WFSA Current News - December,  2002

December 19, 2002

The handguns of gun-banning London
London . It is clearly established and often reported in the media that drug-related crime and ethnic violence are at the heart of the firearm abuse there. If the criminal element is able to pick and choose among models of illegal firearm, it is clear that the bans cannot possibly be fulfilling their stated purpose.

December 13, 2002

NGO role increasing – involved with NATO
              Non-Governmental Organizations are being increasingly given a partnering role in working to attainable ends with governments.
              The Fund for Peace is such an NGO, and it has broken new ground in being invited to play a part alongside a team of NATO experts looking into the feasibility of destroying very large quantities of arms and munitions in Ukraine.
              With the world community effectively shrinking, the increase of global public policy invites such partnering. Organizations that are supranational, such as NATO, ask for cooperation from special-interest groups. This has already been seen to happen on a more limited scale among other NGOs, including the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities, which continues to aim to bring solutions to perceived problems that involve legally owned firearms. Some governments cast their nets more widely than others in their discussions with stakeholders, but NGOs in general can safely expect to be asked to take higher-profile roles in future. The trend is towards more rather than fewer invitations.
               In this case, reported today by Newswire, the Fund for Peace was asked by NATO to collaborate with the Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies, and participate in a Ukrainian program designed to promote transparency and diminish arms trafficking, while emphasizing economic incentives to peace. The aim is to diminish stockpiles of military supplies, including 133,000 tons of munitions. Greece, Turkey and Germany contributed to initial studies aimed at outlining the problem. The report quotes a NATO official as calling this "the largest weapons destruction project ever anticipated". It is expected to continue for over a decade.
              It is clearly both important and appropriate for the interests of law-abiding gun owners worldwide to be represented by NGOs in the international community.

December 7, 2002

Canadian gun registration failing
           The last few days have seen a series of news articles outlining what could well be the imminent breakdown of the proposed and incomplete Canadian gun registry.
            Few restrictions on guns have been as ineffective as the process of registering each individual firearm. A look across the history of registration as it has been attempted in many different countries shows it to be at the very best misguided.
            In 1994, the Justice Minister of the day, Allan Rock, was a vociferous proponent of registration, which he indicated would cost C$2 million to introduce nationally. The figures in this present rash of articles vary, but $860 million recurs as the actual cost now in fact expected by the time the program is fully implemented in 2005.
            There are many damning criticisms delivered in articles through Reuters (December 3 and 4), The Toronto Globe and Mail (December 4) the Moncton Times (December 4), and the Ottawa Citizen (December 6). The present treatment has been brought about following statements by the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, whose office has been unable to continue with its audit, so poor are the financial records available to it. She went so far as to ask publicly why the Canadian Parliament was kept in the dark about the costs, so obviously out of control.
            However, even more disturbing were other specifics of Fraser’s report which remarked on an atmosphere among the authorities of the validity of "excessive regulation and enforcement controls over all owners and their firearms." Too many of the registry’s officials, the report said, held the opinion that all gun ownership is a “questionable activity”, requiring strict government intervention.
            One of the Reuters reports indicated that the Canadian liberals who have so strongly supported the gun registry “seek to distinguish Canada from the United States and its ‘gun culture’". It does not, however, mention how a gun registry could ever be instrumental in assisting this process, valid or not.
            The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are charged with the management of the registry information, but even they now doubt the value of what it is that they have collected. Handguns had long been registered in Canada when in 1995 it was decided to add longarms to the registry. The aim was of course to have dangerous individuals somehow made less dangerous through the registration process. But independent researchers have shown no improvement to public safety whatsoever.
            For his part, the present Justice Minister, Martin Cauchon, followed his predecessor Allan Rock in supporting the gun registry in its declining condition. As is the usual case with registration rhetoric, no hard data were offered in support of the effectiveness in increasing public safety. Rock did refer to “the lives saved”, implying a sort of cultural difference between Canada and the United States , somehow stemming from the registry.
            The Ottawa Citizen report said, “Mr. Rock and Mr. Cauchon cited statistics showing a decline in death by firearms in Canada to argue the program is improving public safety.” This practice of isolating harms by firearm, to quote them apart from the overall rates of murder and suicide, has become a very common tactic in the Westminster countries where anti-gun legislation is increasing. It would greatly increase the validity of gun registration if murder or suicide rates are seen to fall wherever it is introduced. Unfortunately, they do not.
            In fact, the issue of method substitution is usually carefully avoided by gun registration proponents, because when it is taken into account, no social benefit whatever is to be found from the registration of lawfully held firearms by those willing to submit to the process. All that the registry defenders can do is to quote death rate figures selectively and hope the public at large will not notice. Meanwhile, the costs continue rising. The Globe and Mail article demonstrated the fervency of the defence of this failing system. In May, 2000, a parliamentary committee was told the cost of the program had risen to $327 million, but yet at the same time privately the government was being warned that the costs would rise past $1 billion.

December 4, 2002

Continuing English moves against hunting
            The unrest around hunting to hounds in the United Kingdom took a new twist today. In an article by Sue Leeman, Associated Press reported on a new argument breaking out. With massive support for hunting from the rural population, the heavily urban Labour government has not been in a position to totally ban fox hunting. Now, in a bid to avoid a backdown but still to introduce further restrictions, a licensing system has been proposed, where individual groups apply for permission to hunt on the basis of local conditions.
            The argument against hunting foxes has been made on emotional grounds more suited to small-animal veterinary practice than to wide scale animal management in the wild. This being the case, it comes as no surprise that the proposed move would not only affect fox hunting, but it would prohibit outright the hunting of both deer and hares by the use of hounds.
            Under the proposed legislation, those intending to hunt would have to appear before a tribunal to put their case, and also meet some kind of anti-cruelty test.
            Sam Butler of the Countryside Alliance immediately pointed out that there are no rational grounds for the moves.
            As is the case in the United States, deer populations in parts of the British Isles are such that the animals are in numbers beyond carrying capacity and culling is called for. As is also the case in many other countries, those Britons who take animals in the wild are a driving force for the maintenance of habitat. The mentality directed towards animal preservation, founded on no grounds related to conservation, is a continuing danger to the environment and the welfare of wild animals of all kinds in Britain.