So the harpercons have decided to use a private members bill to accomplish one of their chief aims, which is to kill the Liberals' gun registry. The NDP has a tradition of not whipping votes on private members bills and several NDP MPs representing rural ridings want to vote their constituents' wishes and agree to kill the gun registry.
I find this a very tricky subject. I don't like guns and for the most part I don't think that I like gun enthusiasts. That having been said, I don't like some of the sweeping powers and invasions of privacy that go along with the gun registry. I don't believe that an armed population can keep our massively-armed states in line but I do like to limit the scale and scope of the authorities' monopoly on the tools of violence. Furthermore, for the most part, Canada's gun owners are responsible people. (That was one of the arguments in "Bowling for Columbine" by the way. Michael Moore clearly shows that Canadians own more guns per capita than do USians, but our gun-related crime rates are far lower.)
I've been recently been reading editorials and surfing through various progressive bloggers' posts about the subject and a far chunk of these don't argue the case for the registry very well. There are numerous references to police association reports where they praise the long-gun registry to the skies but I've not read much in-depth summaries of these reports and remain suspicious of police enthusiasm for more tools to monitor and control people. There are arguments about gun violence against women but they're generally constructed so as to paint anyone opposed to the gun registry as being automatically in favour of women being killed by their partners, which is the same as saying that anyone who doesn't support lowering the highway speed limit to 20 kmph as wanting to have hundreds of thousands of Canadians die needless fiery deaths on our roads every year.
There's a vigourous debate going on here at EnMasse on the subject.
Some people have argued against Layton whipping the vote from the perspective of encouraging democracy within Parliament and how MPs should represent their constituents' first and that the "leadership" Ignatieff is showing is actually dictatorial.
These are all interesting questions and positions. And I'm really too lazy to provide all the links or to construct my first real post in a while so as to make it coherent. Bear with me, I'm on a train! Anyhooo, to get to the point of it, I think the NDP should vote against this motion. Without having found the time to read the studies, some summaries have shown that the long-gun registry has had a significant effect on lowering gun violence and violence against women. For that reason, this bill to simply scrap the long-gun registry should be rejected.
The NDP apparently proposed different legislation that would keep the long-gun registry but address the concerns of rural long-gun owners and privacy advocates but people argued why this wasn't proposed when the bill went to committee. I'm going to look at the committee report and see what happened.
But if the bill is voted down there's no reason why the NDP can't argue that they had to reject this irrepsonsible, all or nothing bill while remaining sincere that they want to bring forward some responsible legislation that deals with the valid concerns of long-gun owners (rural and urban) AND urban voters and womens' rights activists and other pro-registry voters.
Specious argument: The long-gun registry cost two-billion dollars, therefore we should scrap it. I believe in the debates at second-reading, an MP from the Bloc Quebecois described this logic as "my house cost me much more to build than I expected. I think I'll burn it down."
There's some good debate at that link, I suggest anyone who hasn't read it to check it out. Well, the snack cart is coming and I don't know what else to say on the subject at the moment anyway.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I think you hit the main points here. It's the specious argument that's a big problem and that's why I'm for whipping the vote on this one although generally, I like MPs to vote according to what the constituents want. As elected members, though, they also face time constraints and don't always have the luxury of educating their constituents on every topic.
They can respect their voters' wishes in ways that you write about here - whip the vote, keep the registry, but make it clear you intend to make changes to it after proper study and consultation so that it is not only more effective in reducing crime but reduces negative impact on those who use long guns responsibly.
A bit of an aside - taking on votes like these could help re-educate the public on the multiple nature of issues as well. It's rarely one thing or another, nor is it always something, that once voted on, cannot be changed.
Of course, the harpercons can be counted on to portray this as simply the NDP's betrayal of rural constituents.
Some have mentioned that already: that the bill, being irresponsible, is designed to fail, but it gives the always-irresponsible harpercons the chance to divide the opposition parties and weaken the very important rural base of the NDP.
This move, as irresponsible as it is, is actually more cunning than the usual bullying brinkmanship that the harpercons usually indulge in.
The whole "representing what constituents want" argument doesn't make sense if you look at how people voted in those 12 NDP ridings. There's only 1 party that is openly against the gun registry (Conservatives), the Libs, NDP, BQ and Greens all support it. So you'd think that if most people in those ridings were opposed to the gun registry, the Conservatives would have won, or else it would be fairly close. But it wasn't. In all 12 ridings, the total vote for parties other than the Conservatives far surpassed the Conservative vote - like over 70-80% voted for parties other than the Con candidate. Only one riding was "close", meaning the total pro-gun registry party vote was less than 60% (58%). If there is that much any gun registry sentiment in those ridings, shouldn't these figures be a lot different?
As I understand it, many NDP MPs have been quite vocal, for a long time, about their opposition to the long-gun registry.
It's one of the reasons they get elected in those ridings and that's something that harper would like to bring to an end.
Post a Comment