cssa-cila-e-news
——-
CANADIAN SHOOTING SPORTS ASSOCIATION / CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION
116 Galaxy Blvd, Etobicoke ON M9W 4Y6
Phone 416-679-9959, Fax: 416-679-9910
Toll Free: 1-888-873-4339
E-Mail: [email protected]
Website www.cdnshootingsports.org

Tags: 2014, TEAM CSSA E-NEWS - June 16