Canada = proof that civil disobedience works

[Kimber45acp]

I'm not advocating the breaking of any law. I just think it's worth noting that most of the momentum for getting rid of the long gun registry is coming from this:

Reality has not seemed to matter to those who support retention of the long-gun registry. In fact, the information it contains has been shown to be incomplete and unreliable. The compliance rate is estimated at only 50 per cent which effectively renders it useless.

The registry is not nearly ready for use, with only seven million of the 16.5 million guns in Canada registered. More than 300,000 owners of previously registered handguns still don't have a firearms licence.

Parliament now has before it Private Members' Bill C-391

Many here would say "who cares about Canada," but there is a lot to learn and a lot to teach others HERE about Canada's experience with gun control.

http://kingscorecord.canadaeast.com/friendsneighbours/article/822030

 

[ByAnyMeans]

"Many here would say "who cares about Canada," but there is a lot to learn and a lot to teach others HERE about Canada's experience with gun control."


I agree and thank you for posting this. I think it is very important for us in the U.S.. This allows us to point to a countries failures when attempting to use "gun control" in place of "criminal control".

 

[Zoogster]

Yes civil disobedience works when the punishment is not "no more guns".


Civil disobedience does not work for most firearm related things in the USA because most gun charges are felonies. Felonies prohibit ownership from then on. So civil disobedience on firearm related issues will usually result in a lifetime prohibition.
Once that person is a felon, even most gun owners will favor thier firearm ownership prohibition as demonstrated from polls on this forum.

So a gun owner who uses civil disobedience becomes a felon. Once a felon even the biggest supporters of gun rights no longer support the felon having firearms. If even strong supporters of firearm rights like on this forum still end up with a 60/40 in favor of banning felons, then what do you think the average citizen is going to think?
The result is all the government has to do with anyone that does not comply with a firearm law is charge them with a felony, and then the population will support thier lifetime prohibition anyways.
So thier non-compliance on technicalities involving firearms ceases to be important, and they can be jailed for the completely unrelated "felon in possession" charge if they even own firearms again, especially if they become politically active. So they can then forever be silenced by the government without ever having to address the issue they were against to begin with.

Consider California. They passed a mandatory registration of "assault weapons" before banning future sales entirely. Those who did not register become felons if found with unregistered "assault weapons".
So even if all of the owners united in civil disobedience, they could still be legally defeated and prohibited from ever owning a firearm in the future, and most firearm owners would support that, as shown through "felon" polls on this forum.

If a state bans open carry, and people decide to then march while open carrying as a form of civil disobedience, they can all be charged with crimes that prohibit them from ever owning a firearm again.
So they are defeated without those who defeated them ever needing to address the actual issue they were protesting.
If everyone decides to protest the SBR/SBS restrictions by having thier barrels 1 inch shorter, they all become felons when caught and the population then supports thier lifetime prohibition.
This makes firearms laws unique as one of the things least successfully challenged through civil disobedience.

Imagine if people lost the right to free speech for saying something that was outlawed? No 1st Amendment if charged with saying something outlawed. Now imagine even the strongest supporters of free speech and the First Amendment supported that.
That is the situation with firearm laws. No 2nd Amendment for someone charged with violating a firearm law, and even the majority of staunch gun rights activists will support that prohibition. Our own THR polls demonstrate this clearly.

 

[kanook]

"who cares about Canada,"

I CARE

 

[THE DARK KNIGHT]

Who said civil disobedience has to involve guns?

Wearing empty holsters at a demonstration, or millions of people carrying signs, shows the message just fine. No need to do anything illegal with a gun at all.

 

[rodregier]

From what I can infer, the bulk of the civil disobedience to Canadian firearm licensing and registration laws is passive/underground, not active/aboveground.

This is not surprising, as "visible" resistance is commision of an Indictable Offense, which is roughtly the equivalent of a Felony in US law. Most folks with a family and a job are reluctant to push civil disobediance to that level.

The quoted statistics on prior Canadian handgun registrations is somewhat misleading, as it is likely that as much as 30-50% of the claimed registrations are actually ghost, gone or non-existant firearms. Those artifacts are part of the non-published reasons behind the Federal move to re-register all prior registered firearms in Canada.

There is a Canadian organization practicing active, public civil disobediance to Canadian firearm registration and licensing laws - LUFA.

http://www.lufa.ca/

LUFA have encountered very strange reluctance by Canadian federal policing agencies to initiate arrests in their intentionally created test case circumstances, which would start the ball rolling for a court challenge. One possible interpretation is that the Canadian federal prosecution authorities are reluctant to contest a "pure" test case untainted by other unrelated-to-the-challenge charges.

A common LUFA challenge is to send a notice of a legal skeet shooting session using unregistered, unlicensed single-shot shotguns. An arrest under such circumstances would be untained by "irrelevant" issues such as "evil" firearm characteristics, unsafe storage, public endangerment or criminal threating with firearms, etc.

 

[Zoogster]

Who said civil disobedience has to involve guns?

Wearing empty holsters at a demonstration, or millions of people carrying signs, shows the message just fine. No need to do anything illegal with a gun at all.

That is not civil disobedience, that is political protesting. Civil disobedience by definition is a refusal to follow the law in a non violent manner as a form of protest.

Illegal assembly to protest in violation of ordinances and loitering laws for example is often involved. Marches down a street without a permit in violation of the law, often called a "riot" (even when the only violence is from the police) is civil disobedience.
Refusal of blacks to sit in the back of the bus as required by law, etc was civil disobedience. Or laws requiring blacks to use separate bathrooms, drinking fountains, or stay out of certain restaurants when broken intentionally as a form of protest was civil disobedience. When they went into that business, sat down, and refused to leave until the police were forced to arrest them for violating the law, that was civil disobedience.

The Whiskey Rebellion resulted from civil disobedience when many Americans, who turned the excess of thier crops into much easier to transport whiskey refused to pay an alcohol tax imposed by the government.
They were violating tax laws.

When Gandhi organized a refusal to pay the legally required British salt tax, and planned to march down to the ocean and obtain free salt from the salt water (which was illegal) it was civil disobedience.
All participants were violating tax laws which gave the British a legal monopoly on salt production and sales.
Must like the previous Tea Tax in the colonies that would form the United States.
They broke the law and did something non-violent that was illegal as a political form of protest.

Violation of tax laws is often a felony (just like it is in regards to the NFA tax stamp laws.)



Any similar action involving firearms would result in a felony charge. A felony charge would allow the government to then permanently forbid ownership of firearms with the support of the population.

Hence civil disobedience with firearms is not possible. A big portion of civil disobedience relies on public sympathizing with the perpetrators of such actions and supporting them in the future.
Yet with firearm laws breaking the law, being charged, and then breaking the law again, as is common in such civil disobedience would result in a long prison sentence supported by the very people they were trying to represent, other gun owners.

If someone protests a gun law with civil disobedience and they receive a felony, they then cannot legally own a firearm again anyways, and that is supported by most. So they lose all thier firearm rights for engaging in civil disobedience to gain slightly more firearm rights, and the segment of the population they were representing supports that result.

 

[LowEx]

Civil disobedience requires an intense commitment to what you believe is right, so much commitment you are willing to be arrested and tried in a court of law (and potentially convicted) in order to sway public opinion. Or even force the governmental / social apparatus in your area to grind to a halt until you are satisfied.

First of all, I'm not entirely sure that anything approximating that level of resistance is being displayed in Canada. It seems to be more along the lines of "Lack of Participation", which while seemingly effective in this case, is not nearly the same as civil disobedience.

Second of all, Zoogster brought up the poll and discussion in http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=479651and I too think the information contained therein has some degree of relevance as to the likelihood of success should RKBA ever be forced into a position where civil disobedience became necessary. That is to say, it would be disastrously ineffective. It would also be extremely ineffective because most Americans do not have the sense that the 2nd Amendment is a Right, as apposed to a privilege. If you doubt that, just consider the disparity of restrictions between the first and second amendments. Therefore, making a plea upon the general public to recognize that our rights are being restricted (which is what Civil Disobedience is designed for) is unlikely to succeed.

So instead of focusing on Civil Disobedience to solve our future woes, I suggest concentrating on friendly education and familiarization with everyone you can. If you want the general public to actually get up and DO something, you have to start by making them care enough. This includes your Gun Buddies! Just because someone owns a firearm does not mean they would not casually cast it away should a majority of Congresscritters tell them to.

 

[Owen Sparks]

There is a really large potential for civil disobedience brewing in the US over the 2010 census. According to the Constitution, it is only supposed to be a head count and there is a growing movement of conservatives and libertarians who vow to refuse to answer any other questions except for how many live in their household. This is a far cry from a massive open carry protest but it is a start. It will be very difficult for the government to crack down on a million people who refuse to answer the census because they have the Constitution on their side. It would also be hard to get a jury conviction and even if they could, jailing a million people who refuse to pay a fine is impossible with the current prison overcrowding. This has potential to incite other acts of civil disobedience in cases where the government is violating Constitutional law such as in prohibiting the right to keep and bear arms.

 

[damien]

I'm not advocating the breaking of any law.

Let me be the first to advocate the breaking of certain laws since nobody else has.

 

[Autopistola]

Refusing to answer census questions does not seem to be civil disobedience to me... they just opted out, right?

Now the farmers that planted hemp seeds on the front lawn of the DEA, now that's civil disobedience!

 

[Kimber45acp]

Now the farmers that planted hemp seeds on the front lawn of the DEA, now that's civil disobedience!

Amen. I'll add to that dropping homemade drop in auto sears on the front lawns of BATFE agents

While it is true that these Canadians who refuse to register their firearms are not under the same threat of malicious and heavy handed prosecution that we are if we disobey BATFE, I think it bears noting that the only reason they are not under such threat is because so many of them are doing it! I've watched the Canadian registration laws play out over the last decade and the vicious threats by the Canadian government were very real in the beginning. There were even some raids initially, some really nasy and heavy handed raids. Are Canadians less captive by fear than Americans? I wonder. Where is the actual home of the brave?

 

[Owen Sparks]

The next gun related case to go before the Supreme Court will decide if the 2A applies to the city of Chicago. If they decide it does, that will mean that all local laws prohibiting the bearing of arms are unconstitutional. That will be interesting.