Janke 1st MRB

So for those of you who don't know me, hi. For those of you who do, I haven't changed much in the last 3 years. This was me in July, I tend to look like this most often, but with longer hair. Kinda like a Duck Dynasty reject. And here's me today after a shave and a haircut: I forgot to take a before picture.

Feldwebel =/= Hauptfeldwebel Now now, calm down, don't want anyone to come off as a deutschbag now, do we?

You didn't really just assume that drunk driving is a result of "fully-aware and in control of their means" drunk drivers did you? Because when you say that "those who drive drunk know very well", it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying. I think I might have mentioned something about a democratic system built with checks and balances on many levels to prevent that kind of ultimate corruption. If modern Americans think they need to ensure that interpretation of the 2nd amendment, I think that they'll have more to worry about then gun ownership. I do believe that Fort Hood has armed MPs? I won't even go into the slippery slope of the argument that more people with more guns = better deterrent because any rational exploration exposes the rather titanic flaws in that defense. And you said you were concerned about what kind of government would be around in 30 or 50 years... Oy vey! Thanks for understanding my OP Everyone who drives drunk knows fully well what can happen when they do so, whether it be when they're drunk or before hand. If one is going to get so shit-faced that they forget the consequences of drunk driving, then they have a responsibility when they're sober to prepare for their drunken stupidity and make a motor vehicle inaccessible to themselves. The main point, though, is no legislators go after the car when someone drives drunk, they go after the person and the root cause. Why is it then when a gun is involved in a crime the causes are seemingly ignored, and the only focus becomes on the gun? And no democracy is absolute, there are plenty of examples of democracies throughout history being subverted and overthrown, one of the checks you mention for the US to prevent that is the means to fight back against such a government. The Fort Hood shooting too place in a gun-free section of the base and was perpetrated by a high-ranking officer, whom nobody had reason to believe would do such a thing. As for these apparent "titanic flaws" I fail to see them, the US is at a 50-year low in murders despite there being more guns in circulation now than ever before, and murder rates dropped significantly as more people in the US gained the ability to carry their guns for self-defence. Dr. John Lott explored the idea in the book by the same name as it, More Guns, Less Crime. And it'd take it kindly for you not to brush off certain aspects of my post in such an condescending and insulting manner. I'm sure the people of Germany in the 1930s never expected their nation to become a dictatorship, nor many of the nations in Europe affected by the Nazis and the Soviets. Nobody can predict the future, especially the future of politics. That exact idea, actually, was from Ben Shapiro's interview with Piers Morgan. And while I am concerned about the future political atmosphere of America, hell I'm concerned about its current political atmosphere, I'm not even American. Your idea of "excessive amount of hoops" is not the same as my "reasonable training," the implications of your idea are that it should be next to impossible for someone to get a gun, in contrast mine is that one should only need to demonstrate their ability to safely handle the firearm before being able to acquire it. They haven't, I already showcased an NBC segment saying that Newtown was committed with 4 handguns, Virginia Tech was committed with handguns, the shootings at Danzig St. and the Eaton Centre in Toronto were committed with handguns, the shooting at Concordia University in 1992 was committed with handguns, the Dunblane Massacre was committed with handguns, the Sikh Temple shooting was with handguns, Columbine was committed with weapons legal during the last AWB, including a shotgun. These shooters do not have a preference, though perhaps the AR-15 is noted across the media so often because of its appearance, and perhaps its widespread attention is why several shooters recently have been using it. And the thing is here and now is not getting worse, it's getting better. I've mentioned this before, homicide rates are down, violent crime is down, but gun ownership is up. As am atter of fact, according to the FBI, just about ever form of violent crime in America is at a lower rate than it was in 1991 and the Bureau of Justice reports homicide rates are at a low not seen since the 1960s. Why indeed should here and now get worse? Here and now is not getting worse with the gun control the US has in place currently, as a matter of fact here and now is getting better. Why then, if there is no statistical detriment to society, should one's freedoms be taken from them in the name of so-called "security"? As Benjamin Franklin said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." As defined in the US Constitution, the ownership of firearms is indeed an essential liberty, necessary to the security of a free state. Penn and Teller did a piece in their series called Bullshit about Gun Control, it's a rather good watch.

The idea of allowing citizens to own private property is not a dangerous one, and to call opposition to gun control dangerous is to insult the majority of America's gun owners. If you look at the effectiveness of the last AWB, as well as analyzing crime statistics over a period in time in the US, you will see that the last AWB accomplished nothing and that there is generally accepted to be no direct correlation to gun ownership and gun crime, though murder rates dropped quite noticeably between 1989-1999, the period in time when most US States adopted CCW laws, with Illinois now being the only one without any at all, and that's soon to change, and 4 States; Alaska, Arizona, Vermont, and Wyoming; not requiring any license at all to carry a handgun. Those who drive drunk know very well the consequences of such an action, they know it can be lethal. And you misinterpret the 2nd Again, tyranny was not only foreseen by the British, the founding fathers were worried about future tyranny from their own government, from the American government. The 2nd was not just to fight against the invading British, it was to ensure the American government never became the British, because the citizens would be able to fight the government if it tried. In accordance with the principles of the 2nd, it is still relevant today, because while the government may still be fair today, who's to say what the government will be like in 30 years? 50 years? Virginia Tech, the most lethal school shooting in the US, was committed by a man armed with only 2 pistols, each with only 10-round mags, the shooter simply chained the doors shut and brought a lot of magazines. The Cumbria Shootings in England were committed by a man with a double-barrelled shotgun, and he killed 13 people. The École Polytechnique shooting was committed by someone who broke his Ruger Mini-14 so that it was basically a straight-pull bolt-action, and he killed 15. And as for Newtown, I've heard from NBC that no AR-15 was used in Newtown, it was also only handguns, the AR-15 was in the car the whole time. Adam Lanza was also denied the ability to buy a gun, he stole them from his mother. The looks of a gun also mean absolutely nothing in terms of its function. Why target a gun based on looks? What will that accomplish? So they ban "evil, scary guns" like this one but guns like this are not "assault weapons"? You know what the difference is between those two guns? Nothing. Banning a gun based off of aesthetic features is absolutely ridiculous, because it accomplishes absolutely nothing. It will not stop mass shootings, both the North Hollywood Shootout and Columbine happened during the last AWB, it failed to stop either. Canada's restrictive gun laws failed to stop shootings just last year in Scarborough, Downtown Toronto, and Edmonton. Britain's gun laws failed to stop the 2010 Cumbria Shootings. Gun laws in both France and Germany have failed to stop mass shootings. Gun laws fail to stop these because they do not address the core issue, and the core issue of mass shootings is mental illness. Moreover, as I already mentioned, mass shootings account for less than 1% of America's national murders, rifles and shotguns account for about 3% of all national gun murders combined, America's true problem with gun violence is the 97% of murders committed with a handgun, which is largely gangsters in inner-city ghettos. To address the real issue, one must address the causes of murder, not the tool. For one, the criminals who cause the majority of the murders already ignore all firearms law, they actually love gun control, it disarms their targets. Why then, if they already blatantly ignore all current laws, would one more suddenly make a criminal change their mind? Criminals will always have guns, regardless of whether or not the law-abiding do, all you accomplish by disarming the law-abiding is giving the criminals easier targets. Secondly, even if by some miracle you managed to do the literally impossible and take all the 300 million guns out of America, these gangsters would still kill each other, they'd simply resort to stabbing each other. Knife crime in Britain skyrocketed following the gun bans there, and it's actually the most violent place is Europe, more violent than the US or South Africa. They banned guns, and it didn't stopped violent crime, murder, or mass-shootings. It's also interesting to note that at this time America's homicide rate and violent crime rate is at the lowest point it's been since the 1960s, and that is despite the fact that there are more guns in America, approximately 300 million, than ever before. As well, with the exception of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, every mass shooting in the last 30 years has been committed in a gun-free zone. Virginia Tech? Columbine? The Aurora Theatre (and by the way, there was a theatre closer to his house and a theatre with a larger auditorium he could have shot up, he chose the one he did because it advertised nobody inside would be armed)? Sandy Hook? École Polytechnique? All gun-free zones, meaning nobody in the building could possibly stop the shooter, they wouldn't have the means to. The Oregon Mall Shooting? It ended after a CCW holder drew his gun. He actually wasn't supposed to be carrying in that mall, it was supposed to be a gun-free zone. He didn't shoot, because of bystanders behind the shooter, but the shooter saw the permit holder, and the next shot he got off after un-jamming his gun was to kill himself, because he knew he was done. These killers chose these places because they knew they wouldn't have resistance, because they knew they would have easy, vulnerable targets. You do not need to ban guns to reduce violent crime, murder, or mass shootings in the US. While I do believe that America could do with some slightly stronger gun control in the form of better screening, perhaps even a license covering the acquisition of a gun, and only the acquisition, I do not believe that the word "banned" needs to be used at all in relation to functional gun control. In the Czech Republic there is technically no such thing as a banned gun, legally you can get any gun you please, even automatics if you can justify to the police why, and yet it has a murder rate comparable to Canada's, but like I said previously, the US is unlike any other nation and it's not entirely fair to compare its situation to the situation of any other nation. I do think, however, that every nation around the world could learn some things about effective gun control by looking at certain parts of the gun control in the Czech Republic. No gun needs to be banned, not even automatics; which have since 1934 only ever been used in 2 shootings, one by a cop; in order to have effective gun control, all you need is varying levels of restriction, but no gun should ever be or need to be entirely inaccessible to a law-abiding citizen who wishes to acquire such a firearm.

I take special contention with the people trying to claim Canada's gun control methods have done anything positive here, they haven't, and as a matter of fact they've been used to harass law-abiding citizens and marginalize certain aspects of shooting sports. There was a study done by McMaster University's Dr. Caillin Langmann about the effects of gun control in Canada from the '70s until 2008, and it was peer-reviewed and is being published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and it found that gun control here has done absolutely nothing to effect murder rates. However, as I said earlier, it has been used to harass the law-abiding who attempt to protect themselves, like Mr. Ian Thompson who was charged with unsafe storage of a firearm after defending his house from firebombers. His guns were stored legally, locked unloaded in a safe, they eventually were trying to argue about ammo in his nightstand. A key fallacy people don't realize is that the media is stupid, they don't know what they're talking about and try to hype the hell out of just about anything, especially shootings. Military assault rifles have been banned in the US since 1986, they are incredibly hard to get, the cheapest pre-86 automatic weapon in the US is about $10,000. An AR-15 is NOT a military weapon, it is a civilian sporting rifle, and it is certainly neither powerful nor large. People and the media take contention with a completely made-up term, "assault weapons." In truth, there is no such thing. An Assault RIFLE is a select-fire rifle, these are already banned, an assault WEAPON is a fabricated term to mean a gun that LOOKS like the military MIGHT use it. This website goes into it fairly well: http://www.assaultweapon.info/ The AR-15 is one of America's most popular sporting rifles, it is used every day for hunting, recreational shooting, and self-defence. It is not a military gun, anyone who thinks otherwise is quite ignorant, actually. Just because the gun is black and looks "scary" doesn't mean it's any more dangerous than any other semi-auto sporting rifle, or that it is used by the military. As for the 2nd Amendment, it states: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." What does this mean? This has been the centre of hot debate for years. Some people keep trying to say that the 2nd was made at a time when there were only muskets, and that the founding fathers couldn't have ever possibly envisioned the guns of today, so it shouldn't apply to them. The argument of the amendment being outdated crumbles as soon as you apply it to the First amendment, obviously if the 2nd doesn't apply to modern guns, the First amendment doesn't apply to modern forms of communication, because they never could have envisioned the radio, television, and internet back in the day, so they must not be covered under the 1st, right? No, of course not, just like the 2nd doesn't only apply to muskets, both amendments are designed, as they are written, to last through the ages. The purpose of the 2nd Amendment, especially when you look up some quotes from the founding fathers about it, is quite clear; it is to give the people the means to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. This means the citizenry is given the right to be equally, or comparably, armed to any given national military, so that they may have a feasible means of defending their nation from tyranny, be it foreign or domestic. As for the section of a militia, people think this means only a militia should be given the right to own guns, and they're wright, but they're wrong on what that militia comprises of. The militia mentioned in the 2nd amendment is not any one explicit militia, no, it's an implicit one, consisting of every able-bodied US citizen. Every citizen of the US is a member of the militia laid out in the 2nd amendment, and this militia of the American People is necessary to the security of the free state of the United States of America. This is why the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, it's because the people are all part of the largest militia in the world, the militia of the American citizen. Blaming the gun in these shootings would be like blaming the car for causing a drunk driving accident, it doesn't address the core issue. People don't shoot up a school because they own an AR-15, they do so because they have a very serious mental problem, and they need medical attention. Mental illness is incredibly stigmatized in North America, the vast majority of those who are mentally ill go undiagnosed because they don't want to be outcast from society as a "loony" or as "mental" or something like that. Banning guns would not stop these shootings from happening, Britain has some of the world's strictest gun control measures, and like almost all gun control it was enacted emotionally with absolutely no factual base or scientific research to back it up immediately following a series of massacres, and yet still in 2010 a man took his legally owned shotgun and killed 13 people including himself, in what became known as the Cumbria Shootings. Britain has a total ban on semi-automatics and handguns, and yet that didn't stop a mass shooting, and no more gun control in Britain could possibly be enacted, save a complete ban on guns. Addressing the tool has not helped Britain, and as a matter of fact gun crime in Britain jumped significantly following the handgun ban, because it's not the gun that's the problem, it's the person, they need help because they have a mental illness. If the government wants to do something to actually help stop mass shootings specifically, they can allocate the funding they'd waste on ridiculous and ineffective gun control into helping make America's medical system better so it can better help those with mental illness. Moreover, mass shootings account for less than 1% of the ~8000 US gun deaths any given year, and 97% of those shootings are committed with handguns, yet we don't see a politician going after them. And why not? Because they're used primarily for self-defence as well and politicians know many more people own a handgun than a so-called "assault weapon" and they'd therefore have a harder time getting support for any legislation surrounding handguns. But who commits these shootings with handguns? It's mostly violent gang members in inner-city ghettos. It's people who resort to crime because they see no other choice for themselves, because they've become lost and their guiding hand has become a violent gang. These kinds of murders are the real issue America has, mass shootings pale in comparison to the number of people killed in gang shootings in America's top 5 most violent cities alone. The real way the US will help reduce its murder rate is not through wasteful and proven ineffective gun control (and the 1994 AWB was proven ineffective), it is though addressing the core causes of violent crime; social inequality, poverty, and gang culture. America needs to have a better welfare system to assist its poor, a better healthcare system to assist its week it needs to work harder to abolish institutional discrimination for the poor and institutional racism, and it needs to make sure gang culture is not romanticized for young, impressionable inner-city children. There are plenty of examples of places with stricter gun control than the US and less gun crime, there are plenty of examples of the opposite as well. The key difference between America and many of the European nations people attempt to use as examples, and even Canada, is that they have better healthcare and welfare systems in place, as well as providing more equal-opportunities for their citizens. America is, of course, anywhere from 3-20 times the size in terms of population of any country one could find as an example, and that presents issues in of itself. America is unlike any other nation in the world, and it is entirely unfair to compare it to any other nation in the world when trying to address the issues America has. As for the idea that gun control has, internationally, been proven to lower crime rates, I present a Harvard Study of Europe that proves otherwise. It's not the gun that kills someone, it's the person, and addressing anything other than the person committing the crime will not help stop further crimes. Rather than asking "how did he kill all those people?" it's more important to ask "Why did he kill all those people?" The former addresses a method, but not cause, and without addressing cause you cannot stop further acts of murder. The latter, however, addresses cause, and by finding out the cause for the commission of murder and addressing why the murder happened and not how it was done, you gain knowledge you can put into practice to stop further murders.

My Linksys E2000 is not IPv6 supportive, and it's only 2 years old, on standard firmware at least. It really wasn't until last year that it became a concern for hardware makers. I also know my modem doesn't support IPv6 either, and I'm unsure if my ISP has appropriate tunnelling, though they likely do at this point.

Due to the fact that we have now run out of IPv4 addresses, it's important that you get a router that is fully supportive of IPv6, whose implementation has already started, and is intended to phase out the old IPv4 system in the coming years. Any of the routers on this list are supposed to be approved as IPv6 ready. While we may still have IPv4 support now, I can't be sure how long that will last, and seeing as implementation of IPv6 has already started, it's important to have this technology supported by your network going forward.

This, of course, doesn't talk about the new methods of oil sands mining or Alberta's provincial movements towards the reclamation of mined land. There are two sides to these things, and while people criticize the size and look of a traditional oilsands mine, strip mines for any mineral all operate in the same fashion, but because this one is getting oil rather than gold, it became the hot topic for environmentalist attacks. It's no worse than strip mines for gold, nickel, platinum, or anything else, they just want to make it look like it because they don't want people using the oil, but we have to, because there's no viable alternative available yet, electric cars are too expensive and have environmental problems of their own with the replacement of their batteries, as are fuel cell cars, as well as being dangerous since they operate on compressed hydrogen. Until we have a cheap alternative to the gas powered car, we need this oil. What pisses me off is that we mine all this oil, yet we STILL buy oil from OPEC, and that's why our gas prices are so damn high, and instead of using this oil locally to keep gas prices down, we're trying to sell it to Texan oil barons and China.

Have you tried the maps yet? I think you'll find your issue.

So did anyone see SNL last night? They had Psy show up and do Gangnam Style.

When they shrink his face like that he looks kinda like Jay Leno.

She really doesn't have the voice for this song, way too squeaky.

No, Moxy Fruvous was better.

I'm telling you I was the King of Spain, And now I vacuum the turf at Skydome

NO

So my grandmother was doing some cleaning, and guess what she found? She also found an old army helmet of my dad's that they shot at at some point.

I tried once, after playing San Andreas for about 3-4 hours prior, to run an assault MOS on my laptop, and found that the heat was causing it to be choppy and the performance was sluggish, and my laptop's brand new and fairly high-end. My advice would be buy some form of cooling pad if you plan on gaming on a laptop, the little fans in them can struggle after prolonged periods of time to cool adequately and you may notice a decrease in performance, a cooling pad helps keep the air flowing, elevates the laptop off the desk a bit, and keeps cool air pointed at the hottest parts of the laptop. Most laptops have some ability to disable the touchpad via keystrokes, so plug in a mouse and disable the touchpad when you're gaming (this goes for you too, Orozco). This is usually facilitated by the Fn key most laptops have, the "function" key. It's usually Fn and one of the F-keys, there should be a small image in the corner of the F-key that looks like a touchpad and a circle-with-a-line-through-it image usually synonymous with "no entry" or "not allowed." Hitting those two keys simultaneously disables the touchpad, hitting them again re-enables it. Either of those computers would do fine for DOD:S, but I think the Lenovo would probably be a better choice, not just because I'm an Intel fanboy, but because it has a dedicated graphics card with a gig of dedicated VRAM, whereas I believe the ASUS uses an integrated card, that if I'm not mistaken allocates some of the actual RAM for use as VRAM, and won't perform nearly as well in higher-detail games. This would give you an all-around better gaming experience in other games as well, not just DOD:S, as it would be able to handle some of the more graphically-intensive games better. NVidia chips, though, are notoriously hot, no matter the platform, so definitely look at investing in a cooling pad. That, and the Lenovo has more features to it, such as Bluetooth, an e-SATA port, and 2GB more RAM (not that you really need 6GB, but still). Both of them are from fairly reputable brands, and both of them are on sale, it just depends if you want to spend the extra money on the Lenovo. One thing to be wary of is that the ASUS seems to be a new product, there are no reviews on it so you can't gauge how well received by customers it has been, or if there have been any issues. The Lenovo has generally positive reviews and has been on the market for a bit, you can read up about how other people felt it was and if it's been working out for the others who've bought it.

Woohoo, drinking age! Need to take a pic of myself holding my family's traditional drink, Krupnik, sometime.

No firearms owner who makes themselves legally known to the government through the acquisition of a license is a "problem" as you say, and I suggest you in which he uses Statscan data to prove that yes, you can actually show how few crimes the registry truthfully prevented. No matter if they're a hunter, farmer, trapper or a target shooter, if they live in the boonies or in the middle of downtown Toronto, few if any legal firearms owners are of any problem or threat, regardless of where they live or why they own their guns. And the fact that cops treat every situation the same way means that this registry data makes them no safer in the end, because they have to treat each locale as if it has a firearm therein, even before this abolition. A waste for the police force as it provides no benefits for them anyways due to the volume of unregistered firearms in Canada, and the volume of crimes committed with unregistered firearms. This registry is was the largest collection of data on individuals who've done nothing wrong, and I'm going to quote/paraphrase Gary Mauser, who testified before the Senate, that "If this was a registry of people based on their religious beliefs or ethnicity, the country would be up in arms about it. This registry is wasteful and discriminatory." And indeed his words are true, it discriminated against a section of Canadians looking to do any number of things, from preserve one of our country's oldest, proudest, and founding traditions, to wanting to preserve valuable pieces of history, to wanting to compete for our country on the world stage. This was a collection of data on personal property owned by law abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong. Dr. Langmann was able to prove, through hard facts from Statscan, that this registry has had no significant impact on crime rates, and was therefore a complete waste of money, because it failed to do what it said it would. Moreover, how was one slip of paper supposed to stop a person committing a crime with a gun anyways? It's not like someone thinking of killing anyone would think "Oh, this gun's registered, better not use it then." The registry never could have stopped crime, it's not like that piece of paper was some magic morality barrier that stopped people with ill-intent from touching the gun, all it could have ever hoped to do was be an afterthought, a device to supposedly help police solve crimes, and to my knowledge I have NEVER once hard the phrase "The murder was solved thanks to data collected in the Gun Registry," whether it be the long gun registry or the pistol registry, which has been ineffective since 1934, neither has actually been instrumental in solving a murder. The only crime I recall the registry helping solve was the individual who was going through the process of transferring 159 guns to his name from his work's name, only to then sell them to LICENSED INDIVIDUALS, he wasn't even selling these on the street, and as several of them were restricted anyways even without the long gun registry he would have been caught at it, and truthfully the only thing the registry did was help get back those 159 guns, all without compensating the individuals who purchased them, yet again leaving gun owners at a loss of money because the government doesn't feel it's THEIR problem when they take something from you to reimburse you for it, this was also true with the arbitrary reclassification of the Norinco T97, the Armi Jager AP-80, and many of the guns that were confiscated in the '70s when automatics were banned, 1991 when the first arbitrary prohibitions based on aesthetics took place, and in 1998 when the Firearms Act came into force. To state, "I see no reason why people who have a legitimate use for a rifle should have a worry about the registry." Can be exactly equated to, "I see no reason why people who don't pirate should have to worry about sacrificing some of their online privacy." It's a violation of one's privacy rights either way, which will truthfully not prevent the issue it attempts to tackle, and in the end ends up taking away one's freedoms in the name of a security that was never needed, nor could possibly hope to do what it intended, and in the case of the registry where it keeps tabs on individuals who have done nothing wrong, many feel it treats them as second-class citizens, who are being discriminated against for wanting to have a hobby, for wanting to preserve a tradition, and/or for wanting to preserve pieces of art and/or pieces of history.

It seems you're taking it literally. Seldom does it seem quotes from the old and wise were meant to be taken in a truly literal sense, and especially from Ben, a founding father, you can't take a quote advocating anarchy literally, such a thing would be absurd. Granted, I've heard a better wording to it used more in the modern day, "Those who sacrifice freedom for security get neither," and when not taken literally I say I've observed a few cases of this quote being rather true. Now I can't claim to be an expert on, or even have studied the founding fathers, they're not even MY founding fathers, but every time I see a quote from them, or hear about them, I can't help but think they were very wise men, more wise than I think some people realize, and I think in a sense a lot of what they said, did, and put in place, was because they worried about America becoming what it is today, and worried about it going down the path it's going down now. They worried that if the government had too much power, they would abuse it, that they'd fall out of line with the desires of the American people, and I believe they feared corporate lobbying before it was even a though-of threat. Indeed, looking at this quote, it seems to me that it's meant not to be taken literally, that anarchy is what we should strive for, but that it's meant to be interpreted as that we should be wary of laws that promise security if they put freedoms at risk, and that we need to seriously weight the benefits and detriments with a level head, and unfortunately, emotion usually plays very far into enacting bad or oppressive laws, making it difficult to analyze potentially freedom-threatening laws with a level head to decide if they're truly worth it. To cite the examples I see in the modern day of freedom being sacrificed for false security, there's the TSA, the NDAA, and the PATRIOT Act, to name just a few in the US, that impede dangerously on freedom while promising security, but failing to deliver the security promised, though still sacrificing the freedom. Unfortunately, all of these have been passed on emotion in the wake of the "War on terror" and 9/11, in a time when level-headed thinking, especially in the government, is a rarity. The same can be said about Canada's firearms law, the Firearms Act of 1995/98, it was enacted in response to the 1989 shooting of 14 women at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique by a single man who did actually legally own his gun. Despite being enacted 6 years later, drive for gun control was strengthened after a second Montreal shooting by a professor using handguns to kill 4 others in 1992 at Concorida University. The actions of 2 individuals affected approximately 4 million Canadians, as laws were enacted off emotion that sought to detriment gun owners, likely in hopes to stop shootings such as these. Personally, I feel the 2006 shooting at Montreal's Dawson College to be a demonstration of how that failed. The gun laws were advertised that they'd reduce crime, reduce homicide, reduce violence, reduce shootings, and make the public safer. Since its enactment, Canada's managed to make, if I'm not mistaken, the top 10 on the lists of rape and kidnapping, and while a downward trend in gun crime was noted before C-68, that downward trend did not accelerate after its passing, and I believe handgun crime started going up, demonstrating its lack of effectiveness. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, every gun used in all 3 of these shootings is still legal here, despite all the arbitrary prohibitions of guns based off only aesthetics. Bad and/or oppressive laws are made often when emotion prevails over logic, what I feel this quote is meant to do is emphasize the need for logical thinking when enacting laws, and not letting emotion overwhelm your decision, because at that such a point is when you will fail to see how little security your sacrifice of freedom will truly bring to the public. If logic prevails, then laws that find the balance between effective security and freedom can be made, but if emotion prevails, the laws will promise security in exchange for freedom, but will fail to deliver as promised. It is these laws I believe this quote warns about, not an advocation of anarchy, but a warning to always be wary of a law that promises security if it will detriment freedom, and to ensure the sacrifices and benefits are looked at and weighed with a logical level head, and not through emotionally clouded glasses.

Society has no right to know what property you own, even, and especially, if it's a firearm. I don't think you realize that a man was taken-down in his parent's house by SWAT because a neighbour though his car's steering wheel lock was a shotgun. (Because I expected you to find this hard to believe, I included a source) The cops had nothing but hearsay to go off of, and they sent in SWAT. If even one neighbour doesn't like someone and if the gun owner's privacy was invaded, unconstitutionally I may add, to the point where everyone was required to be informed that he had guns, that neighbour would just need to tell the cops, in a blatant lie, that he was scared/thought he saw a prohibited gun/was threatened by the person, and SWAT would barge in, arrest him for no good reason, take his guns away, and charge him with a load of crap that he, again unconstitutionally, is required to prove he DIDN'T do, rather than require the crown prove he DID do it, and I can guarantee one of those charges will be unsafe storage, even if he has all his guns locked up in a safe, because that's a charge that cops just slap onto everything, and it's also a charge and set of regulations that's being constitutionally challenged in Ontario right now as violating sections 7, 11(a) and 11(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because it's so vague and gets slapped onto everyone and everything that has to do with legally owned guns. People who've been on vacation and had their safe broken into, one person even had a VAULT broken into, and had guns stolen were charged with unsafe storage, despite having them stored in a safe, which is legally above and beyond what is required for storage or display of most guns. The above also happens in spousal abuse scenarios, though not the kind you think. I've hard stories from people who were at a point just before a divorce in their relationship who had their soon-to-be-former wives calling police and BLATANTLY LYING about being abused by their soon-to-be-former husband and having him threaten her with his guns. In most cases, the men had removed the guns from the home, so the police told the wife she was full of shit, but in some cases men have had their lives ruined by a spiteful bitch because when it comes to guns, due process goes out the window, and you're unconstitutionally treated as guilty until proven innocent, and in such a case as this, the jury and courts are more likely to believe the woman's lies than the man's truth that he did nothing wrong. Nobody has the right to know what property you own, and nobody but you should, especially guns, because crap like the above happens far too often than it should, and by that, I mean the fact that it happens at all, and if a gun owner were required to make public he owns guns, how many, and of what type, I practically guarantee this kind of crap would happen more often. And before you assume that's what the registry did, let the public know who had guns and what guns they were, the public had no access to that registry, only police and the government, except for the 300-some-odd times someone hacked into the registry. Making known publicly someone legally possesses guns and/or how many will not make the public safer, it just invades the privacy of that individual and actually has been known to make them a target for robbery, as criminals have been known to break into houses to try and steal people's guns if they know they're there. The law-abiding gun owner is not going to commit a crime with his guns, so knowing he has them makes you no safer, and since he will be arrested if he tries to defend his home and family with those guns, it actually puts him in a situation of unconstitutional privacy violation and at a higher risk of robbery, making him less safe, which is completely counter-intuitive to the point of it. This is much like our gun laws, focusing on the law-abiding will not stop the criminal, it will only detriment the law-abiding.

The issue is police are supposed to treat EVERY SITUATION as if there is a gun there, several cases have happened over the years of police putting too much trust in a registry that is estimated to contain records on only 30%-80% of the firearms in Canada, and the police went into a house thinking there was no gun there, and they got shot. The registry actually cost police their lives by having them put too much trust in its accuracy. As a matter of fact, despite the Association of Chiefs of Police supporting it, of 2500 frontline officers polled, 92% said they don't support the registry, or trust the validity of its data. The registry was advertised as being a deterrent and a means to solve crimes, and it has done neither, it has not made an impact on crime, and has not helped solve A SINGLE CRIME. This registry has solved no crime. It has, however, been used to take people's property WITHOUT COMPENSATION from them. When the government have confiscated various guns from people, no matter the reason, but especially due to reclassification, they did not compensate the people for taking their property, and in some cases, people lost THOUSANDS of dollars in property and got NOTHING for it. You also seem to be misinterpreting registration and licensing, which is unfortunately all too common a misunderstanding. You still need a license to own a gun, that hasn't changed, what has is the government tracking each of your guns, which facilitates only making it easier to confiscate them in the future. Moreover, society has no access to the firearms registry, that's private data, the only people with access are police and the government. Society has no right to know if you own a knife, a sword, a crossbow, a television, or anything else, it's your property and what you own is private unless YOU decide otherwise, nobody else has any "right" to know what you own, even if it is a gun. There are over 1.8 million people with a firearms license in Canada, and throughout them they own almost 8 million guns, and some people estimate that for every licensed gun owner, there is one without, and for every previously registered gun, there was one that was not. But I can tell you one thing, 1.8 million legal gun owners committed no crime in this country yesterday, I can't say the same about a gang-banger with no license or registration papers for his pistol. The whole registry hinged on assuming crimes were committed with registered guns, but of course, they're not, so it was ineffective and only wasted money. Firearm legislation in this country makes no sense, the entire Firearms Act was enacted by a man who thought that the only people who should have guns are the police and the military, and rather than focus on crime, and what to do when a crime is committed, it sought to make owning a gun overly difficult and confusing, and arbitrarily banning guns based off nothing else than looks. There have been instances where someone charged with a violation of the firearms act required that for their trial a judge, lawyer, and police officer all had to get together and argue about the meaning of a piece of legislation. At that point, I think it's time for legislation that makes sense. C-68 did nothing but try to make criminals of law abiding firearms owners, and some people believe it actually treats them worse than sex offenders, the application for for a gun license is the single most invasive form one will ever have to fill out in their lifetime. If there should be any kind of registry related to guns, it should be a registry of individuals prohibited from owning them, but as it stands now no such thing exists, and it's considered a privacy violation to release if someone is barred from gun ownership, yet hypocritically it's perfectly okay to keep tabs on every gun the government possibly can. I can support gun control that works, but attacking gun owners who do nothing wrong is bad gun control. Rather than making it a confusing mess to own a gun, we should impose stricter penalties for firearms offences, and allow properly licensed and trained individuals the ability to conceal-carry, as every US State that has made Concealed Carry of Weapons more accessible to law-abiding citizens has seen a notable drop in crime rates, because criminals think twice when their life is on the line, and individuals with CCW permits are actually far less likely to shoot someone who has committed no crime, 2% likely to shoot an innocent versus 14% likely for police. Moreover, as this act was put in place by someone who thought only the police and military should have guns, I find it astounding that police are held to such a lower standard in terms of firearms safety than the public at large. As a chief was announcing that 2 shotguns and some body armour was stolen from his department, an investigation in the station revealed that an officer has left a loaded gun under the seat of his squad car. If a civilian had done that, he'd be carted off to jail, but the cop just got a figurative slap on the wrist. Another case appeared where a cop in BC left his gun at a ferry terminal on a table. Once again, normally off to jail, but it's likely this cop will get off Scott-free. If they are to protect us, they should be held to a higher standard in my opinion, an officer found to be this negligent with his firearm should be charged and arrested, just as a civilian would have been, not merely warned and told "don't do it again..." Disarming law-abiding people is not done for the benefit of society, only for the benefit of a government with ill-intent and criminals, who will get firearms no matter the law, and who prefer restrictive laws, as it means they will have more easy, defenceless victims to choose from. The 1.8 million legal gun owners are of little to no threat to the public, yet they're treated as if they're all sociopaths, and the media has only perpetuated this falsity. If anything, these are the 1.8 million people in the country least likely to commit a violent crime. TL;DR: The registry didn't do what it said it would, did not make cops or the public any safer, facilitated the confiscation of property without reimbursement, did not deter, prevent, or help solve crime, has wasted money, and was the largest registry of law-abiding citizens that existed in this country. The Firearms Act on a whole is legislation that is confusing and aimed at the wrong objective, and should be abolished and re-written to focus on crime rather than preventing property ownership. Nobody has any "right" to know what property you own, especially a gun, and especially given how paranoid 20 years of anti-gun bias in the media has made people here. To quote Benjamin Franklin, "He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."

Handgun hunting is actually quite popular in some states, and is only disallowed here because the government shits a brick at the thought of a gun that can be easily fired with one hand.

Copying this post from another place I posted it, so if you see it elsewhere, I posted it there too. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politi...article2392983/ Honestly, why the fuck is Quebec doing this? Licenses and registries didn't stop any of the 3 shootings that happened in Montreal, nor did they help catch or identify the individuals, apparently Rathjen herself said the Dawson shooter was identified by his CAR'S LICENSE PLATE rather than the serial numbers of his guns. I also don't see how Quebec, who is apparently the most debt of any province, thinks this will work better, cheaper, and/or more efficiently provincially than federally, when the exact reason the federal registry is being scrapped is because it's wasteful, inefficient, ineffective, incomplete, and does NOTING to stop, deter, or solve crimes. If anything, a provincial registry will cost more, be less effective, more incomplete and have an even lower compliance rate than the federal one, whose compliance is estimated to be anywhere between 30% and 80%, and end up screwing over hunters from other provinces wanting to go hunting in Quebec, as no other province needs registration as of right now. Moreover, when Alberta tried to opt-out of the registry when it was created, the Supreme Court ruled gun registration is a criminal matter, and therefore the responsibility of the federal government. The good thing is there's a team of 5 lawyers from across all areas of expertise prepared to challenge Quebec's attempt to preserve the registry that, based on the Supreme Court's ruling, they have no right to. Oh well, at least this wasteful piece of criminalizing garbage is over for the rest of us.