You’ll have to learn to negotiate if you lean to a respectable career in politics.

When enough people have their say you often need to deal gracefully with bizarre comments that have nothing to do with the central issue. It is just part of participating congenially in a democracy.

But capitalizing on strange comments to discredit the ideals of millions of people in North America is disingenuous, and probably even ultimately damaging to your own cause.

It is equally as nonsensical as discrediting PETA’s ideals wholesale on the basis of the radical actions of a few weirdos.

It is a question on the mind of many why you communicate a deep need to discredit the pro gun view instead of entreating a genuine debate?

I keep hearing your references to the powerful gun lobby, but that doesn’t reflect the real story. Maybe that is an artifact of your familiarity with the US gun lobby, and an erroneous assumption that the Canadian gun lobby is even remotely similar.

The real story is that Canadian lobbies are strapped for cash, and often cannot get the gun owning public to pay a mere $50 for a yearly membership, let alone sizable donations from Billionaires with sweeping political agendas.

When presented with the choice of buying another box of bullets or supporting an lobby organization that protects their rights, many if not most choose the bullets.

Would you continue to call that powerful? I call that notion delusional. I am sure that Tony Bernardo of the CSSA reads comments here.

I would happily accept his rebuke of my comments, but am pretty sure that I am unlikely to see that position taken by an powerfully unpaid volunteer.

Instead, lets identify real lobbying power. What criteria would we set? Perhaps an organization with enough power to, say, control an news organization.

I won’t spoil the surprise with my comments. Let the audience decide. That’s democracy, no? THAT is honesty. THAT is our position.

Here is the MSNBC version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI

And now here is CNN’s report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OCJn9XEfhU

Too bad the carefully edited MSNBC piece never shows Chris’ hands and face while talking about the racist reactions to a black man in the white house.

Then again, how else could they discredit a movement without having to develop their own defensible position?

Powerful gun lobby? No. We can clearly see that it is a powerful anti-gun lobby. And yet another attempt from the left to discredit gun rights activists by carefully manipulated slander.

As always ensuring that posts do not mysteriously disappear, this has been blogged.

I have carefully went thru your website and many other anti firearms sites as well. I find your statistics to be extremely in-complete and when actually checked into to only represent a distorted picture of the situation.

All the websites that proport to be represnting a ture and unbiased picture of firearms contol in Canada in fact are poorly researched and contain nothing more than emotional arguments that have no basis in fact.

The one so called study referencing the 2 billion dollar boondoogle is full of mis-reprentation.

How can a study done in 2002 state that the dollar figure upto 2006 was only 1 billion dollars? Quess they have a crystal ball and can see with 100% clarity 4 years out.

If you want the true cost to the registry look deeper you’ll soon see at present its well over 2 billion and nearing 3 billion. You’ll need to look hard but most of this is backedup in the Auditor Generals reports.

If you’re really as educated as you site indicates you’re gulity of very shoddy reseach

You stated the following on your way to Waterloo:

“The first few days of my fellowship with Project Ploughshares have been a whirlwind of meeting new people, reading up on gun control legislation in Canada, and exploring my new surroundings. The Ploughshares office is located in an old Seagram’s distillery and needless to say, it’s amazing. The building used to be a museum, and much of the distillery is still intact.”

“reading up on gun control legislation in Canada” struck me right away. That statement told me that you knew very little or nothing at all on the subject.

You came to Canada at the wrong time to discuss gun control. Personally, I’ve been fighting this for 30 years as have many others. The last 14 years have been miserable. The last straw came with a nationwide call for a handgun ban by the Liberal party of Canada and Mayor Miller of Toronto in the fall of 2005.

For the last 4 years we have been fighting to keep what we legally own and we won’t give up without a fight.

Gun control in Canada is a very, very touchy subject. We gun owners don’t have the luxury of an organization like the NRA. They have 3,000,000 members. Our largest org has 40,000 members. So, we use the best TOOL we have in hand. Not our guns, our pens.

Put things into perspective from our point of view Liz.

BTW, in 1967 I worked as a summer student at the distillery in Waterloo. My dad was a VP with Seagrams in TO and got me the internship. I had just turned 18 that summer and had a wonderful time there. Also worked on the experimental farm and lost my virginity to a 26 yr secretary in a store room off the main accounting floor.

A summer I’ll never forget.

“The anti-gun-control community in Canada is rabid in its hatred of the modest and sensible controls we have here and of all who support them. It cares little for the victims of gun violence or those who are injured or killed in gun accidents. Its dishonesty is demonstrated in demands for ‘proof’ that any measure to control guns be demonstrated effective in advance. It constantly claims that controls have no beneficial results and implies that more people are killed or injured as a result of controls than would be the case without them.”

Actually you are incorrect gun owners for the most part do support sensible controls and laws. Gun Control in Canada is not sensible, effective nor modest gun control laws.

We care greatly for victims of gun violence, but we know the current rules placed upon civilian gun owners simply target the wrong people. And our government has wasted BILLIONS on the illusion of public safety.

Yes, we demand ‘proof’ and ‘reason’ especially when a topic is as politically charged as this one is. You have no idea what is truly at stake here a freedom, liberty and property right.

I suggest you read up a little on this topic before making comments such as yours.

Citizen of Canada Wrote

“Sadly we have far too many M.P.s who for the sake of a few votes are willing to pander to the insane demands of the anti-gun-control people. I fear that if the Conservative Party ever gets a majority in the Commons, our gun control laws will be repealed or rendered ineffective by one means or another.”

You have no idea what the word ‘pander’ actually means if you believe for a second gun owners have been pandered to in Canada. We have been smashed in the teeth with a hammer for the last 20 years in the name of public safety and yet there has been no measurable gain to public safety.

All the gun control laws in Canada are aimed at honest law abiding citizens as they are the only ones that will respect the laws to begin with.

The current laws are ineffective. Gun Control is not Crime Control and it never will be.

PS this has been blogged.

Canadiangunnutz is an open, public forum, and all are free to join there.

As Canada’s most popular recreational, political and trade forum for gun owners it is true that we have attracted the ramblings of more than the occasional wing nut with an extremist agenda.

But to be fair with CGN’s administration and members, the tenure of radicals there tends to be very…

Short.

We don’t need billionaire funding and a Global network to accomplish a balance of freedom, propriety and intellectual honesty that seems to have escaped your venture.

I would strongly ENCOURAGE your audience to join and meet us in discussion there. Comments are not indiscriminately censored there by a privileged few, but rather countered by a community. Best of all, participants will be able to catch up with the vast majority of the comments you chose to edit, marginalize or censor out completely.

What fun.

It is a courteousy that we will happily extend to your readership that we must agree has not been accorded on your sight.

Dissatisfied with that? Join up. Despite your antagonist comments dangerously bordered on misandry, you can have your say there too. But do not expect to play the victim card when you get called on your inappropriate behavior.

The great thing about the Internet is that your comments never seem to disappear.

If you had allowed a comment or two that personally attacked or threatened you, I’m sure that you would have seen the firearms community ‘go to town’ on that poster in your defense, right here on IANSA. They’re very good people on the whole.

“Its dishonesty is demonstrated in demands for ‘proof’ that any measure to control guns be demonstrated effective in advance. It constantly claims that controls have no beneficial results and implies that more people are killed or injured as a result of controls than would be the case without them.”

You don’t think laws that restrict liberty on a broad scale while spending billions of our dollars should require proof?

There are reams of data already existent on gun control. The experiment has been performed dozens of times. People here have presented the evidence over and over and you obviously ignore it.

Good job attempting to bolster your argument by calling groups of people names. Got a leg to stand on?

Having a position in a debate does not automatically accord respect for that position. Making a comment doesn’t automatically convey validity to that comment.

Respect for a position or a comment comes with proof of that position. You could say that the world is 6000 years old, but you might get a snide comment about sniffing the glue that the Sumerians were learning to use around that time. You might even get laughed at. Can you handle it? So far you haven’t shown as much.

Statements made with no proof are akin to snake oil salespeople: Best ignored most of the time, unless the town is giving their money to the salesperson.