David Climenhaga's Desperation is the Anti-gun Lobby's Desperation

Desperation.


That's literally the only explanation for a recent blogpost by far-left demagogue David Climenhaga. It appears both on Climenhaga's Alberta Diary blog and on Rabble.ca.


The latter is a dead giveaway into the true nature of the post. When writing for Rabble.ca not only is basis in fact or sound logic not a prerequisite, it frequently seems like it's discouraged.


It's not surprising: this particular blogpost very clearly has no basis in either of these things. It's merely an exercise in desperation, and a tacit admission that the debate over the long gun registry isn't about the long registry at all -- not for the left.


Rather, they want to make it about everything but the long gun registry.


In Climenhaga's case, he wants to make it about the shooting rampage perpetrated by Derek Jensen, killing three and wounding one other.


It's only natural Climenhaga would want to draw the conclusion; the story has everything that LGR proponents favour. It's tragic. It's sensational. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with the long gun registry, but that doesn't matter. Climenhaga practically practically says as much himself, without ever realizing it.


Derek Jensen opened fire on a car carrying the four victims, one of whom was his ex-girlfriend, not with a long gun, but with a handgun... the kind of weapon that will be entirely unaffected by the legislation that is about to formally abolish the long gun registry.


But to Climenhaga, none of this matters. Not a whit.


Rather, Climenhaga forecasts that the Harper government will also move to abolish the handgun registry... even though no one has even flirted with such an idea. If he bothered to attempt a search for remarks by Conservative MPs talking about abolishing the handgun registry, he very clearly came up empty; his blogpost features not a single one.


Simply put, Climenhaga is openly spreading panic about something he's concocted entirely out of his own imagination.


But in his desperate bid to try to make the long-gun registry about more than just the LGR, he's unwittingly played a dastardly trick on himself: he's just written every pro-gun rights activist in Canada a license to make the LGR about more than just the registration of long guns... about things such as mass gun seizure.


Pro-LGR activists have insisted that mass gun seizure has never been on their agenda. We've been expected to take them at their word.


Ironically, there's a great deal more justification for being concerned about mass gun seizures -- stories abound about Toronto Police, in particular, seizing long guns mere hours after owners have mistakenly allowed the registration to expire.


Meanwhile, with no evidence whatsoever to justify the prediction, Climenhaga infers that abolition of the handgun registry is next.


The only trace of evidence Climenhaga offers is a remark about wedge politics, suggesting that the handgun registry is the next, ideal, wedge issue for the Conservatives.


It's beyond comical. It ignores the fact that it's been the Liberal Party, NDP and Bloc Quebecois who have been exploiting the LGR as their wedge issue. It also ignores the fact that one of the priorities of the Conservative government has been gun crime. Not gun ownership, but gun crime.


Of course that the facts so neatly lineup against his handgun registry strawman argument is a detail that seems to have evaded Climenhaga in his desperate frenzy to erect a strawman that will distract from now the facts also so neatly lineup against the long gun registry.


In the end, there are only two things about David Climenhaga's blogpost that are remarkable: the first is the extent of its self-edification. The second is the desperation.


But mostly the desperation.

John Doyle is His Own Political Santa Claus

There's something about a television critic whose work seems to be far more about politics than it is about what's actually on TV that provokes a cringe among so many Canadians.

That cringe becomes more cringe-y still when one considers just how invested Doyle is in the soul-crushing status quo of the Canadian media. But when he takes that devotion and applies it to playing Santa Claus... well, the results are not pretty.

That's precisely what Doyle does in his most recent Globe and Mail column, and the results of his political "naughty and nice" list are predictable to anyone who paid any attention whatsoever to Doyle during 2011.

Topping his list is federal Minister of the Environment Peter Kent. Because Doyle doesn't like him. That seems to be pretty much it.

The second is Sun News Network anchor Krista Erickson. Erickson, you see, asked "iconic" interpretive dancer Margie Gillis some forbidden questions back in June, and Doyle has never forgiven her. The consensus media -- the keepers of the aforementioned soul-crushing status quo -- never forgive anyone who asks forbidden questions. Just ask Dan Gardner.

Coming in third is Rex Murphy -- a familiar target of hatred for the far-left. The far-left find Murphy to be a comforting locus for their hatred because he is skeptical of their causes celibre on, of all networks, the CBC. The CBC, they assure us, is theirs, and no viewpoints can be tolerated there other than their own.

Thus Doyle's revulsion at Don Cherry -- another far-left hate magnet -- and Kevin O'Leary. Cherry is, well... Cherry, and O'Leary was seen to be insufficiently deferential to American journalist Chris Hedges.

Closing out the list at #9 was another Sun News Network anchor, Brian Lilley. Doyle seems to resent Lilley for asking tough questions about the CBC, but there's more to it than that. Although Doyle ridiculed Sun News for not being an instant success at a time when it wasn't airing in all of Canada's media markets, Doyle likely hasn't forgiven the network for promptly beginning to break ratings records just two months later.

Also mentioned was Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, although seemingly not formally included on the list. Ford, you see, committed the grievous sin of not being sufficiently jovial when accosted at his home by no-talent "comedienne" Mary Walsh. Remember that Walsh was conducting that particular ambush, and the real reason for Ford's inclusion becomes crystal clear.

Well, if John Doyle is handing out Santa's presents to anyone this year -- be it to TV producers and personalities or to anyone else -- the people who rightly belong on the naughty list can expect generous presents, and the people who rightly belong on the nice list. Not only does this particular Santa suck at his job, he's also ass-backward.

Occupy the Canadian Wheat Board?

There is Something Deeply, Deeply Wrong With These People

Previously on Bad Company, I told you all about Twitterthug and varmint-at-large @ConBGone and her campaign of intimidation against opponents of the Long Gun Registry.

For a time, it seemed like this individual had, gratefully, excused herself from Twitter.

Sadly, no. @ConBGone has, unfortunately, resurfaced on Twitter, and hasn't learned a damn thing from her experience. Rather, instead of attempting to excuse her foul behaviour at all, she's resorted to pointing the finger at other people:

It's the typical response of a shoolyard bully: @ConBGone is trying to pretend her behaviour isn't what's wrong, what's wrong is that someone would draw attention to it. Just like every schoolyard bully who blames their victim for telling a teacher, rather than accept responsibility for their own actions. Which tells you everything you need to know about @ConBGone's progress through the process of growing up.

She's not alone in this regard by any means.

Scuttlebut has it that @ConBGone has even established a stalking horse Twitter account, @GunNutz. Speculation holds that @ConBGone established the account to try to make the anti-LGR lobby look bad... but who would put any stock in @ConBGone's Twitter activities when she's already revealed herself to be nothing more than a petty thug?

Not Friends of All Canadian Broadcasters

In all fairness, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting's "Stop the CBC Smackdown" campaign has probably gone unnoticed by most Canadians. In fact, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has probably gone unnoticed by most Canadians.

In the ad, FCB presents a fictional -- purely fictional -- scenario in which the government privatizes the CBC and sells it to an American pro wrestling promoter. The ad has Bret Hart offended, and rightfully so.

In every sense, the campaign is an example of FCB playing at dog whistle politics. They've assumed that most of their supporters look down on pro wrestling, and so they've singled it out as a means to ridicule any notion that the CBC may not continue as it always has. In other words, that there may be any sort of changes.

But in singling out pro wrestling, FCB very clearly forgot about one of Canada's pioneering broadcasters: none other than Bret Hart's father, Stu Hart.

For decades, Hart was Canada's most successful wrestling promoter -- which, unfortunately, isn't saying much in terms of financial success. But Stampede Wrestling was broadcasted across Canada, into the United States, and in markets around the world. It's left an indelible mark on this form of entertainment that apparently FCB hate so deeply.

If the mark of success is how many viewers his programs reached, and how many dreams it has helped create, than Hart was an incomparable success.

Some of the Canadian stars to emerge out of Stampede Wrestling include Bret Hart, Owen Hart and Chris Jericho. Other stars to emerge out of the company included the British Bulldog and Andre the Giant.

Not that the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting have any respect for this.

Nor did they have much respect for Pat Patterson, a Quebec-born wrestler who was openly gay within the industry. The homophobic crack from their Lance Fury character is deeply disrespectful.

I fully expect to hear some ridicule for even bringing these things up, and I'm prepared for it. Frankly, I don't care.

Children across the world grew up watching pro wrestling, and for people of my particular generation, Stampede Wrestling was a big part of that. It was one hour of every Saturday afternoon remembered with fond memories.

For an organization that purports itself to be a supportive pillar of broadcasting in Canada to so callously and contemptuously disregard the contributions of wrestling to Canadian broadcasting simply reveals the group for what it is: a sham.

Jason Unruhe: Wrong About Everything Since God Knows When

More Facts the Pro-Long Gun Registry Lobby Refuse to Acknowledge

As debate over the long gun registry continues despite the inevitability of its demise, the debate, from the side of its proponents, is as much about the information they won't acknowledge as it is about the information they will.

Anything they can present as supporting their arguments they'll happily acknowledge, even if they must twist that fact beyond anything even remotely resembling the truth. Any information that doesn't support them they simply refuse to acknowledge. They pretend it doesn't exist.

Even in the week following a political rally passed off as a L'Ecole Polytechnique memorial rally -- without so much as a dress-up -- more and more information is being presented that shows pro-LGR arguments to be the uninformed and ignorant tripe it really is. Previously, it was the Globe and Mail that was off the pro-LGR reservation. Now it's the Montreal Gazette.

In a pair of charts presenting the facts regarding crime in Canada, two things become crystal clear: first off, the weapons of crime in Canada overwhelmingly are not guns.

As it turns out, the lion's share of crime in Canada is committed not with firearms of any time, but with bare hands -- described as "physical force" in these charts. It's kind of hard to register bare hands. So we'll register guns instead, right?

Right?

After all, at that point when someone does use a gun to commit a crime, we'll be able to use the registry to catch them easily, right?

Right?

Well, as it turns out the vast majority of guns used to commit crimes in Canada are not known to be registered. This is either because they were never registered in the first place, or because serial numbers and other identifying information have been removed from the weapon.

More staggering for pro-LGR activists -- so staggering they will pretend this fact doesn't exist -- is the detail that the vast minority of guns used to commit murder in Canada are long guns. The gun of choice for murder in Canada -- not the weapon of choice, but the gun in choice -- is a handgun.

Handguns have been required to be registered in Canada since before the second world war.

So of all the weapons that LGR proponents could be singling out, the long gun is precisely the wrong one. If LGR proponents really want to focus on reducing gun violence in Canada, they should focus on the guns most overhwelmingly used to commit gun violence in Canada: hand guns.

Of course, there are far fewer hand guns in Canada. This provides them with far fewer targets to pursue, and when the goal is not really to reduce gun violence but rather to rebuild Canadian culture around their favoured brand of hegemony, it's better to have far more targets -- even if those targets are law-abiding -- to pursue.

How the Left Intends to Wage War for the Long-Gun Registry

Since the very beginning, proponents of the long gun registry have relied overwhelmingly on three things to win what they view as a war to save this demagogic and symbolic institution.

They rely on emotional blackmail: they accuse those who want to dismantle the long gun registry of being indifferent to the suffering of the victims of L'Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson College. They accuse them of being indifferent to domestic abuse.

They rely on fear-mongering: they insist that the long gun registry is the first step in dismantling all measures of gun control in Canada.

They rely on distorting the facts: they note that the registry was logged into thousands of times a day, although the onboard computers police have in their cruisers automatically access the LGR when they make any kind of inquiry.

Now, they have another tactic: intimidating their opponents.

This tale revolves around the activities of @ConBGone, a far-left Twitter troll who despises conservatives to her very core. Like almost all of these far-left trolls, she apparently believes that no rules of any kind apply to her. So when she had the opportunity to post the name and address of a long gun registry opponent, she did so with glee.

As with virtually all of these zaelots, @ConBGone wasn't particularly responsive to criticism of her targeting of this individual. In fact, she set out to make it seem as if those who objected were the ones with a problem:

Moreover, when called out by several Twitter users for this blatant thuggery, @ConBGone made it clear that her intention was to intimidate opponents of the LGR into silence:

Fortunately, the precise offending Tweet has been deleted. Concerned bystanders immediately reported @ConBGone's activity to Twitter, and she hasn't Tweeted since. Speculation holds that Twitter has frozen her account prior to deleting it.

Fortunately, not all LGR proponents have gone quite as far off the deep end in their actions. But @ConBGone's actions are a reminder of just how far many of them are willing to go.

Unfortunately, actions like @ConBGone's have been taken before. Consistently, those who commit these kinds of acts have consistently refused to take any responsibility for them. Some have gone to remarkable lengths to escape the implications of their behaviour.

Fortunately, those witnessing these acts of bullying and intimidation aren't staying silent about them any longer.

Desperation Cubed

Jean Chretien pulls "hidden agenda" meme up out of its grave

When Jean Chretien ascended to the office of Prime Minister after the 1993 federal election, Time Magazine hailed him as "yesterday's man".

It was, in every sense, a deeply cogent pronouncement. Chretien was a relic of a Canadian politics many considered to be long past, one that could only prevent the ascension of a new political regime by vilifying it. When Chretien was in office the target of relentless vilification was Preston Manning and the Reform Party. By the time Chretien was finally shuffled out the door by Paul Martin, it became clear that the politics envisioned by Manning and the Reform Party were very much the politics of Canada's future.

That future would never come with Manning at the helm. His predecessor, Stockwell Day, proved himself to be uniquely vulnerable to the character assassination tactics favoured by the Liberal Party. They were able to destroy Day's leadership prospects to a degree they previously could only fantasize about.

Then along came Stephen Harper. And while the fear-mongering could hold Harper off for a time -- for two years to be precise -- it couldn't destroy his Prime Ministerial hopes the way the Liberals had hoped.

Not that they didn't try. God, did they ever try. They forecasted the destruction of Canada as we knew it: the repeal of same-sex marriage, the end of abortion freedoms, even soldiers -- with guns -- in our cities. They called it Harper's hidden agenda. The only reason why no one else could find any evidence of Harper having such plans was because it was so, well, hidden.

On February 6, 2006, Harper became Prime Minister of Canada. And something remarkable happened: all the horrors the Liberals assured us were forthcoming never came. They never happened.

For a time, they assured us that they just hadn't happened yet because Harper only had a minority. The "hidden agenda" meme lived on in their imaginations, even though Canadians further rejected it in 2008, when they reelected Harper with a stronger minority government.

Fewer and fewer Canadians believed Harper had a hidden agenda. In 2011, they reelected his government again -- this time with a majority government.

Now, it seems, the shit has truly hit the fan. Now, Jean Chretien has come out of hiding to insist that Harper has a hidden agenda.

Of course, he didn't say as much to the Canadian public. He said it in a fundraising letter sent out to his Party's dwindling followers.

"Next may be a woman's right to choose, or gay marriage. Then might come capital punishment. And one by one, the values we cherish as Canadians will be gone," Chretien wrote. The Harper government has already walked away from the Kyoto Protocol Chretien's government signed then never implemented, and the long gun registry which they claim reduces gun violence, but actually does nothing. "Unless we are bold. Unless we seize the moment. Everything we built will start being chipped away."

It's all terribly yawn-inducing -- so dreadfully reeking of desperation that it's tempting to simply discount the Liberal Party altogether.

This is a party that has nothing new to offer. It had nothing new to offer when it offered Jean Chretien, and Canadians only accepted that because they thought he was better than Kim Campbell or Joe Clark, and less scary than Preston Manning or Stockwell Day.

By both counts, they were wrong. Chretien embarked on a directionless and self-indulgent romp through Canadian politics, demonstrating just how ill-suited he was to mold Canada's present, or plan for Canada's future.

Now, with the Liberal Party's desperate reach into the past in a desperate bid to ensure its future, they've shown that this quality isn't unique among Liberals to Chretien. Rather, it's pandemic among Liberals.

They're desperate to survive. Desperate to matter. Desperate for your attention.

Vainglorious Cop-Baiting Predatory Leftism Revisited

Frankly, Derek Soberal was never really all that interesting to me. So uninteresting, in fact, that I forget entirely how his video, "Raw Video: (12 Toronto Police) Vs 1 - Post G20 Toronto: Aug 16 2010" reached my attention.

Now, after a being in contact with Soberal -- more than a year after I raised some questions about his video -- Soberal seems much more interesting.

Not that this really says much. Much more interesting than barely interesting is still not very interesting. In fact, it's pretty easy to draw some quick conclusions about Soberal: he likes attention.

I mean he really, really likes attention. So much so that he seems to have made a habit of going around Toronto sticking his video cameras in the faces of cops wherever he may see them, and regardless of whether or not he has any real reason to be doing it... more on this soon.

He seems to enjoy being on TV, he seems to enjoy being on the radio. He seems to enjoy having his name mentioned in the newspaper. And, really, why not? He just has very little worthwhile reason to be there.

One thing he doesn't seem to like is asking questions. One thing he doesn't seem to like is being asked questions.

That's probably why when I asked him about a portion of his video -- in which he is allegedly pushed around by a Toronto police officer -- that skips, he promptly blocked me from his YouTube page. Which is a shame. It seems like it would be an easy enough question to answer.

In the end, his desperation to avoid any questions is an answer in itself.

Did Soberal edit the surveillance footage he offers as evidence he was assaulted? It sure appears to be heavily edited, but he won't answer this question. But considering that the video skips more than a full second at a very convenient time for Soberal, it's hard to conclude that it hasn't been edited.

There's no business quite like being in the business of being a professional victim, particularly a professional victim of "police brutality". But considering what we already know about some of his make-work projects -- more on that soon, too -- Soberal's whining just isn't worth taking too seriously.

In the end, it just makes you feel sorry for police officers. Every day they put their lives on the line in a humble bid just to help keep people safe.


These days they don't just have to worry about some perp with a gun or a knife. They also have to worry about predatory "documentary filmmakers" trying to deliberately set them off so they can parade their footage around as evidence that they're a victim of "police brutality".


That's not just bluster, either. Derek Soberal has made a habit of posting the evidence that this is precisely what he's doing online.


More on that coming soon.

It's Not a Memorial... It's Political Emotional Blackmail

Every December 6, the entire nation stops to engage in a few sombre hours of navel-gazing, wondering just how what took place on December 6, 1989 could have happened.

Some people have wondered how what took place when Marc Lepine -- also known as Gamil Gharbi -- burst into L'Ecole Polytechnique, divided the men from the women and murdered the women, could be prevented. Others have pretended, but done nothing more. They've only pretended.

Sadly, some of those who were victimized in 1989 are among the latter, and not the former. They've participated in the politicization of the L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre, and they've taken it beyond being merely ideological, and made it partisan.

Today, Tory MPs were excluded from a L'Ecole Polytechnique memorial. The idea was to punish Conservative MPs for daring to abolish the Long Gun Registry, that government program that has had magical violence-abating qualities ascribed to it even though no evidence has ever supported that notion.

More on this shortly.

But the organizers of the "memorial" -- among them Suzanne Laplante Edward whose daughter was sadly killed at L'Ecole Polytechnique, Coalition for Gun Control President Wendy Cukier, and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union -- have made it clear that the purpose of the "memorial" is not actually to memorialize the victims of Lepine/Gharbi, or the victims of gun violence, but simply a political rally. Nothing more.

They can deny it all they want, and they will. But they're just not telling the truth.

A memorial for the victims of gun violence would require only mutual revulsion at what took place on December 6, 1989. Disagreement with whether or not a specific programme has had any effect on gun violence -- involving long guns or otherwise -- would be tolerated. But not by Laplante, Cukier, or the CEP. The decision to exclude those who don't agree with them about the Long Gun Registry is, to that end, predictable. Such people have never tolerated disagreement, regardless of what the facts actually indicate.

In the end, the only thing remarkable thing about the move is that Laplante, Cukier and company declined the opportunity to emotionally blackmail Conservative MPs in person. Because that's all these things have been about.

It certainly isn't about what the facts state. If it were, getting Long Gun Registry advocates to acknowledge the information contained in this graph, originally published by the Globe and Mail, wouldn't be like pulling teeth.

Compiled using data on gun crime from Stats Canada, the graph clearly shows that violence involving long guns had been declining Canada since 1982 -- seven years before L'Ecole Polytechnique, and 12 years before the long gun registry was established.

It's staggering and undeniable evidence that the LGR just hasn't been the miracle cure that its advocates insist it has been. The LGR is a mere cosmetic gun control measure, designed to give the illusion that something different has been done, while in fact it does nothing.

The Long Gun Registry would be bad enough if it were merely ideological. But it's far worse than that. The steadfast and ongoing tantrums of the LGR's advocates, even in the face of all the available information -- actual information, as opposed to merely the assertions of its supporters -- demonstrates that the LGR is in fact demagogic in nature.

It merely appeals to the prejudices, emotions (particularly fears) and vanity of Canada's left-wing, and is merely being allowed to stand as a symbol not of Canada's opposition to gun violence -- actually violence-combatting measures alone would do that -- but of the left-wing's success in rebuilding Canada in its own image.

That a Conservative majority government could exist at all is deeply threatening to that notion. That they would dare destroy one of the left-wing's sacred cows is yet even more threatening. That's all they really care about.

These memorials, whom the politically-motivated self-appointed gun violence martyrs demand that Conservatives stay away from -- have finally succeeded in trampling the memories of those actually killed December 6, 1989, and holding up their bloody carcasses as political strawwomen.

It's emotional blackmail, and it's their intention that the fix is in. The Tories should show not an ounce of quarter. Abolish the long gun registry, destroy the data, and let the demagogues weep over it.