FACTS YOUR GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!
Judicial and related Professional Opinion of Gun Control
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(------VANCOUVER-----)
(-----AUG 21 1986-----) NO. CC 861283
(-----REGISTRY-----) VANCOUVER REGISTRY
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IN THE SUPREME COURT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION )
BY JAMES LESLIE HURLEY FOR A........ )
WRIT OF CERTIORARI OR RELIEF IN....)
THE NATURE OF CERTIORARI AND..... )
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
FOR A WRIT OF MANDAMUS OR........ )OF THE HONOURABLE
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF............. )MR. JUSTICE GIBBS
THIS IS THE PETITION OF ..................... )IN CHAMBERS
PETITIONER.............................................. )page "- 2 -", lines 11 to 17 contain the following text:
This is a difficult case. Not the least of the difficulties is due to the
tortuous language of the gun control provisions of the _Criminal_Code_. In
_Regina_v._Neil_ (1985) Kamloops Registry No. 25175, Gordon, P.C.J., was moved,
with some justification, to refer to those provisions as "one of the most
horrifying examples of bad draftsmanship that I have had the misfortune to
consider", as "so convoluted that even those responsible for enforcing the
provisions are apparently unable to understand it", and as "a challenge to one's
sense of logic".
Clearly, within the confines of their courtrooms, Canadian judges have expressed dissatisfaction with the current gun control laws and with the obscure manner of writing in this portion of the criminal code.
The Auditor General of Canada's report to the House of Commons in 1993 re:"Gun Control Program" Assistant
Auditor General: Richard B. Fadden; Responsible Auditor: Alan Gilmore said:
"27.29 Our review of the new regulations indicated that important data, needed to assess the potential benefits and future effectiveness of the regulations, were not available at the time the regulations were drafted. The government proceeded with new regulations for reasons of public policy."
University of Toronto criminologist, Philip Stenning had this to say about the (1991) changes to gun legislation:
"The bottom line is we're legislating without knowledge about the likelihood of things that we're legislating working." "The official rationale is to reduce firearms abuse of all kinds, whether it be theft of firearms, crimes with firearms, suicides with firearms. I think the actual rationale is a more symbolic activity. It's the need to be seen to be doing something about these problems. It serves a political purpose." (The Burlington Spectator - April 10, 1993)
In his paper, "Gun Control, A Counterproductive Petition", H. Taylor Buckner, Associate Professor of Sociology at
Concordia University said:
"A (just completed) scientific survey of undergraduate students at Concordia demonstrated that the students who signed the petition do not know what the current law is, vastly over estimate the involvement of handguns in homicides, and would have been just as willing to sign a petition that asked for the current law.
Finally Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood, of the West Yorkshire Constabulary (writing in Police Review, Britain) after
he had done a six-month study, at Cambridge University, of firearms control methods and their actual (as opposed to
theoretical) effects in many countries:
At first glance, it may seem odd or even perverse to suggest that statutory controls on the private ownership of firearms are irrelevant to the problem of armed crime: yet that is precisely what the evidence shows. Armed crime and violent crime generally are products of ethnic and social factors unrelated to the availability of a particular type of weapon. there is no case, either in the history of this country or in the experience of other countries in which controls can be shown to have restricted the flow of weapons to criminals, or in any way reduced crime.
Clearly there is a large body of judicial and related professional opinion our Gun Control laws are a mess. That they do not positively contribute to crime control. What's needed is a management audit of the Federal Justice Department followed by a Royal Commission into the effectiveness of Gun Control to separate reality from Government cultivated perception.
Gun Control is not Crime Control
NEW BRUNSWICK FIREARMS ALLIANCE