How’s everyone’s local and provincials doing with Coronavirus? It’s been a bit since anyone posted in this thread, but a couple of stories that’ve been on my mind this past week.
Even in a crisis, Trudeau can’t help but find a new way to rub salt in the wounds of Canada Post.
It’s hard to remember that there are other things happening midst Covid-19, but this is still happening.
Starting today, licensed gun owners will no longer be allowed to sell, transport, import or use these sorts of weapons in this country.
The firearms ban comes less than two weeks after the Nova Scotia gun massacre, an incident Trudeau called “the deadliest rampage in our country’s history.”
“These tragedies reverberate still. They shape our identity, they stain our conscience, they make adults out of children and the heartbreaking truth is they’re happening more often than they once did,” Trudeau said of such mass shootings.
“Their families deserve more than thoughts and prayers. Canadians deserve more than thoughts and prayers.”.
Damn right we do and it shouldn’t have taken a tragedy of this size to have it happen.
This Liberal government’s pendulum swinging back and forth from awful to surprisingly progressive continues…
Now expand CERB for god’s sake. I need fucking food.
There’s legitimate concerns on enforcement of the weapons ban and the cost of a buyback program, but I am overall encouraged by the swift response to the Nova Scotia shooting. I’ve grown tired of the “law-abiding” gun owner spiel and frankly don’t care at this point about legitimate use. I’m not exactly onboard with animal slaughter, so hunters can fuck off.
Now to somehow deal with the fact that we have the world’s longest undefended border with the most gun-fetish nation on earth.
Hunting is tricky, for me, because I would unequivocally oppose any gun legislation that restricted to indigenous people’s ability to hunt - but I also despise the people who treat hunting as sport, and frankly find it less defensible than most other reasons to own a gun (excluding, like, buying a gun explicitly to do a murder). So hunting kind of sits at both extremes.
I’m no expert on indigenous customs, but I would ask the question why maintaining hunting traditions would depend on a European invention. In any case there’s an easier solution in my mind. Treat indigenous lands as actual independent nations with the ability to govern arms (among other things) as indigenous governments see fit. But non-indigenous Canadians? I’m fine with complete disarmament.
Indigenous sovereignty would be excellent, and currently indigenous people are partially protected under a special firearms act (though it has a lot of flaws, especially in terms of economic realities). But there are a lot of practical concerns, including the fact that we’ll probably see a sweeping gun ban in this country long before we see any radical decolonisation.
For instance, even if it is legal for them to own guns, it’ll be a functional ban if there is nowhere in Canada that actually sells guns. Especially if they don’t live anywhere near the US border.
It’s also not just about tradition - though that is part of it, and remember that they’ve had access to the guns for hundreds of years at this point, which is as much tradition as anything that precedes colonialism. It’s practical, given the food deserts and outrageous food prices in parts of Canada. 86% of Nunavut is indigenous, and as of 2017, it was $17 for a bottle of Heinz ketchup there. Similar situation in northern Ontario and other places in the north.
Very much this. There are places in Canada where hunting is not just a past time, but an industry, a way of life, and a key means of survival.
Reading some reactions online (like this CBC article) I’ve found seems to be that, yes, some people do use some of the guns in this list to hunt, but a) the people that do are few and b) Indigenous hunters are exempt from this law anyway based on the constitution.
Another concern is from those who shoot competitively in competitions. There are some competitions that do use some of the guns on this list, but they must be very niche because as someone who competed in those sports (air pistol), I’ve honestly never heard of those events until now.
Yeah, this particular legislation shouldn’t be a huge problem for hunting. Only a couple of guns on the list are practical for it, though the quote on indigenous exemptions I read was: “They may continue using firearms that were previously non-restricted for these purposes until a suitable replacement can be acquired.” The specifics of which, I’m not sure.
Still, my concerns are definitely more about the future than this particular legislation. I hope this also means the cops don’t get to keep any of these guns, but that’s a whole other discussion on guns.
Well, I guess I’m having a provincial election then
This might be an inaccurate read, but the only real rationale I can think of for this election is that the BCNDP wants to feel more self assured about drifting further and further to center
I’m admittedly not fully abreast of BC provincial politics, but is this really necessary in a pandemic? Is there some sort of political crisis out west that I haven’t heard of?
If there is, I haven’t heard of it, and yeah BC had a 1000+ spike of new COVID cases last week, so I’m really not sure of the logic
It’s strategic. People seem to really like the BCNDP right now, as a result of the perceived success of the Pandemic response. Might as well extend your mandate if you can, I guess?
If there’s one thing I’m definitely not worried about, it’s a Conservative takeover, for sure. People associate Bonnie Henry with John Horgan and any rightward attack would backfire ten-fold
I believe they’d be required to hold an election by next October, and realistically we’ll still be in the pandemic then, so it makes some sense to hold it now while our numbers aren’t the worst and people feel decent about the NDP. (Despite their bullshit response to the pipeline, that’s faded from most settlers’ minds during all of this.)
It’s extremely Cool and Good that commercial fisheries have created an environment where pogroms happen in 2020
Love that we can have open lynch mobs in Canada in twenty fucking twenty. Cool cool cool.
I look forward to talking heads being surprised at outrage over this obvious act of violent intimidation. Wait, no, I hate that that is going to be the discourse, actually.
If you want a hint of where the Canadian Discourse is at, here’s the National Post being utterly embarrassing
On another site where I read about this, I saw this Google Doc getting passed around with ways to help, aimed primarily but not exclusively at Canadians: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u_LF_bCFBbSijzqJgHNh4-MfpYz0hfdv/view
Note: I have not personally vetted any of the information, nor do I have the connections in the Mi’kmaq community to do so.
The National Post is the worst. A smarmy veneer of education over intellectually bankrupt assertions of conservative talking points. At least the Sun knows what it is.
