KILLING IS OKAY BUT DON'T USE A G-U-N

by Jane Gaffin

We've heard of U.S. government-paid thugs killing two and injuring one at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, then moving on to kill 76 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993.

The avenger of these acts, Timothy McVeigh, killed 168 people in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

The Vietnam "peace" protests escalated into destructive riots at Kent State, where the Ohio National Guard killed four students on May 4, 1970.

We've heard of the trench-coated, gun-brandishing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold choosing Adolf Hitler's birthday to murder 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999.

But, until author Richard Poe recounted the massacre in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, how many people had heard of the bloody event that left five dead and 27 injured on April 23, 1992? Practically none.

It was a warm, sunny day. The park was filled with sunbathers, street musicians, vendors, students, mothers and children.

"Violence struck suddenly at 3:30 p.m.," wrote Poe in his 2001 book, The Seven Myths of Gun Control.

"It was like a surreal experience," remembered a New York University graduate student. "It was like a movie. First we heard noise and it sounded like gunfire...People were just trying to get out of the way."

Paramedics described the scene looking like a bomb had exploded.

"Who was responsible for this carnage?" Poe asked his audience, who expected it to be some drug-induced, trench-coated teenager brandishing an AK-47.

"Not at all," advised Poe." It was 74-year-old Stelia Maychick, an elderly Yonkers woman out for a drive in her 1987 Oldsmobile."

Screams filled the air as bodies flew everywhere like rag dolls. People were mangled, grotesquely twisted. Two people were dragged beneath the car.

The investigators concluded the driver had inadvertently stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake, which accounts for why she couldn't stop the car!

She was not charged, and was allowed to keep her driver's license.

Closer to home, a 67-year-old Utah man waiting for a Whitehorse bus was killed when a driver's new Subaru careened out of control and hit a bus-stop bench on July 22, 2003.

The car, headed north on Quartz Road when it lost control shortly after 6 p.m., crashed into the bus stop, went over a small embankment and came to a rest on is roof.

The 40-year-old male driver, a Carcross resident, walked away from the crash. The man waiting for the bus was thrown over the embankment by the impact. He was pronounced dead at the scene by the coroner.

At the relevant time, police investigators were unsure if alcohol or speed might have played a factor for the driver losing control and didn't know if any charges would be laid, despite a man being dead at the scene.

If the Carcross man had killed the Utah man with a firearm, there would be no hesitation about laying charges.

But it was a vehicle.

Just like the Mountie flipping a police cruiser last September on Carcross Road while bringing a prisoner to Whitehorse for a court appearance.

Const. Jeff Monkman walked away unscathed from the crash in which his 37-year-old female prisoner, riding in the back seat, was killed.

The constable was not charged for manslaughter. He was charged for driving without due care and attention under the Motors Vehicles Act.

Had he shot his prisoner to death, the charges would undoubtedly been different.

So why do we get upset when the politically-correct blather, "If we license vehicles, what's wrong with licensing guns?"

Plenty.

The Motors Vehicle Act is not part of the Criminal Code. The Firearms Act is.

A vehicle does not need to be licensed and registered if it is confined to private property.

A firearm does.

A vehicle requires registration only when it is removed from private property. If it stays on private land forever, it never needs to be registered. A firearm, however, requires registration even if it never leaves the gun safe.

Insurance is a different story, of course. For vehicles, because they cause so much damage, insurance is expensive. Insurance for firearms use, on the other hand, is practically free. Any lawful user of firearms can be insured for all their firearms usage, on and off ranges, for about $5 per year. Chew on that a while.

Perhaps the claim that guns are inherently dangerous is not true?

Should the vehicle owner forget to purchase new plates before the annual expiry date, his forgetfulness will be greeted with a fine; or the vehicle might be impounded until he forks over some cash. The owner will neither be prevented from driving again nor from buying another vehicle.

A gun owner, on the other hand, who possesses an unregistered firearm or forgets to change his or her address will be criminally charged, have his firearms confiscated, and be sent to jail. And he will be prohibited from owning firearms for at least 10 years.

As a paper criminal, the owner of a G-U-N is treated far worse than a driver who commits manslaughter or mayhem in a park with a lethal, overpowered weapon called a C-A-R.

The government should not be imposing registration fees on the personal property of one select group to pay for "public safety" that benefits the whole.

Further, the government is attempting to overthrow legal rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 7: "Everybody has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice."

Once people accept licensing of civil liberties, there is no cap on what freedoms the government will label dangerous and take control of with a discretionary licensing regime.

Discretionary licensing, where all decision-making power rests "in the opinion of" one bureaucrat, empowers the government to keep slowly turning the screws.

Each year, firearms officers disqualify a higher number of applicants than the year before.

Once the honest gun owner tries to comply but his application is refused, he's caught in a trap. He can kiss his filing fees and guns good-bye.

When all the good, little obedient servants have revealed where the remaining guns are located, the National Weapons Enforcement Support Team, Canada's version of the BATF (and trained by them as well), will swoop in to seize the privately-owned firearms.

Under this type of politically-correct-think, upheld by our courts, Canada will collapse, like other democracies have, into a dictatorship.

We're already well on the way, aren't we.

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Copyright 2004 diArmani.com