{"id":541,"date":"2015-01-20T16:21:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T16:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/?p=541"},"modified":"2015-01-20T16:21:03","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T16:21:03","slug":"canadians-need-a-government-who-understands-guns-kill-citizens-must-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/?p=541","title":{"rendered":"Canadians need a government who understands guns kill: citizens must vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

RCMP Constable David Matthew <\/a>Wynn, 42 is not another person in the news. He is one more law enforcement officer who has\u00a0been\u00a0gunned down\u00a0by\u00a0a criminal who used\u00a0a gun\u00a0freely. There is outcry and focus in the mainstream media as well as in\u00a0social media. Cpl. Nathan Cirillo<\/a> was the last major incident in 2014 that gripped Canadians.\u00a0The Harper government wants to bring in laws\u00a0regarding Canadian \u00a0jihadists\/terrorist. Does he understands it is guns that kill people\u00a0as well the \u00a0pathologies\u00a0that plague our society.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0On-duty police officers can carry handguns as well as\u00a0Canadian border guards\u00a0carry side arms as our Firearms Act and Regulations\u00a0Act in Canada <\/a>defines who can legally carry them. National Firearms Association of Canada\u00a0<\/a>works on trying to change our laws and protecting their membership’s rights with views such as ‘research is clear that arming law-abiding people’. Guns for the sake of protecting\u00a0are not part of our everyday culture which has it roots in First Nations, the UK and France. Unlike the gun crazy USA\u00a0and their\u00a0constitutional right to bear arms, Canada has tried to support a value where guns are\u00a0 used mostly if “the individual’s principal activity is the handling, transportation or protection of cash, negotiable instruments or other goods of substantial value.” The Harper government passed Bill C-19\u00a0and\u00a0Long gun registration <\/a>is no longer required except in the province of Quebec. This change in policy could not be stopped in spite of the outcry by women<\/a>\u00a0,Police, Health and Safety Experts <\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I look at today’s sad Wynn family in the news, it is more than having unarmed auxiliary officers, it is more about us.\u00a0It is also about the flow of illegal guns from the USA, the lack of political will,\u00a0and removing\u00a0guns for criminals. As well, allowing any Canadian, age 19 or older who does not have a history of violence, drug trafficking or other habitual criminal behaviour\u00a0to legally buy and own firearms must be revisited as storage, lending and violence against family members will find holes in this part of our legislation. Arm sales is big business and Canada is a target market\u00a0when we read that the\u00a0UN report ‘that Canada ranks third among the developed western countries (behind the United States and Norway) in the civilian ownership of firearms.’\u00a0Our society’s social capital, our schools where young people die, and our health as a society pay a price when guns wreak havoc as it has done on Constable Wynn’s family and friends. <\/span>
\nRights legislations are a baseline for establishing values and the social construction of democracy and freedom add to these values. However, with rights comes responsibility. Who is responsible for his unnecessary death? We will all be upset for the next while. The family will always have a missing chair at the table. We, the people must vote for parliamentarians who represent us and ask for less party politics and send more independent candidates to\u00a0parliament.\u00a0Staying home and not voting in Canada sends the same actors\u00a0back to parliament beholden\u00a0to big business and big donors.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we want increased control over the availability of weapons in Canada we must try to change social perspectives which allows for\u00a0our current dysfunctional political system. The\u00a0 pathology of not voting as viewed as exercising one’s\u00a0vote. This is\u00a0a view that needs re-educating. If the citizens of Canada take political\u00a0 power back\u00a0by voting, current identity politics, and pandering to large vote rich ethnic groups\u00a0can be limited. Canada needs a government that listens to all of us,\u00a0making laws that\u00a0the\u00a0majority view as important\u00a0while protecting\u00a0minority political and civil rights. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our society’s social capital, our schools where young people die, and our health as a society pay a price when guns wreak havoc as it has done on Constable Wynn’s family and friends. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merleajacobs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}