Large Fierce Mammal

Society is over regulated, and it’s getting worse all the time. This becomes an inevitably self-perpetuating trend when laws put in place to control problem behaviours are crafted without regard for actual causes because when they fail to work, the tendency is to increase the severity on the grounds that measures already taken simply weren’t enough. So it is with “gun control”.

As with all issues that attract a passionate following, this one has had a polarizing effect, and statistics quoted have become meaningless because they are either offered completely out of context or fabricated altogether. No matter though, because I don’t need statistics to come to an understanding,

Governments should be about good roads, national defense, order and prosperity while creating as little interference with the conduct of life and commerce as possible; but they aren’t. They are about control and interference based on promises that it’s all in the name of the public good. In this they get bogged down in creating laws about and against issues that are already regulated, with much time and treasure being squandered.

An example of this is the matter of breed specific Dog control regulation. When I was growing up, the breeds of choice for people wanting a guard Dog were most commonly the German Shepherd and the Doberman Pinscher. They were also the choice of people with the kind of character flaws that drive them to compensate for their shortcomings through the kind of acquisitions that I like to call “penis extenders”. These people still exist, as they will always do, only now they have a new breed du jour at the end of a chain – often a Pit Bull type, Rottweiler, or something else that carries the air of bad assedness their owners lack themselves. Banning those breeds will have no effect on the problem of Dogs biting people because the kind of sloppy Dog handling that contributes to it still remains, and people in need of a penis extender will always find a means to their latest enlargement. Ban Pit Bulls and bites from Pit Bulls will naturally become a thing of the past, but those of their owners for whom they filled a compensatory need will remain, and another breed will be found to fill it. Measured exclusively against Pit Bull bites then, the ban will appear to be a resounding success, but the question is really what impact did it have on the total number of Dog bites overall.

Likewise with firearms. Back when I first started teaching Provincially and Federally mandated firearms and hunter safety courses, the population of Canada was somewhere around 25 million, and the annual number of deaths involving a firearm had been holding steady at around 1100. Most of those were suicides and accidents due to a combination of negligence and misadventure. Only a tiny fraction were homicides, illustrating a simple fact of society at the time – people are more inclined to be suicidal or stupid than they are to commit murder. To that I would add that nothing has really changed.

Focusing on the suicide issue, we have such lofty organizations as the World Health Organization (WHO) wading in with the assertion that, “The easy availability of firearms has been associated with higher firearm mortality rates.” to which one astute author replies, “The authors, in noting that the presence of a gun in a home corresponds to a higher risk of suicide, apparently assume that if denied firearms, potential suicides will decide to live rather than turning to the numerous alternative suicide mechanisms. The evidence, however, indicates that denying one particular means to people who are motivated to commit suicide by social, economic, cultural, or other circumstances simply pushes them to some other means. Thus, it is not just the murder rate in gun-less Russia that is four times higher than the American rate; the Russian suicide rate is also about four times higher than the American rate.”

When the gun control act here in Canada got its first major overhaul, it introduced safe storage and transport regulations that required stored firearms to be fitted with a trigger lock or be otherwise rendered unable to be instantly fired, and that ammunition be stored separately in a locked container or compartment. The explained reasoning for this had less to do with keeping children from playing with loaded firearms – although this was a part of it – than with keeping gun owners safe from their own passions. We were told that the small interval of time it would take to unlock the ammunition and the gun, load it, and turn it on yourself or someone else could save a life. I have always considered this to be complete bullshit. I am an exceptionally stable person, but I can tell you with certainty that if I have somehow been brought to the conclusion that my problem can only be solved with a firearm, it was arrived at through sober deliberation over a time period far exceeding that required to bring gun and ammunition together. Rare is he who wakes up one morning with a burning desire to kill himself or someone else that came out of the blue. These urges come from other sources than the tool used to bring them about, and anyone who tells you that getting rid of the tool, or slowing down access to it, will fix the root cause is selling fertilizer of the most aromatic sort.

I speak with authority here because long ago in another lifetime I plotted my own demise in great detail as one option I could choose from a number that were open to me. After all, suicide is but a choice from among available choices. One could ask, “Should I have whole wheat toast, white toast, or just kill myself?” Suicide is a really low probability choice in this case, but admittedly it is a choice. My plans did not include firearms or blades of any kind, and in the end another plan I had in play bore fruit, eliminating the need for a final option. Whole wheat as it turns out. I have since had candid conversations with several others who have done likewise – planning suicide as an intellectual exercise without execution, which is completely different from chickening out. None of those people considered any methods that might put others at risk, or that involved firearms or blades which can be horribly inefficient under such circumstances. When you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough, and it offends me to be told I need to be saved from myself. Even more so at the implication that well meaning bureaucrats can do anything to help, particularly because government bureaucracy was part of my problem at the time, and nothing in my methodology could have been denied to me by any legislation then, since, or even possible ever.

We’ve had the shining example of Prohibition to illustrate how well bans work to keep the banned commodity out of the hands of people who want it. We’ve got the so called war on drugs, and with it every year a new term for the latest craze from junky world – bath salts being a recent example. It’s already illegal to murder people or negligently endanger life and property with anything, guns included. Criminals are called that because they do not obey the law.

One last item I want to mention is how little thought is given to arguments offered for or against tighter restrictions on gun ownership. The current government of Canada campaigned on the issue of eliminating registration of so called “long guns”; i. e., most rifles and shotguns; on the grounds that the system used to administer them had proven too costly and cumbersome. Detractors of the move – including some Canadian police chiefs – cited an officer safety concern on the grounds that police rolling up to a residence were safer knowing going in that there were registered guns there, and what kind they were. On the surface one might be inclined to nod and accept this at face value, but it’s really quite meaningless, and plays more into the cult of knowing that afflicts bureaucracy at large than it offers any real benefit beyond regulation for regulation’s sake.

To illustrate, consider another example from my own experience. When my own firearms possession and acquisition license was due to expire, I had to submit some updated paperwork. Included in this were provisions for my Wife to sign off on her comfort at the thought that I should be permitted to acquire and keep such things. Likewise I had to swear that I had not recently suffered a marital breakup or business failure, that I had no criminal record that might prohibit me from owning or acquiring weapons, and I was required to provide several references. In this latter case I had requested and been given permission to list the then Justice Minister for the Province of Nova Scotia (with whom I have hunted many times), the Chief of Police for the Lunenburg-Mahone Bay Police Service, one serving member of that same police service, and another serving member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, with all of whom I had professional and personal affiliations. I was golden.

So now, after all the hoops put in place by the Government of Canada to eliminate me as a candidate for lunacy or sociopathy, I would suggest that any police personnel called to my house on a disturbance complaint should be overjoyed to learn I have firearms registered to my name because it speaks to my good, law abiding, and stable character. In fact, instead of wasting time on a database that really tells nothing of unregistered lethal implements that might be lying around, what happened to good old safe operating practices? In teaching hospital staff to conduct a bomb search in the wake of a threat, I always applied the doctrine of searching your own work space on the grounds that nobody knows it like you do, and if you find something suspicious, never assume it’s the only one.

Guns don’t make me dangerous any more than driving a car that can exceed the maximum legal speed limit by at least 100% makes me a speeder.