WFSA Current News - August, 2003 

 
August 23, 2003

Further erosion of Canada’s gun registry
New Brunswick is another province intending not to comply with the new federal longarm registration laws in Canada.
            The province’s Premier and its Attorney General are reported by the newspaper as saying that they are responding to growing concerns that the law is “a failed experiment” and “a waste of money”.

August 21, 2003

Preservationist measures in Africa criticized
            A report today, http://www.unwire.org/News/328_426_7721.asp , quotes a book based on two years of study of conservation programs carried out in nine African countries. The Guardian carried a lengthy article ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1025852,00.html ) on the subject. There has long been a clash between the sustainable-use element of conservation on one hand and the often well-intentioned but misguided preservationists on the other.
            The book, called From Principles to Practice, has focused on the primarily scientific programs set up with a view to assist tribal communities and funded through the offices of various large bodies including governments and the World Bank. A number of protected parks have been created, and access to these is now completely denied.
            It is reported that as a result, whole tracts of land, now being studied scientifically, are closed to the usual use of the local tribes. This includes hunting and gathering. The result is that the people are rendered incompetent and they suffer immensely from the loss of their way of life.
            Equally troubling is the suggestion it is widely believed that people and conservation are incompatible. All responsible hunting is based on principles of sustainable use, and native peoples usually have in place their own land and game management practices. It is, after all, central to their interests to do so. The fact that this is not more widely understood harms both man and environment.

August 11, 2003

Australian article casts doubt on officer

The Age, from the Australian state of Victoria , has published its second article in three days about handguns. It would seem a setting of government-sponsored confiscation provides a welcome backdrop.
            The article concerns an accredited gun club president and long-time competitive shooter, Greg Moon, who is also a police sergeant. He has become the subject of an internal police investigation, said to have been instigated into his business activities as a licensed firearm dealer.
            The article describes the way that Greg Moon in the period leading up to the current Australian confiscations and acting in his private capacity had lobbied various politicians in defence of the shooting sports. One such politician described the submissions as “informative”. Sergeant Moon has since complained to the Police Association that the investigation into his business operation has been politically motivated.
            Not all gun dealers have or need premises. Wherever pistol shooters attend clubs, they need access to guns parts to maintain their competition arms. It is not unusual to find licensed gun dealers as club members, and they often provide a service appreciated by other members. The tone of the article, headed “Officer under scrutiny over gun dealership” (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/10/1060454078640.html), is such that it casts some doubt over why any police officer might need to show such an untoward interest in firearms.  It would be very regrettable if a common misconception about the lawful and reasonable activities of arms dealers is what motivates such an investigation.

August 9, 2003

Australian handgun confiscations under way

            The Melbourne Age today described the commencement of the destruction of pistols lawfully owned by sporting shooters (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/08/1060145866843.html ).
            The confiscations for destruction are part of a recently introduced move to ban a wide number of handguns on the basis of calibre and barrel length. No such moves have ever been shown to assist in the reduction of crime.
            The people involved in this article were presenting registered handguns at a mobile destruction centre at Geelong , not from the capital. The article described the beginning of the confiscations as “the first day for the Victorian public to participate in the national handgun buy-back program”. The implication is of a willing and co-operative mass movement where ordinary citizens are pleased to go and part with guns that deep down they would rather not own in the first place.
            The facts are quite different. Licensed handgun owners in Australia are relatively few. They have been heavily screened before their gun ownership became approved by the authorities; they carry on their activities under close scrutiny and considerable restriction, and the only reason they are handing in their guns is that they are being forced to do so on pain of legal sanction. Illegal guns owned by criminals will of course not be surrendered.

August 7, 2003

Canada to persist with registry
            The Toronto Star has today printed a remarkable piece by Tonda MacCharles which relies heavily on quotations from the Canadian Federal Solicitor-General, Wayne Easter.
            The difficulties faced by the recently imposed gun registration system in Canada have grown steadily since its inception. Some of its history is recorded on this website.
            A gun registration system that fails to register all guns would appear to have no value at all. Those which are registered are clearly not the ones that will be kept by criminals and used for their own illicit activity.
           This article shows the insistence of the authorities that the registry must continue, and quotes the Solicitor-General as saying that new consultation processes may be introduced in order to canvass the delivery of “a better service”. It does not seem to be clear to the federal authorities that those who will consent to have their opinions canvassed are not the same people over whom the system is trying to increase controls. The bottom line, he said, is that the registry will remain in place. He called for its continuation in order to satisfy those from rural areas, and simultaneously to make Canadian urban streets safer.
            How these aims are connected, and how gun registration could possibly achieve either of them, is not mentioned. The article ends with mention of a poll suggesting fewer than forty per cent of Canadians support the registration system.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1060207812741