Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:38 pm
Hell - the vast majority of gun owners didn't have a problem with it at first.
It wasn't till later that the true nature of the bill was revealed, and the potential for abuse realized.
On the face of it, there's nothing really wrong with registering guns. Now don't freak out - think about it in general terms. It's quite possible that having a list of guns a guy has might have some value at some point in a small way.
If it had been virtually free, if there was NO criminal requirement to comply, if you couldn't get arrested for not having registered a gun, if the gov't wasn't interested in confiscating lawful firearms, etc etc, then really we wouldn't have had a big problem with it. As a licensed user, if you got caught with an unregistered gun, well 25 dollar fine for you and please register it when you get a chance. Who'd be really bitching?
And that's how it was largely presented.
It wasn't till later that people really woke up to the idea that this was FAR FAR more than that. ANd that it would be used to TAKE our guns, lock up innocent firearms owners, discourage ownership, allow for searches without any real reason, etc etc etc.
We should be thankful. If the gov't had been a little less agressive and hateful towards us, we might well have accepted a form of registration without much complaint. Then later they could have 'tightened the law a little' and really screwed us. They went too far too fast, and it woke gun owners up.
THat's why we didn't have SERIOUS gun org advocacy groups until the late 90's, early 2000's.
If the liberal gov't had done it a little more 'cleverly', like forming a 'national firearms insurance company' and insisting that for safety all guns must be registered and insured, just like cars (7 bucks a year and 1 buck for each gun you own or something) we might have all fallen for it hook line and sinker, and they'd have got their registry and it would have been funded by gun owners just like automotive is with the insurance companies. Hell - they could have done it thru the existing insurance sellers networks out there, made it nice and easy for people. And people would have thought they were 'getting' something for it, in case they accidently shot something and had to pay for it.
We got lucky in many ways that c-68 was as bad as it was - done differently they may well have sold it to canadian gun owners until it was far too late to fight back.
