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Mathew Aldred's avatar

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!

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Ned Smith's avatar

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’?

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