Here in the United States, we tend to use the word “liberal” with a lower case “l” because there’s no formal group. It’s really just an informal collection of people with similar beliefs. In Canada, though, the LIberals are a political party
Normally, this distinction is largely irrelevant for discussion purposes. They’re generally close enough to use the terms synonymously.
However, that might not be fair. Canada’s Liberals are different than American liberals.
After all, can you imagine our brand of “liberal” trying to decriminalize firearm offenses?
The Liberal’s move to decriminalize numerous firearms laws show they are only interested in punishing legal gun owners, says the executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
“It must seem obvious to anyone that the Liberal’s real agenda is to persecute and punish lawful firearms owners — by definition, the people that don’t break the law. Every time a new Liberal gun control measure is announced, it is directed at the law-abiding while the punishments for real criminals are lessened,” Tony Bernardo told the Western Standard.
The Liberal government is moving again to eliminate the mandatory minimum prison (MMPs) times handed to people convicted of some gun crimes.
A proposed Liberal bill would affect 14 Criminal Code sections and six drug-related offences.
The gun offences that would see MMPs dropped include possessing a restricted firearm with ammunition, weapons trafficking, discharging a firearm while committing an offence, reckless discharge of a firearm, and extortion and robbery with a firearm.
Yeah, this looks weird to American eyes. I mean, the liberal group is trying to decriminalize firearm offenses and the gun-rights group is opposing that measure.
In fairness, I think I see what the Canadian Shooting Sports Association opposes the measure. After all, law-abiding Canadians have followed the law and been treated like criminals, meanwhile, the Liberals want to give the criminals a free pass. It really is rather insane from that perspective.
And the Liberals–note the capital letter–aren’t doing this from a pro-gun standpoint, either. This is criminal justice reform, which is very similar to the bail reform efforts we’ve seen here in the United States. It really is about minimizing punishment for criminals.
Yet, I don’t see any of the left standing up and demanding an end to mandatory minimums for firearm-related offenses. It’s just not going to happen and I think we all know it.
If it did, though, where would the Second Amendment community stand? Would we support it or would we be like our Canadian brethren?
I know what I’d like to see happen, but that doesn’t mean we’d see it.
Then again, it’s not like it matters. The odds of that happening are about as great as my cat building a rocket and challenging Elon Musk in the corporate space race.
She’s a smart cat, but that just ain’t happening.
Either way, it’s interesting to watch and ponder. In the end, Canada is Canada and what they do doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me in the grand scheme of things. The fact that they don’t believe gun rights are an actual thing, for example, is problematic as hell, but at the end of the day, I’m not going to lose sleep about Canadian gun control.
What I do pay attention to, though, is how ideas from that side of the border might just trickle south a bit, then we end up having to deal with more insanity from the usual suspects.
This is one, though, I just don’t see becoming too much of an issue.
