Guns, Carried Openly or Concealed, Threaten Our Safety

[iverglas]

102. TRUTH, not that I expect anyone to do anything

except injure themselves when they fall over it.

It was in the post I am replying to, which so many people have been hurting themselves trying to pretend was something it wasn't. Ah, just like the good old days.

Pardon me for thinking that you wanted to ban the practice outright.

Sorry you've confused yourself, but you had it right the first time. And where I am, the practice IS banned outright, except for individuals who need to carry firearms in the course of specific types of employment.

I was more or less asked whether I wanted to ban the carrying of firearms in public.

And I replied that where I am the carrying of firearms in public IS BANNED.

So is smoking pot, thanks to our charming neighbours.

Now that I have told you that smoking pot is banned, I'll bet five of you will come along and start yapping that what I said was that no one in Canada smokes pot.

Since I'd be laughed out of Canada if I said that, well, go ahead and try.

... Does anybody really know anybody who hasn't smoked pot, generally quite a lot of it? Nobody's managed to get me old mum to try a toke yet ...

Anyway, I don't know anybody who carries a gun around in public, and if anybody were doing it, it would be in my neighbourhood. The one attempted robbery at the 7-11 on the corner that I heard details of involved a keychain-type penknife and a clerk who laughed so hard he could barely call the cops and was still laughing when he told me about it 10 minutes later.

Yes, there are stickups in Canada in which people use guns. I detailed all the gas bar holdups in Ontario that google news found me for a couple-year period a while back. A dozen maybe, I forget.

But the practice of carrying guns around in public is generally banned. You know, outlawed. Not allowed. No shall-issue licences. No may-issue licences except to people whose employment meets the requirements in the firearms legislation, or who spend a lot of time wandering around in the wilderness where there are lions and tigers and bears. Banned, with little narrow exceptions. Get caught carrying a firearm around in public without one of those little narrow exception licences -- like, you weren't sitting in an armoured truck at the time -- and you're in big serious trouble.

I'd ask whether that's all cleared up in your noggins now, but it would be a rhetorical sort of question. I doubt that it was at any time unclear, and I doubt that anyone will acknowledge that it is clear now.