TheGunBlog.ca — Following is an imaginary conversation based on real laws for Canada’s 2.2 million men and women hunters, farmers and sport shooters with police authorizations to own guns.
Albert: If we want to improve public safety, what if we tracked the people who threaten it? We know a lot of them, but we won’t touch them.
https://twitter.com/TheGunBlog/status/1017384325505900544
Billy: Are you some un-Canadian unhinged authoritarian fascist Nazi-Communist alt-scumbag threat to democracy?
We don’t treat people like that here.
We respect their rights and freedoms, their privacy, their culture and way of life. We respect principles of law and justice like fair treatment, due process and innocent until proven guilty.
What you suggest is immoral, unconstitutional and illegal.
Here’s what we do instead:
- We start by recording their personal info: name, address and phone number. We record their sex, height, weight and eye colour. We record the names of their closest friends and interview them. We record who they’ve slept with for the past couple years and interview them. We record their state of mind, the state of their career and the state of their finances.
- We make them take courses and tests, and we make them pay for it.
- We make them carry a special ID card, and we charge them a special tax to pay for it.
- We track them through the police database every day.
- We track what they buy and sell.
- We block them from borrowing or lending things to relatives or a spouse unless they all have the ID cards plus special police permission.
- We restrict their travel unless they get special police permission.
- We prohibit them from having certain things based on the Four Universal No-No’s (F.U.N.), Section 12:
- 12 (1) “It’s too big.”
- 12 (2) “It’s too small.”
- 12 (3) “It’s too long.”
- 12 (4) “It’s too short.”
- We make them damage their equipment with holes and rivets to destroy its value and prevent it from running properly.
- We make some of their equipment illegal after they bought it. We’re always looking to ban more. And more. And more. And more.
- We confiscate their prohibited gear after they die.
- We sometimes seize their homes and belongings while they are alive, especially if they were defending their lives, but also if someone says they were mean.
- We make them store their belongings in a certain way, in certain places in their homes. We’re thinking of making it a crime for them to keep their property at home.
- We inspect their homes.
- We make them report to police within 30 days of a move.
- During natural disasters like floods, we break into their homes and take their property.
- Even though we aren’t supposed to, we sometimes stop them when they’re driving and seize their property.
- We have special government teams to harass them.
- We run disinformation campaigns in parliament and in the media to create a culture of antagonism and hostility toward them.
Albert: That’s a terrible way to treat people, even criminals and terrorists. I wasn’t thinking of anything so inhumane.
Billy: We would never do any of this to criminals or terrorists. They have rights, and we respect those rights. We reserve this treatment for the country’s most honest, trustworthy and responsible citizens. Everyone from ordinary men and women right up to world-class hunters and Olympic competitors, role models who inspire us and make us proud.
Albert: Why?
Billy: “Public safety.”
https://twitter.com/TheGunBlog/status/1089572467817902080
https://twitter.com/TheGunBlog/status/1091088264230883328
Related