Ontario wants power to ban handguns
www.ctv.ca, Feb 5 ’06

Because of the theft of 40 handguns from an Oshawa man’s house:

Ontario’s attorney general says his province should have the right to ban handguns.

…According to Bryant only the police, the military and Olympic sharpshooters should be allowed to have handguns…

“Nobody needs to have a handgun in their house,…”

Criminals don’t pay attention to the part about not being “allowed” to own handguns. It’s very difficult for law-abiding Ontarians to own handguns. But, in any case, these people in government decide what we need and don’t need. They’ve decided that self-defense is not a valid reason for owning a handgun, but I don’t see how that way of thinking could be correct.

Police chiefs continue to support gun registry
toronto.ctv.ca, Jan 29 ’06

The head of Canada’s police chiefs says he will impress upon the new government the merits of the national gun registry, a much-maligned system the Conservatives have promised to scrap.

The gun registry is just one example of this, but the idea with the gun registry is for the government to be aware of personal information about peoples’ lives that they have no business knowing. If there is no reason to suspect a person of a crime, it is equivalent to a forced search of someone’s home without a just cause. It isn’t a legitimate role for the police to be treating all gun-owners like potential criminals.

If you would think along these lines a bit further, you would realize I am questioning a lot of our assumptions about government. It seems to me basically that many Canadians assume that the government owns their lives – not them – and is entitled to know all sorts of personal information about them.

But if the government is our servant and not our master, then where does this idea come from? It’s just the same old desire for power and mastery. Yes, the potential dangers of granting governments limitless power are enormous. People need to have more power over their own lives. Instead, we have the opposite. If government is there as a servant to help make us more secure from criminals, why does it try to make it difficult for us to defend ourselves from criminals?

And the tendency to not want to hold criminals accountable for their actions – the failed justice system – this fits in fine with the idea that we are helpless children and not responsible for our own lives. Many seem to want to believe that the government is responsible for every aspect of our lives. Otherwise, how would they be able to control others? The idea of recognizing individual rights and the need to defend them against criminals or others must seem completely disgusting to them. “Oh, you want to let other people – nasty, selfish people unlike me – decide what’s in their own interest and what’s best for themselves!?”

(Original Post)