HANNAFORD: Second amendment rights wouldn't be so bad...

One of the good things about seeing the end of the Liberals — yes, I remain a believer — will be the departure of people with no sense of irony.For here we are setting forth on a confrontation with the United States, a trade war that may be a cover for something vastly more sinister, even the end of Canadian sovereignty. A feckless Liberal prime minister, one who once delighted in calling Canada a post-national state with no core identity, now summons up all the nationalist imagery he once mocked and struts around with a maple leaf flag in one hand and a manifesto in the other, promising to defend Canada and urging Canadians to stand firm and fight Donald Trump.Now, to our satisfaction, he is apparently about to take his leave.But what does he do as he does so? Why, he bans another 170 types of firearm.Seriously?For a start, most of them appear to be collector pieces and collectors tend not to settle their drug deals by shooting at each other in alleys and from moving cars. And if they did, it would probably not be with an Egyptian Rasheed rifle, or an antique 1918 pattern British Farquhar & Hill rifle, now both illegal to own in Canada. Seriously again, how many of these guns are there in Canada even?This goes beyond necessity and common sense, and leads even to unflattering speculation about what really drives someone like associate public safety minister Rachel Bendayan to take such pride in what is for practical purposes, an act of spite against law-abiding sports shooters and collectors. She said, “This is also personal, as a mother, a lawyer, an elected official.”Is it now? Personal you say, Madam?Like any Canadian citizen, Ms. Bendayan is always entitled to her feelings. However as a public official, other citizens expect her to do what is right, good and above all fair and not to use her office to satisfy whatever personal feelings she may have about people who take enjoyment from something that she does not. Where would we end up if we were governed by feelings?Actually, after nearly ten years of government inspired by Prime Minister Trudeau’s feelings, now exposed by circumstances for the feeble and poorly founded jumble of ideas that they are, we have ended up in a fine old pickle. That's what happens.Now, nobody in their right mind would ever suppose that a dispute with the US over tariffs on butter or anything else is going to be resolved by guerrilla warfare. And Trump was asked directly whether if he wanted to absorb Canada, he would use military force. He said not, and in a simple binary thing like that he can in more than most things, be taken at his word.But here’s the thing. These people have no sense of irony. So we would say this to the departing Mr. Trudeau. Yes, our supposed friends have acted in an unneighborly way. You are right to call them out. You are also right to propose proportionate and appropriate economic responses.However, to try to whip up Canadian anger and resentment against a powerful ‘enemy’ using the language of bitter conflict and then say as you leave the building, ‘by the way, we’re banning guns,’ just undercuts your entire message of resistance.You could have left it for somebody else at a later time. Buy you had to have this announcement for yourself. Do you know what that makes your government look like to the people with whom they must now work out an agreement?Let us leave that as a rhetorical question.Obviously, Canadians have no wish to be taken over by the US. But if the unthinkable happens, guess what? We also get the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.Just saying.