News and Commentary

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Keep your powder dry...and so long...

As of this weekend, Gun Control Canada, the dot-org, dot-com and dot-ca domains, will be allowed to expire. The core programming, the Blogger link guncontrol-canada.blogspot.com will continue for a time, as will the links (for as long as they remain valid) and the articles on the blog pages. Most of the articles referenced in the links were archived off for safe-keeping in the event the link went bad.

I thought long and hard as to whether I would keep funding the domains or not. When they came up for renewal this month, I decided it was time to let them go, "to all things, there is a season". Traffic levels have never been high enough to support the efforts, even amongst those who profess to defend the right to bear arms in Canada, and while the fight continues in earnest, my time is done. I am simply getting too old to continue the fight on the front lines. I will do what I can when I am able, but its time for me to focus my remaining good years on the many other things that I enjoy, and to maintaining some quality of life as I enter old age.

The Conservatives have been a huge disappointment on the gun rights front. While their lack of majority has prevented some of the legislative changes, they also have not taken advantage of the orders-in-council approaches they might have. Moving the registry to the RCMP was a huge strategic blunder on their part. No police organization in Canada supports an armed citizenry. While individual rank and file members get why the right to bear arms is a fundamental necessity to a free people, its simply counter to the objectives of para-military forces to support such freedoms. The legislative changes they introduced only hands the registry off to the provinces.

The Conservatives have also squandered an opportunity to fix a horribly broken and patronized civil service. Thirteen years of Liberal trough-dipping and grossly incompetent mismanagement have left departmental ruin in its wake. My own department, in which I am a LEO, has now been given the last rites - it is no longer capable of even the simplest of effective enforcement programs.

Forced attrition through programmed staff budget cuts, retirements (and, indeed, early retirements of those no longer interested in carrying on in such an environment), lack of new hires, suspension of meaningful training programs, "corporatization" initiatives, and senior management postings filled with people who don't understand what the work is, or how its done, have destroyed what was once a proud, attuned, professional cadre of civil servants looking out for Canada's interests. Repairs will now take two parliamentary cycles and a massive expenditure. Billions of tax dollars have been squandered, and will have to be spent, to fix what could have been done in the first year of the new Conservative mandate.

The last British WWI veteran was laid to rest this week. My crystal ball, cloudy as it is, predicts that freedom as we understood it, and fought for it, was buried alongside him. The outrageous thuggery of Obama and his administration may be a bellweather of the turmoil to come, if the Americans don't re-align things in 2010. He is well on his way to becoming the most ignoble of US presidents. Americans may need their right to bear arms before his administration finishes.

I will have control of the domains for about 20 days longer for anyone on the side of right wishes to acquire them. Email me.

And to those young enough to carry the torch, hold it high, for the sake of the children (an inside joke, perhaps, but never more appropriate). See you on the range, or in the camp. ... Skip