Unintended Consequences, Part 3
Justin Trudeau claims he has a “clear mandate” to move forward with his plan to ban guns after losing over a million votes and his previous majority government.
“You are sending our Liberal team back to work; back to Ottawa with a clear mandate. We will get guns off our streets…”[i]
Trudeau is obviously too blind to notice vast swaths of our nation rebuked him on October 21st. The only mandate voters delivered was for him to heal our fractured nation, the nation he spent the past four years dividing East vs. West, city dwellers vs. rural Canadians.
With the exception of downtown Winnipeg, there isn’t a Liberal to be found east of Surrey, British Columbia, or west of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Vast swaths of Quebec elected a separatist party that was on life support until Trudeau ripped our nation apart.
Now Trudeau wants to drive another wedge between us.
Should he move forward with his plan to allow cities to ban guns, he will pit law-abiding citizens against one another.
More Unintended Consequences?
If Trudeau gives cities control over who may and may not legally possess firearms inside their borders, are cities allowed to make their own decisions on guns, or is the only permissible option to ban them?
What if some city councils want to take another path? What if they want to welcome gun owners, not vilify them?
It’s an interesting question, given the experience of Kennesaw, Georgia, 30 minutes north of Atlanta. In 1981, the town passed a symbolic ordinance mandating all heads of households must own a firearm (with a wide swath of exceptions making the law unenforceable).[ii]
The city’s website states, “After passage of the law, the burglary rate in Kennesaw declined, and today the City has the lowest crime rate in Cobb County.”[iii] To be fair, the suburb’s crime rate was already low, but it dropped even further after the law passed, much to the dismay of politicians and activists alike.
No Authority
Here’s the thing Trudeau refuses to acknowledge: the federal government has no authority over cities.
When Premier Doug Ford slashed Toronto City Council in half, Toronto Mayor Tory was powerless to stop it for the same reason Trudeau is powerless to impose his will in this case.
A city is the creation of a province, not the federal government.
But let’s put all those pesky “facts” aside and play along with Trudeau’s charade. Let’s pretend he can actually do this.
What happens next?
Trudeau gives cities the power to control who may or may not legally possess guns within their borders.
Toronto immediately bans gun ownership inside its city limits.
Tens of thousands of gun owners must now move or, at the very least, transfer their legally-owned firearms to another jurisdiction.
For the sake of argument, let’s say the City of Oshawa (or any other city surrounding Toronto proper) takes a different route.
Fully comprehending federally-licensed and RCMP-approved citizens are not a threat to public safety, Oshawa passes an ordinance welcoming licensed firearm owners and all of their guns.
Many of Toronto’s licensed firearm owners will leave the city and take their share of 23,814 registered handguns with them.[iv] That’s a bonus for Oshawa for years to come because of the influx of decent citizens and all the tax revenue they generate.
Toronto is happy because they just ran their most law-abiding citizens out of town.
The City of Toronto’s gang violence problems will continue unabated for reasons obvious to everyone but Mayor Tory and Prime Minister Trudeau. These blowhards haven’t lifted a finger to stop violent criminals, let alone disarm them.
So when this plan fails miserably, as it surely must, can you guess who these sanctimonious politicians will blame?
Why, Oshawa, of course, and every other city that didn’t drink gallons of John Tory and Justin Trudeau’s Kool-Aid.
“If only they hadn’t welcomed all those gun owners,” Mayor Tory and Justin Trudeau will whine, “all of Toronto’s thugs, drug dealers and gangs wouldn’t exist.”
And of course, they would conveniently ignore that Oshawa’s crime rate with firearms had dropped.
That’s the thing about virtue signalling – it’s all about sprinkling pixie dust and unicorn snot in the eyes of your followers in the hopes it will blind them to the truth – you’re not actually solving the real problems facing our nation.
In fact, you’re intentionally creating division between us while refusing to solve the problem, and that’s a more heinous offence against us all.
Sources:
[i] https://www.macleans.ca/politics/transcript-justin-trudeaus-post-election-speech/
[ii] https://library.municode.com/ga/kennesaw/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIICOOR_CH34CIEM_ARTIIFI_S34-21HEHOMAFI
[iii] https://www.kennesaw-ga.gov/our-history/
[iv] https://ipolitics.ca/2018/07/23/more-than-23000-handguns-registered-in-toronto-rcmp/
Second Reading of Bill C-21: What Does That Mean?