Anti-gun voices often decry things like preemption because they say it’s wrong for an overall authority to prevent localities from finding their own solutions to violence in their communities. They take this position because traditionally, Republicans favor local control over federal or state control in most things. They hope this will be a wedge they can use to drive a split in between most in the GOP and the die-hard gun rights advocates.
It hasn’t worked, thankfully. At least not in this country.
However, gun-grabber and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently made some comments that illustrate just how bogus their arguments actually are. Trudeau’s comments framed by Cam’s:
Trudeau is warning provinces that resistance is futile, issuing a vague promise to use “other tools” to empower cities to ban handguns if their provincial governments object.
The federal government’s preference is to hand some powers over firearms to the provinces, which would in turn allow for municipal regulation, Trudeau said.
“In some situations, we may have a province that is unwilling to do that despite the willingness of a city or cities to do that,” he said. “At which point, I have been assured, there are other tools we can use that wouldn’t be as ideal, because it would involve disagreements with the provinces at a time where we want to be collaborative.”
Trudeau sounds an awful lot like Virginia governor Ralph Northam and the state’s attorney general, both of whom have warned of consequences for counties and towns that don’t enforce any new gun control laws approved in the upcoming legislative session. What is it with blackface-wearing politicians and their love of gun control?
Cam is, of course, right. Trudeau and Northam sound an awful lot alike. However, that’s a discussion for another day.
Instead, I want to focus on the reference to “tools we can use” that Trudeau makes. You see, this is a big problem for me despite not being Canadian.
You see, I can articulate why preemption is a good idea quite well. I can point out that without it, states can become an unnavigable mess of gun control rules that no one can keep up with, thus turning a law-abiding citizen a criminal the next town over. Preemption is a law that protects law-abiding citizens from becoming criminals simply due to crossing the wrong line.
While the same challenges exist when traveling from one state to another, states’ laws are easier to track and keep up with, so while it’s a mess, it’s not as big of a mess.
Yet Trudeau’s threat is nothing more than an effort to bludgeon provinces in Canada into accepting gun control despite the people of those provinces disagreeing with it. He wants to use these “tools” as a club with which to beat the provinces into submission.
While anti-gunners decry preemption in the United States, many look at Trudeau’s comments wistfully. They want that kind of power here in the U.S.
That’s because they don’t give a damn about local or regional control. They only want to see more gun control on the books and they don’t really care how they get it.
They decry preemption but fail to see how state laws mandating storage requirements could potentially impact rural residents or how an AR-15 is actually a useful tool to combat predators like coyotes before banning them. They simply don’t like guns and don’t really care about the role they play in the world.
Their opposition to preemption, much like Trudeau’s, isn’t that they crave local control in general. It’s that they crave any kind of control that would expand gun control in general and they’re not above beating the opposition into submission if they can.
