Category: Waste

Some things require no explanation at all …

You know something’s coming when they start softening you up with reassurances.

“Don’t worry, you won’t lose your jobs. Really.”

The federal Conservatives aren’t backing down from their pledge to scrap the controversial long-gun registry, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a Miramichi, N.B., audience Friday there will be “no loss of federal employment” in the area when it happens.

The prime minister told a packed arena that his government remains committed to abolishing the registry. In Miramichi, however, the promise takes on an added dimension from the typical debate over gun control.

Say what you want about these boys, they really know how to cut through it.

To be totally honest with you, though, I didn’t see this one coming the way it did. Just watch and see for yourself (tip o’ the chapeau to this blog here).

I have to confess that I’ve been on this bandwagon a bit myself, albeit with a little more skepticism than some of the hapless do-gooders you’ll see in this episode. I knew that some recycling was a net loss, that aluminum was worth the effort, all that stuff. But I didn’t know just how craptastic the whole affair was.

Guess it just goes to show you really do learn something new every day. Hmm.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

You really have to hand it to Stephen Taylor, he comes up with the coolest stuff sometimes. 😀

His latest creation, shown below in this post, is something he calls the “absent Liberals video player.” It’s based on the code for his old BT TV video distribution thingamajig (that I have embedded in the right sidebar) and it’s stuffed full of examples of exactly what kind of “leadership” the Grits don’t have to offer.

As Stephen points out in his post today, these are likely an NDP production, but what can I say? The truth is the truth, no matter whose mouth it comes out of. Say what you want about the Dippers (and I frequently do), at least they showed up for work in the last parliament. Can’t say that about the Grits.

So check ’em out and get a good long look at your tax dollars not at work. (If you want the code for your own site, just hit this page and you can get it there.)

UPDATE: Okay… for whatever reason, the player doesn’t seem to be working for me here and I don’t have time to fiddle with it right now. Guess you’ll just have to hit Stephen’s site and check it out there. Sorry, folks. 🙁

Well, I guess we can just file this one under “Well, DUH!” and move on from there, eh? Anybody who comes here regularly (and has two brain cells to rub together) already knows damned well just what I think about the Farmer Bob Varmint Gun Registryâ„¢. Specifically: we don’t have a gun control problem in this country, we have an asshole control problem. Locking up criminals reduces crime; hassling the shit out of farmers and duck hunters doesn’t. End of argument.

About twice a month or so (more often when I put up a post like this one), I get the usual, snarky email from some anti-gun Froot Loop, accusing me of everything from pro-Americanism a’ la the Second Amendment to plotting the assassination of all things cute and fuzzy. These little tirades invariably end with the assertions that I’m a) the lone voice in the wilderness with whom no one else agrees, and b) crazy as a shithouse rat.

Nice folks, huh? The problem — for them, anyway — is that I’m neither wrong, nor nuts, nor alone. And even the MSM is starting to agree. Laura Czekaj had a bit of an interesting writeup in the Ottawa Sun today, telling us that “Many flout firearms registry laws say experts“:

In neighbourhoods across the city, people are flouting the law by storing unregistered firearms in opposition of the federal gun registry.

No! Impossible! Not in Ottawa!! 😯

It’s impossible to tell how many people have opted not to register their guns with the Canadian Firearms Registry, but police and members of the firearms community get the sense that there are many gun owners who subscribe to this passive form of resistance against the controversial registry.

Impossible? No, it isn’t. As a matter of fact, I can tell you myself: it’s about four out of five long gun owners!

“On the whole, we do have records and people have registered firearms, but there are always firearms out there that we are not going to know about, registered or not registered,” said Sgt. Anthony Costantini of the Ottawa police guns and gangs unit.

Um… weren’t we told that having the registry would mean cops would know? About the registered ones, at least? 😕 The Grits didn’t lie to us, did they??

It becomes a concern if police are called to a residence and are confronted with someone carrying a gun, which officers didn’t previously know was in the house.

“But until you are confronted with that, you will never know,” said Costantini. “It’s like walking into a situation where you don’t know what’s behind the door.”

Um, guys? According to the cops that I know, EVERY call is like that: you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door. That’s where that whole “hope for the best but prepare for the worst” thing comes in handy…

It was that exact situation that played out in a Woodroffe Ave. home on Wednesday when Gatineau officers executed a court order to retrieve 14 registered firearms from Siva Yogi Shanmugadhasan, 48, and discovered additional guns that were not properly registered. Ottawa police were called and the weapons were seized.

Shanmugadhasan is facing several weapons-related charges, in addition to being the subject of a domestic dispute investigation that led Gatineau police to his door.

The weapons seized from the house included AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles and an array of inoperable guns, such as a grenade launcher and handguns.

Ah, yes, the obligatory references to the top favourites of the anti-gun hit parade. Nothing scares the bejeezus outta the city folk like a reference to “AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles.” And hey, how can you have an article about guns without trotting out the Domestic Violence Boogeyman®? You can’t, right?

We’ll cut Laura some slack here. After all, she’s writing for an Ottawa newspaper. There’s just a few little problems with this little bit of slight-of-hand…

Lie#1: the AR-15 is an assault rifle. No, it’s not. The M-16 (which is also based on Eugene Stoner’s design) is an assault rifle but the AR-15 isn’t. Yes, the ’15 looks like a scary piece of hardware, but the anti-gun crowd, and the MSM in general, rely heavily on the fact that most of the general public haven’t got the foggiest idea of what an “assault rifle” actually is. Don’t believe me? Alright then, smartass, take a look at the picture on the right (click on it for a better look) and tell me: which one is the “assault rifle?”

Go ahead, take your time; I’ll wait. I’ve got the time.

Okay, think you’ve got it yet? Which one did you choose? The top one? The bottom one? That’s what I thought. Would you like to know the answer? The answer is that neither one is an assault rifle. Nope, not either one; neither one. All those are are just a couple of little ol’ .22s. Sure, they’re all gussied up to look all big and bad, but they’re still only a couple of .22s, just the same.

Lie#2: there are no Kalashnikovs in Canada. This is also bunk. There’s one (Chinese made, I think it is) sitting in the display case of my local gun shop. I think they want about $800 for it, or somewhere in that area… Try actually walking into a gun shop sometime and taking a look around.

Lie#3: there is a quantifiable connection between guns and domestic violence. Sheer and utter bullshit that has grown more and more popular in Canada ever since we experienced our first incident of Islamist terrorism in Montreal. Even if there is a gun in the house, when some woman-beating sack of maggot shit decides to kill his wife, he usually grabs whatever’s closest at hand at that moment: a knife, a blunt object, a cord, his fists… Yes, it’s vile, but it has nothing to do with guns.

COURT APPEARANCE

Shanmugadhasan will appear in court later this week to answer to the charges.

Speaking in general, George Perrin, a member of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, said there are many gun owners across Canada who have decided not to register their firearms either as a sign of defiance, or because they’re collectors who have guns that are now prohibited under federal laws.

“There is a fair number of people who have not registered and have refused to register because of the stupidity of it (the registry),” said Perrin.

The Canadian Firearms Registry contains data related to licensed firearms owners and to the registration of all firearms in Canada.

Can we kill that damned waste of money yet? We could have used the cash to build some new prisons…

Well, isn’t this just God damned jolly?

It’s been more than a decade and a half since the poop hit the windmaker in Oka, Quebec and now, if you believe what some media outlets are coughing up, we’re pretty much smack-dab right back where we started, waiting for it to blow up again. Reading the Freeps and the Winterpeg Sun, you’d think the whole thing was a powder shed, with a chimp playing with matches inside…

The war never ended in Kanesatake, the Mohawk community at the centre of the Oka crisis, and now the government has been put on notice history might repeat itself.

Ottawa’s lead negotiator on the Kanesatake file has received two letters this year from the Kanesatake Women’s Coalition warning the federal government to stop negotiating with the band council. The letters say they could throw up a highway blockade or worse to force the issue.

“I do not have to remind you that this is exactly what happened back in 1990. The chief and council of the day did not have the authority or the mandate to negotiate our land rights in the pines for the expansion of the Oka golf course,” says one of the letters.

“The Mohawk women of Kanesatake warned the federal Conservative government of that day and its negotiator that if they continued to negotiate with the council without the community’s input there will be war and war did break out.”

War, my ass. For those of you that don’t remember all too well: as soon as the army started moving forward, all the “Mohawk warriors” started moving back. Yeah, big surprise. This reserve has been known more for its lawlessness than any other one in the country that I can think of. For example, take a look at what happened a little over three years ago:

An incident on Jan. 12, 2004 triggered it all. When 67 police and auxiliary officers from outside communities descended on Kanesatake armed with three submachine guns, a sniper rifle, two automatic rifles, a semi automatic rifle, two pump-action shotguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition, all hell broke loose. Warriors and community members laid siege to the police station for two days. The force was eventually let out of the community and Gabriel’s [referring to Former Grand Chief James Gabriel] house was burned down.

Nice, huh? As if that weren’t bad enough, this fiasco also has its lips firmly locked on the public teat, to boot:

The official says Ottawa has spent $51 million on the Kanesatake negotiating process since 1994. Of that, $35 million was spent on the acquisition of 178 pieces of property, $4 million was spent on negotiations for the government side and $9 million for the Kanesatake side, according to the official.

This is getting ridiculous. Granted, the Tories haven’t had this file for too long and they’ve had other things on their plate, but there hasn’t been any indication that I’ve seen that they’re going to deal with this properly any more than the Grits did. And with all the talk about a nation-wide “day of action” (read: “shit-disturbing”) this coming Friday, you have to wonder: just when the hell is the government going to put its foot down and say, “the law is the law and you damned well follow it whether like it or not and no, we don’t give a shit what colour you are.”

Granted, the current system for land claim resolution sucks. But Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice recently unveiled a plan to fix that mess. In the meantime, however, the government should be lowering the boom on any lawlessness they see and NO band should get anything until they damned well get it through their heads that yes, the law applies to them, too.