Living in a state of perpetual crisis has proven to be an effective means of accomplishing political goals - but only if the people actually believe it.
I'm enjoying your articles, Ken. Found you through your "partnership" proposal on the Canadian government psyops contract tender page. Keep up the good work!
Sometimes it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. One moment I'm laughing at the absurdity of it all, the next I'm crying (or steaming with anger) at the lives that have been lost because of their schemes.
Allow me to rebut some of the points which you say invalidate the opinions of your compatriots:
“When reporters go around asking people, "Do you support a ban on military assault-style weapons?" when no definition even exists for that term, and then report that 80% of Canadians support it, it does a few things:”
It completely bypasses the real issue, which is that certain people are killing certain other people with a certain type of firearm.
It exposes the ignorance of people and the media.
It influences the opinions of others who are also ignorant, and
It exposes an agenda to manipulate said opinions.”
First, the idea that there is ‘no definition’ is one that we hear from American second amendment advocates ad nauseam. ‘Military assault-style weapons’ (for which you’ll find plenty of concise definitions with a quick Google search) is neutral and as descriptive and accurate as can be when conducting any type of survey. It means a semi-automatic rifle with a design based on military assault rifles, usually with a large capacity magazine. I think that the vast vast majority of people taking the survey understand this. The only other way to explain the weapon to survey respondents would be to list out every single model of gun (a long list) and show a picture, which would be impractical / impossible. It is clear that this is a disingenuous argument, intended to waste time, nothing more.
“1. It completely bypasses the real issue, which is that certain people are killing certain other people with a certain type of firearm.”
No, those are two different issues. Assault weapons bans are not intended to reduce the overall homicide rate in a meaningful way, as rifles are rarely used in homicides. Assault rifle bans are intended to prevent the mass casualty atrocities like the one in Nova Scotia several years ago and like we see regularly in the US. These are akin to terror attacks, often random in nature, and the attackers usually display an infatuation with a very particular style of weapon. Again, most respondents to the survey understand this, your insistence that they don’t understand points more to your own prejudices than anything else.
“2. It exposes the ignorance of people and the media.”
On the issue of ignorance, I’d be interested to know which firearms on the list are the ones you believe to be ‘hunting rifles’. You were vague on this point.
Anybody who claims they need a semi-automatic rifle for hunting, is not to be taken seriously.
The other point here is that we do not need to be experts in firearms in order to hold an opinion. I don’t know much about landmines, but I don’t want my neighbor to be allowed to stockpile them. Is my opinion invalid just because I can’t differentiate an MD-82 from a POM-Z 2? Do I have to take a course before I’m allowed to answer a survey? Or is the survey misleading because if it uses the term ‘land mine’?
"assault-style weapon" can be anything. There is no real definition for it, regardless of what you say you found on the web. It's got nothing to do with 2nd amendment advocates. And there is lengthy list, which is easy to find.
This is not the United States. We don't have the same problems they have. The fact that "assault-style" sounds an often like "assault" is the real disengenuous thing about this.
No one needs to be an expert, but we do need to learn to use our critical thinking skills. Yes Ned, landmines are bad. But don't worry, no one in this country (not even our indigenous people) are hunting game with landmines. They do however have to take a course in order to buy a hunting rifle, unlike south of the border.
“short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges” That’s the US Army’s definition of ‘assault rifles’. The US Army’s main rifle is the M4, a true assault rifle that can fire fully automatic. Because fully automatics are banned in America, they produced instead a semi-automatic only version for the civilian market, known as the AR15. If you put an M4 (assault rifle) next to an AR15, nobody would be able to tell them apart. They are identical. This is why we call the AR15 an ‘assault-style weapon’ (or sometimes just an assault rifle), and when you say ‘assault-style weapon’, most people would picture in their minds an AR15, or some variant.
I really can’t see what’s ‘disingenuous’ about that.
The article you linked to is a bit confusing as it claims that certain non-semi-automatic rifles will be banned, but then contradicts that later. This seems to be based on a version of a proposed bill from some member which basically banned all firearms, but obviously was never introduced.
I’m from Australia, and we banned semi-auto rifles along with handguns long ago. It’s something that most Australians are very proud of, no hunter needs a semi-auto. If they claim to, they are probably the type of person who shouldn’t own a gun.
The AR-15 is on many cases less powerful than some deer rifles. It depends on the calibre. It looks scary though, I suppose. The difference is it's NOT an assault rifle. By the way, AR stands for "Arma-lite".
The legislation here is confusing because much of simply doesn't make sense.
In Canada, roughly 40% of homicides involve a firearm, so evidently people don't really need guns to kill people.
As I mentioned, Canada is not the US, and it's not Australia either.
Your assertion that if someone claims to beef a a semi-auto for hunting, then "they are probably the type of person who shouldn’t own a gun," is very presumptuous and a little bit ignorant considering where you're from.
Back in 2019, an Australian man boarded a flight to New Zealand where he promptly got himself an AR15 and murdered 51 innocent people. There was no reason for him to travel all that way, he could have stayed in Australia and committed the attack except… it’s basically impossible to obtain an AR15 or anything similar in Australia, while New Zealand had not yet banned them. These laws work very well for preventing these kinds of attacks.
Australia and Canada are similar in many ways.. Large land areas with vast wilderness, rich in resources, but with relatively small populations; former British colonies and frontier nations; multiethnic populations centered in modern metropolitan areas, and largely white populations in the rural areas; similar income levels; highly developed with excellent standards of living, health, education etc. - except for the more impoverished indigenous communities.
Australia’s homicide rate is under 1 per 100,000 population. Canada’s is more than double, at over 2 per 100k. Australia’s 23 million people own around 3.5 million registered guns, while Canada’s 38 million people own over 20 million. Gun ownership has increased dramatically over the past ten years in Canada along with gun homicides. Both have remained stable in Australia.
It seems Canada is at a crossroads, where you can choose to follow your American cousins with more and more guns in circulation and more and more gun homicides, or take a more Australian/every advanced nation approach.
I don’t see any problem with the news media pointing to the USA as a very good example of what NOT to do, and a warning of what happens when we listen to the gun lobby rather than the people.
Yeah, I totally agree. Canada and Australia are much more similar than either of us are to the US. Being adjacent to the US definitely affects us and most people here (sadly) follow American news much more closely than our own - including our Prime Minister evidently. There's nothing wrong with pointing to the US, but the problem is when the conflates the two countries. Again - their problems are not our problems. We're not the same, so better watch out, or I'll start calling you a Kiwi. 😉
Our laws regarding gun control are nothing like the US. Yes, there are some that would like our laws to follow what they do there in the name of "freedom", but the reality is the majority doesn't want that here. In fact, most of us do see the US as a cautionary tale and I really don't think we're ever going to go that route. Even the gun lobby in Canada doesn't want that.
Yep, an AR15 is not a deer hunting rifle, it’s a human-killing rifle. That’s what it’s designed (and marketed) for. It’s not as powerful or accurate as a hunting rifle because it’s for war, it’s for taking out as many human beings as possible as quickly as possible, not hunting animals. There’s no reason that any civilian needs an AR15.
Is the legislation really that confusing? Or is it intentionally made to sound more confusing by conservative news outlets? A ban on semi-automatic rifles and handguns doesn’t sound that confusing to me. It works well just about everywhere.
Where do you get this info from, Ned? You sound like my Prime Minister. 😁
I'm sure the accuracy is fine on these rifles. And apparently a lot of guys actually like them for deer because they're small and easily maneuverable in the bush. These are not fully automatic weapons, so as far as "taking out as many human beings as possible as quickly as possible" goes, the AR-15 is no more effective than any other semi-auto on the market.
Where did I get what information? If you’ve ever seen a soldier in a combat situation, whether in a movie or on the news, they’re most likely carrying an M4 rifle or something similar. It was designed for the US military. It’s marketed to consumers as a military rifle, for ‘defense’. The reason it’s the weapon of choice for mass shooters and other insecure man-babies is the same reason it’s the weapon of of choice for armies around the world. And no, soldiers don’t go around firing their M4 in full-auto mode. They use them in semi-automatic, just like a mass shooter does, because that’s the most effective.
You could hunt deer with an F-16 fighter jet, technically. That doesn’t make the F-16 a ‘hunting rifle’
Hey Ken, can you site references for some of the stats you posted? Particularly the stats in this paragraph:
"As far as firearm incidents go, handguns account for 75% of violent robberies, and 60% of homicides.
When you take into account the fact that 85% of handguns used in crimes came from the United States, what he has actually “frozen” is a whopping 15% of these handguns that are out there being used to rob and murder people."
I am absolutely not disagreeing, just like to have sources when someone challenges a stat I spout that I heard somewhere :). Unfortunately, saying that "Ken Hiebert said that" doesn't cut it with the majority of people :)
Yeah man, I totally hear ya about citing me as a source! I might be suspicious of that myself (depending on the day of the week). Here's the news article it came from and I believe they do cite their source. It's specifically referring to Ontario, but I'm quite sure it's the same everywhere in this country.
I'm enjoying your articles, Ken. Found you through your "partnership" proposal on the Canadian government psyops contract tender page. Keep up the good work!
Thank you, Matthew. Isn't that bizarre? Funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Except it's not...
Sometimes it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. One moment I'm laughing at the absurdity of it all, the next I'm crying (or steaming with anger) at the lives that have been lost because of their schemes.
Allow me to rebut some of the points which you say invalidate the opinions of your compatriots:
“When reporters go around asking people, "Do you support a ban on military assault-style weapons?" when no definition even exists for that term, and then report that 80% of Canadians support it, it does a few things:”
It completely bypasses the real issue, which is that certain people are killing certain other people with a certain type of firearm.
It exposes the ignorance of people and the media.
It influences the opinions of others who are also ignorant, and
It exposes an agenda to manipulate said opinions.”
First, the idea that there is ‘no definition’ is one that we hear from American second amendment advocates ad nauseam. ‘Military assault-style weapons’ (for which you’ll find plenty of concise definitions with a quick Google search) is neutral and as descriptive and accurate as can be when conducting any type of survey. It means a semi-automatic rifle with a design based on military assault rifles, usually with a large capacity magazine. I think that the vast vast majority of people taking the survey understand this. The only other way to explain the weapon to survey respondents would be to list out every single model of gun (a long list) and show a picture, which would be impractical / impossible. It is clear that this is a disingenuous argument, intended to waste time, nothing more.
“1. It completely bypasses the real issue, which is that certain people are killing certain other people with a certain type of firearm.”
No, those are two different issues. Assault weapons bans are not intended to reduce the overall homicide rate in a meaningful way, as rifles are rarely used in homicides. Assault rifle bans are intended to prevent the mass casualty atrocities like the one in Nova Scotia several years ago and like we see regularly in the US. These are akin to terror attacks, often random in nature, and the attackers usually display an infatuation with a very particular style of weapon. Again, most respondents to the survey understand this, your insistence that they don’t understand points more to your own prejudices than anything else.
“2. It exposes the ignorance of people and the media.”
On the issue of ignorance, I’d be interested to know which firearms on the list are the ones you believe to be ‘hunting rifles’. You were vague on this point.
Anybody who claims they need a semi-automatic rifle for hunting, is not to be taken seriously.
The other point here is that we do not need to be experts in firearms in order to hold an opinion. I don’t know much about landmines, but I don’t want my neighbor to be allowed to stockpile them. Is my opinion invalid just because I can’t differentiate an MD-82 from a POM-Z 2? Do I have to take a course before I’m allowed to answer a survey? Or is the survey misleading because if it uses the term ‘land mine’?
"assault-style weapon" can be anything. There is no real definition for it, regardless of what you say you found on the web. It's got nothing to do with 2nd amendment advocates. And there is lengthy list, which is easy to find.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/liberals-ban-hunting-rifles-lie
This is not the United States. We don't have the same problems they have. The fact that "assault-style" sounds an often like "assault" is the real disengenuous thing about this.
No one needs to be an expert, but we do need to learn to use our critical thinking skills. Yes Ned, landmines are bad. But don't worry, no one in this country (not even our indigenous people) are hunting game with landmines. They do however have to take a course in order to buy a hunting rifle, unlike south of the border.
“short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges” That’s the US Army’s definition of ‘assault rifles’. The US Army’s main rifle is the M4, a true assault rifle that can fire fully automatic. Because fully automatics are banned in America, they produced instead a semi-automatic only version for the civilian market, known as the AR15. If you put an M4 (assault rifle) next to an AR15, nobody would be able to tell them apart. They are identical. This is why we call the AR15 an ‘assault-style weapon’ (or sometimes just an assault rifle), and when you say ‘assault-style weapon’, most people would picture in their minds an AR15, or some variant.
I really can’t see what’s ‘disingenuous’ about that.
The article you linked to is a bit confusing as it claims that certain non-semi-automatic rifles will be banned, but then contradicts that later. This seems to be based on a version of a proposed bill from some member which basically banned all firearms, but obviously was never introduced.
I’m from Australia, and we banned semi-auto rifles along with handguns long ago. It’s something that most Australians are very proud of, no hunter needs a semi-auto. If they claim to, they are probably the type of person who shouldn’t own a gun.
This is a perfect summation of what's going on in Canada vs the US and how Trudeau milks what's happening to the south.
https://thehub.ca/2023-08-16/canadas-gun-control-debate-has-been-americanised-and-the-consequences-are-real/?fbclid=IwAR3mYOeC8slDn0iAgto7VrY19QYLHCIlqDP5dDdeTVTN2lRTW4TrKaVLgtQ_aem_AWtOeLE8L4zJPRFh-GjI0Kmh9qyKii4W0BWbdhORK9spi19lcfCJhxpZnRze6VIuOjE6OrkF3EMOM4B52dmH5ANZ
The AR-15 is on many cases less powerful than some deer rifles. It depends on the calibre. It looks scary though, I suppose. The difference is it's NOT an assault rifle. By the way, AR stands for "Arma-lite".
The legislation here is confusing because much of simply doesn't make sense.
In Canada, roughly 40% of homicides involve a firearm, so evidently people don't really need guns to kill people.
As I mentioned, Canada is not the US, and it's not Australia either.
Your assertion that if someone claims to beef a a semi-auto for hunting, then "they are probably the type of person who shouldn’t own a gun," is very presumptuous and a little bit ignorant considering where you're from.
Back in 2019, an Australian man boarded a flight to New Zealand where he promptly got himself an AR15 and murdered 51 innocent people. There was no reason for him to travel all that way, he could have stayed in Australia and committed the attack except… it’s basically impossible to obtain an AR15 or anything similar in Australia, while New Zealand had not yet banned them. These laws work very well for preventing these kinds of attacks.
Australia and Canada are similar in many ways.. Large land areas with vast wilderness, rich in resources, but with relatively small populations; former British colonies and frontier nations; multiethnic populations centered in modern metropolitan areas, and largely white populations in the rural areas; similar income levels; highly developed with excellent standards of living, health, education etc. - except for the more impoverished indigenous communities.
Australia’s homicide rate is under 1 per 100,000 population. Canada’s is more than double, at over 2 per 100k. Australia’s 23 million people own around 3.5 million registered guns, while Canada’s 38 million people own over 20 million. Gun ownership has increased dramatically over the past ten years in Canada along with gun homicides. Both have remained stable in Australia.
It seems Canada is at a crossroads, where you can choose to follow your American cousins with more and more guns in circulation and more and more gun homicides, or take a more Australian/every advanced nation approach.
I don’t see any problem with the news media pointing to the USA as a very good example of what NOT to do, and a warning of what happens when we listen to the gun lobby rather than the people.
Yeah, I totally agree. Canada and Australia are much more similar than either of us are to the US. Being adjacent to the US definitely affects us and most people here (sadly) follow American news much more closely than our own - including our Prime Minister evidently. There's nothing wrong with pointing to the US, but the problem is when the conflates the two countries. Again - their problems are not our problems. We're not the same, so better watch out, or I'll start calling you a Kiwi. 😉
Our laws regarding gun control are nothing like the US. Yes, there are some that would like our laws to follow what they do there in the name of "freedom", but the reality is the majority doesn't want that here. In fact, most of us do see the US as a cautionary tale and I really don't think we're ever going to go that route. Even the gun lobby in Canada doesn't want that.
Yep, an AR15 is not a deer hunting rifle, it’s a human-killing rifle. That’s what it’s designed (and marketed) for. It’s not as powerful or accurate as a hunting rifle because it’s for war, it’s for taking out as many human beings as possible as quickly as possible, not hunting animals. There’s no reason that any civilian needs an AR15.
Is the legislation really that confusing? Or is it intentionally made to sound more confusing by conservative news outlets? A ban on semi-automatic rifles and handguns doesn’t sound that confusing to me. It works well just about everywhere.
Where do you get this info from, Ned? You sound like my Prime Minister. 😁
I'm sure the accuracy is fine on these rifles. And apparently a lot of guys actually like them for deer because they're small and easily maneuverable in the bush. These are not fully automatic weapons, so as far as "taking out as many human beings as possible as quickly as possible" goes, the AR-15 is no more effective than any other semi-auto on the market.
Where did I get what information? If you’ve ever seen a soldier in a combat situation, whether in a movie or on the news, they’re most likely carrying an M4 rifle or something similar. It was designed for the US military. It’s marketed to consumers as a military rifle, for ‘defense’. The reason it’s the weapon of choice for mass shooters and other insecure man-babies is the same reason it’s the weapon of of choice for armies around the world. And no, soldiers don’t go around firing their M4 in full-auto mode. They use them in semi-automatic, just like a mass shooter does, because that’s the most effective.
You could hunt deer with an F-16 fighter jet, technically. That doesn’t make the F-16 a ‘hunting rifle’
Hey Ken, can you site references for some of the stats you posted? Particularly the stats in this paragraph:
"As far as firearm incidents go, handguns account for 75% of violent robberies, and 60% of homicides.
When you take into account the fact that 85% of handguns used in crimes came from the United States, what he has actually “frozen” is a whopping 15% of these handguns that are out there being used to rob and murder people."
I am absolutely not disagreeing, just like to have sources when someone challenges a stat I spout that I heard somewhere :). Unfortunately, saying that "Ken Hiebert said that" doesn't cut it with the majority of people :)
Yeah man, I totally hear ya about citing me as a source! I might be suspicious of that myself (depending on the day of the week). Here's the news article it came from and I believe they do cite their source. It's specifically referring to Ontario, but I'm quite sure it's the same everywhere in this country.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/in-fighting-gun-crime-canada-has-an-american-problem-1.6004198
Ka-ching.