Too often, political opponents do not grant any room for honest disagreement with those on the other side. They assume that those not sharing their own worldview have bad intentions, and do not come about their differing view honestly. There is no room for belief that those with different politics may have the wrong information input, or simply have different underlying values. The inevitable conclusion is that the other side is inherently dishonest, or even evil, and is perhaps the most important factor in the incivility in most democratic politics at present..I do my best not to fall into this trap. In my own stint in politics, I never believed that the Alberta NDP or federal Liberals were evil. Just that they were poorly informed, had different fundamental values, and like most politicians, were just trying to get re-elected..Justin Trudeau’s sweeping firearms ban makes me call these charitable assumptions into question. Yes, the Liberals are poorly informed. They wouldn’t know the difference between an automatic and semi-automatic rifle if it bit them in the backside. Yes, they have a fundamental different worldview. They believe that government can always protect people, that gun-owners are strange and scary people, and that gun ownership is not a fundamental right. And yes, they believe that this is good wedge politics to help them reclaim their lost majority in Parliament..But what the Liberals are proposing is not just another Bombardier bailout or tax on productive people. They are proposing theft and criminalization on a national scale. They ostensibly believe that (otherwise) lawful gun owners will willingly surrender their private property because some Ottacrat says so..Many gun owners will not simply agree to be robbed and sell their guns “back” to Ottawa, which never owned them in the first place. When this happens, armed police will be ordered to search peaceful, law-abiding homes to seize and steal the private property of hundreds of thousands of citizens who just happened to vote the wrong way..Many urban voters may agree in polls with a ban on “military-style assault weapons”, but they overwhelmingly do no own firearms. They overwhelmingly do not understand firearms. They overwhelmingly feel that those who own firearms, are strange country bumpkins who don’t need them anyway..The Liberals mouth platitudes about respecting the simple duck and deer hunter, but their sweeping ban has outlawed huge numbers of rifles and shotguns used for hunting every day..In addition to banning 1,500 “military-style assault weapons” by name, the Liberals also seem to have (perhaps inadvertently) banned the majority of standard duck and goose hunting shotguns in use..They did so by prohibiting firearms with a bore of 20 mm or more with a removable or replaceable choke (a devise used to regulate the spread of pellets from the shell)..According to a legal opinion from lawyers hired by the the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association (CSAAA) and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), this will make most shotguns currently in store shelves and in gun owners homes, illegal..Unlike the flimsy list of rifles that the Liberals declared too scary looking, these shotguns are mostly of the variety that your grandpa kept mounted over cabin door. They are used by tens of thousands of hunters every day during duck and goose season. They are now illegal. Any attempt to use, transport, or sell them, can land you serious time in prison..If these duck-hunting guns are not surrendered to the government within two years, the government will have authority to send an armed squad of police officers to your house and take them by force.. POLL: Many Albertans say they will ignore Christmas COVID lockdown .This is not the tepid, transactional politics of the Liberals and Conservatives fiddling around the margins. This is state-sanctioned theft and violence..However misguided Jean Chretien’s long-gun registry may have been, it was never in the business of knocking down doors to steal from its citizens. This is something altogether more dangerous, and sinister..The ban of most duck-hunting shotguns could possibly have been inadvertent. We won’t know until the Liberals clarify if they intended this, or if they will redraw the regulation itself..Let us hope that the more charitable explanation – gross incompetence – prevails..Derek Fildebrandt is Publisher & CEO of the Western Standard.dfildebrandt@westernstandardonline.com.,.Twitter: @dfildebrandt
