Post-Colorado and post-Toronto shootups, there is increasing talk of gun control on both side of the border. We’ll define our terms here, as this is the best way to limit knee-jerk reaction to the whole issue, which understandably, many people take too seriously. We will also provide translation where needed, as we recognize that some people are familiar with firearms and some are not.
First off, it isn’t a gun. A gun is defined as a projectile weapon using a hollow tubular barrel with a closed end as the means of directing a projectile. This could be anything from a 16-inch gun on a battleship that sends shells the size of your sofa towards a target forty miles away, to a marshmallow gun that shoots Kraft Miniatures at a square of chocolate and two graham crackers using air pressure. They’re all guns.
We’re talking about, specifically, firearm weapons. True, knives, swords, crossbows and clubs are also weapons. A stapler can be a “weapon” as it all depends on intent, which we will get to shortly.
A “rifle” refers to the spiral grooves, the rifling, machined inside the barrel of a firearm to make the bullet spin and be more accurate over distance. A “shotgun” refers to the type of projectile, several dozen little steel or lead balls, called shot, in a largish shell, about the size of a lipstick, for those of our audience who use makeup on a regular basis.
A handgun or pistol is a common term that describes the size of the weapon, generally meaning small enough to hold and use with one hand. A shotgun a handgun and a rifle are all firearm weapons, meaning they use gunpowder to propel some kind of hard projectile at high speed towards something else.
We will define further demarcations between long firearm weapons and short firearm weapons.
Hunting firearms are almost all, by definition, long weapons, meaning more than 18 inches long and rarely with a clip of more than 8 rounds.
We’ve got no problem with hunting, be it ducks, moose or even sporting clays, but frankly, sporting clays taste horrible, even if you cook them for a week. Pass a firearms safety course, keep them in a firearms safe at home and transport them properly. Feel free to break bottles, control varmints or target shoot to your wallet and heart’s content. All we ask is that if you do take an animal or four that you use as much of the animal as you can, be it deer, elk, bear or ducks. How many and in what season is up to the provincial or state hunting regulations.
The only limitation we would ever consider imposing is to limit the weapon to semi-auto and to eight rounds. For the non-firearms folks semi-auto means you have to pull the trigger each time you want to fire the weapon and you have to reload after eight shots. Reloading takes a couple of seconds with a well-skilled person using the weapon.
Where the problem exists is firearm weapons that are less than 18 inches long and that great mystery of intent.
We don’t have a problem with people who target shoot using handguns, which are by definition less than 18 inches long. One of our acquaintances is Linda Thom. She knows how to use a weapon correctly, safely and with exceptional precision, as evidenced by her 1984 Olympic Gold Medal in 25 metre sport pistol competition. If you want to shoot targets with a firearm weapon less than 18 inches long, the same rules for long firearm weapons would apply: Firearms safety course, weapons safe at home, proper transportation, limit to semi-auto and eight rounds. The only addition would be a very stringent police background check and here’s why:
Firearm weapons shorter than 18 inches can be easily concealed.
A concealed firearm weapon has a different potential intent than one that is very difficult to conceal, like a long firearm weapon. Yes, you can still pull a Model 870 out from under your coat and fire away at things and people, but it’s a lot harder to conceal than a M1911 short firearm weapon. Both firearms can be used for benign purposes, be it hunting, or target shooting, but both can also be used to kill people. This speaks to intent and the intent to conceal means you have the potential for less than socially acceptable ends in mind when you pull out a short firearm.
Since we can’t actually determine intent up front when someone goes to buy a firearm (Gosh, I don’t want to hurt ducks, I want to shoot several co-workers and then die in a hail of bullets from the ERT – is rarely written on a Firearms Acquisition Certificate as the reason they want to obtain a weapon) we have to make it difficult for less than lawful and socially acceptable uses of firearm weapons.
Concealment is the first step: Make it hard to conceal the weapon by making it illegal for the firearm weapon, except for very specific circumstances, to be less than 18 inches long.
Second step is a limit of semi-auto and eight rounds. Hunters and target shooters don’t need to be able to fire a clip in one pull. If you’re that unskilled that you need full auto and a 50 round clip to take a deer, we’re not sure you should be allowed to have a camera, let alone a firearm. Make it illegal for the firearm weapon to fire full auto and to have a capacity of no more than 8 rounds per magazine or clip.
Third step: The display or involvement of any firearm weapon in the commission of any crime results in the automatic doubling of the penalty. Discharge of a firearm weapon in the commission of any crime results in a second doubling of the penalty. We call it the Double-Double Rule, named after the Tim Horton’s Coffee typical order of a Double-Double, of two cream and two sugar.
Here’s the elegance of the Double-Double: It speaks to the intent of the use of the firearm weapon. It has nothing to do with the legal, acceptable use of firearm weapons, aside from some sensible limits (semi-auto, no more than 8 rounds) their safe use, transportation and storage. These laws are already on the books, or could be amended very easily. Double-Double has everything to do with the commission of illegal acts involving firearm weapons.
So let’s take the Toronto shootings: Illegal possession of a firearm weapon of less than 18 inches in length. Seven and a half years is one of the more recent sentences. Double it, is 15. Discharge of the weapon with intent to harm another person, double it again: 30 years. We’ll let you in on a little feature of Double-Double. No parole or time off for good behaviour: You serve the full 30 year sentence under Double-Double even if it is your first offence.
Perhaps the beauty of the whole arrangement is we don’t have to argue about ‘banning guns’ a gun registry, stolen and illegal handguns, or even debate the merits of target shooting and hunting by sensible, safe, firearm weapons owners. Double-Double gets to heart of the matter, the intent of the firearm weapon holder, without changing our current situation very much.
Could a Double-Double law have prevented the Colorado shooter James Holmes or the Norwegian nutcase Anders Brevik? Not really, except that the shooters would have less likely access to short firearm weapons, either legally, or illegally and know the penalty for being taken alive would be a very, very long time in prison. We can’t control the crazy, no matter how hard we try to legislate things: There will always be those who find a way to act on the voices in their head.
But we can make it very, very punitive for gang-bangers and their ilk to cross that line of intent. A few of them being put away for 30 years tends to send the message in a clear, concise and easily understood manner: Do not use a firearm weapon in the commission of an illegal act – You will go to jail for a long, long time.
Where’s the upside of Double-Double, you ask? For one, it keeps our politicians from behaving in knee-jerk fashion nattering on about ‘gun’ control to gather votes. One Toronto mayor wanted to make target shooting ranges illegal to stem the flow of stolen handguns from the US. That’s almost as dumb as clear cutting forests because forests have trees, that are made of wood, than can be made into a baseball bats that can be used to hit other people over the head.
The second upside is that we make it difficult enough already to legally have a firearm weapon less than 18 inches in length. If you are that keen to take up target shooting and the pistol arts, then you won’t mind waiting 30 days or more for the background check to be completed while you take your firearms safety course and get your firearms safe installed. No problem, as your intent is socially acceptable and the laws are already on the books. Do recognize that we will put your ass in a sling if we find you’re storing your firearms in a dresser drawer with two full mags and the safety off. That’s stupid beyond belief and has nothing to do with target shooting.
Third, we’re not limiting long firearm weapons, aside from the aforementioned semi-auto and eight round limits. Hunt, shoot clays, control varmints or plink bottles all day if you want to, as long as you do it safely. If we find you piss drunk shooting a stop sign by the side of the highway, be assured the cops will confiscate your weapon and should probably give you two black eyes with the butt of your shotgun for being a complete idiot out of season.
Fourth, we get rid of those who choose to wave a gun around, either as thieves, robbers or gang-bangers by putting them away for a very long time. It might take a few years for the message to be delivered, but at least the perpetrators will be off the street. It took about ten years to get the message regarding seat belts or driving drunk to become mainstream, so it isn’t an instant fix. Nothing is.
As for the crazies like James Holmes? That we cannot fix.
RoadDave 
Mason Baveux Explains–The Economy
Forgive me, but he’s been pestering me to write some more since I’m up to my eyelids at work. Then I asked him what he wanted to write about.
Thanks lad for the bloggery keys again. Ise seen you’re up to yer arse in that computer stuff at work, so’s I figgered I’d step up like a friend and do one of the bloggerys for you.
Everybody what’s got an opinion and an arsehole says the same thing: It’s the Economy Stupid. Now I’ll tell you straight, she matters where you put the comma. If’n someone says “It’s the Economy (comma here) Stupid”, they be callin you out and your right snappy riposte would be to say “Learn how to punctuate, arsehole!” I’s expressing a preference for “It’s the Economy and she’s Pooched!” as theres less chance someone could mistake what you be sayin.
What I mean by Pooched is: In the Ditch. Upside Down, Gone Cattywampus. Taken a vacation to the Idiot Mansion. Dumber Than A Box of Hammers. Or to be impolite: Fooked.
Here’s what I got to say: There was a time when countries made stuff and sold it to other countries at a profit. That’s what you call bein in business. That lad Gupta what runs the Quicke down the ways sells milk and bread and smokes and about nine hundred other things. He puts a price tag on’em. Since Gupta’s a smart lad, the price tag he puts on the stuff is less than he pays to buy them from Quickie, or National Grocers, or where ever the hell he buys his stuff from. When he sells somethin, let’s say she’s a magazine, he makes 30 cents or a half-dollar. That’s whats called profit and that’s what Gupta’s in business for. Sell enough soda, magazines or bread and soon enough you’ve made a couple of bucks. From that couple of bucks, you can buy your own groceries for home, pay the rent, keep the lights on plus keep body and soul together. Gupta’s just an example here, a small one what I know about. Countries do the same thing.
Canada, for the longest time was known as “Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water” What they mean was our country was where the Brits got the wood for the fleet, our wheat, and even back in the Voyeurs Day, beaver pelts, what got made into hats for all the swells in London. They’d send over a big sailin ship to Montreal or Quebec City and all the Voyeurs would sell their beaver pelts to the Hudson’s Bay Company, who would sell’em to the Brits, who would sail’em back to Britain, then sell’em again to a hatter who would make hats. Every step along the way, somebody make a couple of pences on each beaver. That, again is what you call business, or to go all political, capitalism.
Canada was where folks came to get our resources. We’d get a bit from diggin the stuff out of the ground, like coal, or cuttin up the trees, but eventually whatever we dug up or grew, would come back at us as something more expensive that somebody else, someplace else made into something.
We got a little smarter around the 50’s, when we started makin stuff, like the Avro Arrow, the St, Lawrence Seaway, or great whacks of electricity. We made it into somethin more useful and made more profit. Like televisions, there used to be a company called Electrohome down towards London, what made tv’s and stereos and radios. They build the cabinets, made the tubes, did the wiring and all the other things what go into a tv, then they sold them to people so’s they could watch the Leafs actually win a friggin game.
Electrohome has been gone for years, as well as Admiral and RCA. TV was invented on both side of the border, what with Reginald Fessenden here and Philo Farnsworth down the US, more or less inventin the whole thing. But we don’t make tv’s here any more. Nor does the US. People are watchin more tv than ever, but not on something made here by us.
Used to be Grand Rapids Michigan was the Office Equipment Capital of the World. My great uncle Duke used to drive truck, takin furniture grade veneer to Grand Rapids every day, for them to make into desks and bookcases. Later he took steel coil there to be stamped into filing cabinets, chairs and whatnot that was sold around the whole world. Today? About all you can get in Grand Rapids is cold. They don’t make things there anymore. Sure they’res jobs, if all you want to do is work at a department store, sellin stuff from somewhers else, to someone what also has a job at a restaurant that you go to once a week and leave a tip so’s in a couple of months time they’ve saved up enough to buy a clock radio from your store, what was made somewhere else.
All you see is a service sector economy, serving a service sector economy and nobody makes things or does things except what they’re told to do. It’s like a snake eatin its tail. Eventually the light comes on and we’ll figure out we’re chewin on our own arse.
Which comes back to why the economy is pooched. Like Gupta, we’ve got to make a profit on things, or we might as well close it up and stay home. The best way to make a profit on things is to make things better, or faster or with more nifty features on’em than anyone else and then sell’em for more than what it costs to make’em.
So’s this Alberta Oilsands thing got me thinkin. We got about the other half of the world’s oil there, but she’s gummed up in sand. We figured out how to get the sand out of the oil and now we’re talkin about sendin the oil down south on some pipeline they want to build to Texas, but Obama don’t want to let the pipeline go, as nobody has figured out if it’s a good thing for the environment. That’s fine, as we only got one environment and we should take care of it, but what we’re talkin about shipping out is the crude. Not the gasoline, Jet A, Sunoco 260 or stove oil. Just the friggin crude, like when we sent wheat and beavers to England and got back hats and bread at fifty seven times the price of what we got paid in the first place.
Screw that I say. We got the knowhow and the people to make that Oilsands crude oil into stuff. We can sell the finished product to whoever shows up at the door with the cash. If the Yanks want to pay top dollar, then we sell it to the Yanks. If the Chinese want to pay top dollar, then we’ll sell it to them too. If none of them want to pay top dollar, then screw them both and we’ll build our own pipeline to tube it to Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City or Halifax. There’s folks in all the cities what would want a good payin job workin on the pipeline, workin in a refinery or workin movin it around. It’s our friggin oil and we should be makin a big buck on it what helps a lot of Canadians, not just some empty suit of clothes sittin in a boardroom in Houston. Eff that noise.
Besides, there’s lots of other stuff you make from oil. Like plastic pellets what they make into bags, or kids toys. Use our own friggin oil to make that stuff and sell it to everyone else. They need plastic bags in Ohio, and Ontario ain’t that far, so the bags would be cheaper than what someone could buy em for from China and everyone still makes a buck or two of profit. And there’s nothin wrong with profit. Ask Gupta. He’s makin a go of it.
There’s a whole other side to this makin a profit and that the politics of her. For instance, garlic. We grow garlic here in Ontario and it’s good stuff. I goes to the Loblaws and there’s Ontario Garlic, grown about fifty miles from the store. She’s $4 for six heads. Right next to it is some more garlic, $2 for six heads. Where’s she grown? It ain’t Ontario. Which tells me someone’s playin fast and loose with what they got on offer. Was that garlic grown on a field near Lambton Country, harvested by a family in the 519 and trucked for an hour or two to a terminal in Toronto? If it’s the Ontario stuff, it sure was.
If the garlic is from somewhere else here’s where the math falls over. They grew it on some field that used to be used for nuclear waste that the government gave them for free, along with the busload of political prisoners to plant and harvest the garlic, payin’em a dollar a month. Then the government pays the shipping from the other side of the world, on their own ships, then sells it to a broker for half of what they charge in the Loblaws. If you’re tellin me it costs a buck to grow and ship six heads of garlic from halfway around the world, then you’re either usin human slaves or you’ve found a way to break the rules of physics that none of us have ever found out about.
Or, your government is subsidizing you so much that you can afford to lose big money every time you plant some garlic. Where’d they get all that money from? The same holds true with shirts, or shrimp or electronics or furniture. Someone is playin fast and loose to put us out of business, so’s they can jack the prices up later. That’s one of the oldest tricks in the business book. Once you’re the only place to get something, you can charge the moon.
So’s maybe it’s time to stop bein cheap bastards. Buy the local stuff, what was made by local folks, without having guards keeping the pickers working at the end of a gun. Yes, she might cost a couple of bucks more, but instead of payin money to keep some government halfway around the world from takin over our economy, why not spend the extra deuce and keep a family in the 519 in business. At least I know the garlic from there isn’t going to be glowing at night.
That’s all I’se got to say. Make a buck, make it fair and make sure when you buy stuff, you buy from folks near you if you can.
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Posted in Guest Commentator, News and politics, Social Constructs