Yesterday I found out that my union is urging it’s members to send form letters to Jack Layton of the NDP to whip his M.P. into voting against bill C-391 to kill the gun registry. It is traditional in Canada for votes on a Private Members Bill not to be whipped. Seems the union does not like Jack’s plan to let his M.P.’s vote whatever their constituents wish. Frankly I don’t think Jack is doing this out of democratic principles, but out of political survival. Many of his rural seats are being held by a slim margin, voting to support the registry could seriously harm the NDP.
What really pisses me off is that the Union involves itself in non-labour related issues, under the guise of “social justice” The union never bothers to ask their members to vote on this sort of thing and decides to whatever it pleases. Clearly a case of some being “More equal than others”. Had they bothered to canvas their members they would find that a significant portion of them are gun owner who are opposed to the gun registry. So I sent this letter last night to the President of PSAC in a likely vain attempt to make them listen. If you belong to this union and are opposed to the registry, you need to make yourself heard!
I have been a member of PSAC since the early 90’s. I find your involvement in supporting the gun registry quite disgusting and have to ask how is this pertinent to your duties as a Labour union?
Many members of PSAC own guns and are avid shooters, why would you support a program that is used to seize and confiscate peoples property? Also are you aware that the program sucked up nearly 2 billion dollars that was badly needed in far more important programs. While this money sucking monster was been created, my Search and Rescue vessel was tied to the dock due to lack of fuel and training was cut.
I have seen lots of claims made by the people supporting the registry all of which fail the fact test.
Suicides: The registry has not affected total suicides and recent claims that it have using a study that covered 1995-2005 are totally hogwash, the registry started in 2003 and was barely working by 2005. The trends in suicides have not changed due to the registry.
Police use: The gun registry is not well received by the average police officers, a recent survey found that 92% of responding street level officer did not use it or trust. Their mistrust is well-founded, only about 33% of the legal guns made or imported into Canada have ever been registered, plus it has no effect on guns that were smuggled in. Only the police chiefs seem to like it, but not enough to offer to pay for it out of their budgets. Not to mention the Police chief association accepts donations from the company that built the registry and the same Police Association was also against the Charter of rights and recently had their ethics advisor quit in disgust.
Cost: The Liberals claimed it was only going to cost 200 million, well approx. 2 billion later we still have a white elephant that has only registered approx. 33% of the legal guns, plus it has re-registered guns that had been reported stolen and is so poorly maintained that even firearm experts have difficulty matching certificates to guns (Most guns up to the 1960’s did not have serial numbers) Currently supporters are claiming it only costs 4 million, yet strangely enough even the RCMP admit to salary costs at 13 million, with a total of around $86 million per year, which most people suspect is on the low side.
Use: supporters like to use figures showing how much the registry is used, these claims started out around 4,000 and now claiming 17,000 times a day the registry is checked. What they don’t say is that all but a tiny fraction are automated, so if you are pulled over for speeding, and they run you through their system, you have just become a statistic for the gun registry supporters. In reality the number of times in a day the system is checked directly is about 19 times. If it was 17,000 times daily that would mean 6,205,000 registry checks, there are 1.9 licensed million gun owners in Canada.
The original authors of the registry have said publicly many times, that it was part of their plan to eliminate gun ownership in Canada that is the only real purpose of the registry and every example in history bears this out. A registry is created with the claim it is for the public good, shortly afterwards, those law abiding citizens that complied have their gun seized.
Do you also know that the original purpose of the gun control laws of the 20’s and the 1934 handgun registry was to ensure the “wrong type” of people don’t have access to firearms. Those “wrong people” were Communist, Socialists and Union members. So I ask you again why are you supporting a program, that does not work, costs far more than it ever should and turns law abiding citizens into criminals. Currently the firearm laws in Canada has made appox. 2 million otherwise lawabiding citizens into criminals, all for the failure to have a piece of paper.
I will be writing Jack Layton and telling him that your campaign does not speak for PSAC or for me and tell him as a proud gun owner to let his MP vote freely as they should in a democracy.
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