I agree vis-a-vis Stein. But consider this line:

"It may be timely to observe that new laws are normally midwived by terrors such as these, and that, in general, we have to live with those laws long after the terrors are dispersed and forgotten."

Will you social democrats be remembering this logic when a public shooting like Ecole Polytechnic occurs and histrionics start being raised in the name of gun control?

You are a bigot. You're so convinced of the rightness of social democracy that you have zero tolerance of anything that conservative (and likely libertarian since WRA is the first mainstream Canadian party with a significant libertarian contingent since the Liberal Party of Canada prior to Pearson). Because of your intolerance, you are personally are a threat to democracy. And so are the many others you like in Ontario. If don't have at least slight doubts about your world view _and_ you think everyone else should be governed by it, you have little respect for rational debate and fruitful democratic decision making.

Wildrose's popularity does not reflect concern over social programs being "raped" as no cuts have occurred. The extreme spending binge started in the late Klein years has continued apace. If Albertans wanted social programs saved the NDP would grow in popularity. With your level of moral certainty, the only rational reaction to Wildrose's popularity is to start being bigoted against Albertans (like so many Ontarians and Quebecois).

And that interests rates were high and oil cheap during the NEP doesn't show that the NEP didn't cause Alberta's economic crash or at least make it much, much worse. Nationalization because of the inefficiencies inherent in state control prevented a great deal of economic growth, causing businesses to close, and slowed any natural recovery. And that Canadian ownership increased does not prove success -- it tells us nothing about the living conditions of average Albertans. Moreover, to the extent that Canadian ownership was government ownership, it hurt Albertans. This is because the purpose of government ownership in the NEP was to transfer wealth back to Ontario and Quebec to buy votes. As Marc Lalonde stated in the 1980 election when Trudeau was bring in the NEP, "Screw the West, we'll take the rest."

The WRA is leading the Tories in Edmonton. The Tories are now third in Edmonton. See the Edmonton Journal story, "Wild rose surges past Tories".

1) Calling me a racist is libel. The reason your defamatory slur doesn't stick is that -- contrary to what you're assuming -- I'm not a conservative. I'm a liberal. What should tip you off that I'm not conservative is that conservatives, in addition to being culturally intolerant (which leads to their mild racism), are generally sycophantic with respect to police power. Arguments for gun freedom based on protecting civil rights are liberal. A conservative would argue that it's unfair to penalize lawful gun owners, not that guns are required for civil revolt.

It's also ironic that you accuse me of being racist and then immediately demean me by acting as though I'm outside the group conversing, "that Robert Seymour fellow". It's as though you're pointing to me standing far away from everyone else. Don't I deserve your respect? Don't all arguments in a liberal society deserve to be addressed? I guess when most people agree with you libel works better.

Further, stereotypical Westerners aren't racist... at all. The most prominent racism in English Canada right now is anti-Muslim bigotry. And it's strongest in Ontario where the media is participating in all sorts of moral scares regarding Muslims (e.g. honour killings) all in the name of women's rights. I frequently hear anti-Muslim sentiment from Ontarians. "Their way of life is a threat to women." You can't promote that type of intolerance of other people's values without untoward consequences developing.

2) Yes, those civil revolts dealt with are extreme situations -- that's the point. Guns are worthwhile for those extreme situations where other means of redress don't work.

I agree that police protect people justifiably most of the time. I'm not against the police, nor do I think they're bad people. I just think they're human like everyone else and they respond to the incentives of the power structure they're placed within.

3) I'm not assuming that police will violate civil rights in the absence of civilians shooting them. I'm assuming that within a society with liberal institutions and values, the ability of civilians to revolt -- which yes could mean civilians shooting police -- creates a disincentive for police to violate civil rights.

Civilian gun ownership is not commonplace in Africa at all. Guns are generally only possessed by states and ethnic armies. There are only two countries in all of the Middle East with higher gun ownership rates than Canada -- two (Yemen and Iraq). The reason firearm ownership in these two states doesn't seem to effect state corruption is that they've never developed stable, let alone liberal, institutions and liberty is not a social value. That is, civilians having guns doesn't matter if they don't care about freedom and the institutions don't already offer some stable safeguards for liberty.

4) I'm not about shooting the police. You're ignorance is frustrating. Please don't vote: http://www.jasonfbrennan.com/Brennan%20AJP%20fina...

Of course, I support civilians taking up arms against the state if all other means of change are spent. Any good liberal does. Look at our history. Individual liberty became an important Canadian value because of the Glorious Revolution in England. Responsible/democratic government came to Canada because of the Upper Canada Rebellion. The Metis were able to vote nearly 100 years before all other natives because of the Red River Rebellion. Civilian use of guns against the state have been essential in Canadian history to the defence of liberty -- even recently. Look at the Mohawk protecting their property rights at Oka. They succeeded.

I have a general intolerance of Central Canadians in political matters, but that doesn't make me a bigot. In fact, my intolerance stems from their bigotry. Bigotry here is defined as being obstinately convinced of one's own rightness. Easterners tend to display this trait in not being happy with simply implementing their values in their own jurisdiction. They think it must become federal policy and apply to all other regions because they _know_ their way is right and represents what it means to be Canadian. Think about David Miller's (mayor of Toronto) reaction to gun violence in his city. It wasn't enough to effectively ban handguns in Toronto. There had to be a national handgun ban.

I did not put words in her mouth. Her desire for the gun registry results from a desires to see less violence. The only way this can occur is if restricting civilian access to firearms through a registry reduces violence _and_ the concurrent increase in the disparity between civilian and police arms does not result in an increase in rights violations by the police. These two outcomes can only occur if people who put a uniform on in the morning are benevolent and those who do not are not.

My comments concern the balance of power between the police and civilians. They do not concern the military. This is because the military is almost never used against civilians. All your arrogant hand wave serves to achieve is to reveal your ignorance -- a complete inability to address the substance of my arguments in kind. Typical Easterner.

Ms. Provost makes the same false assumption that nearly every proponent of the gun registry does. She assumes that government is benevolent and that civilians are not. For she, in arguing for the registry, is arguing that the police can be trusted with their guns but civilians cannot.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

Human nature is not altered by undergoing some training and putting on a uniform. If you can't trust your neighbours with guns, you can't trust the police with them. And the police are not going to give up their guns. They need them to enforce the law. Even police in England have access to semi-automatic handguns and fully automatic machine guns if the situation requires it. Because you can't get rid of police guns, it is good that civilians have them (and that police don't know about them). This is because it creates a disincentive for the police abuse civil rights.

Look at Canada. Over the last 40 years, it's becoming increasingly harder for civilians to have guns and increasingly easy for the police to access weapons. We've gone from a situation where the police kept revolvers in holsters with large leather flaps that intentionally made them hard to access and civilians had access to rifles, shotguns, handguns, and machine guns without even a background check (although handguns and machine guns had to be registered) to one where the the police have easy access to semi-automatic pistols and tasers and employ SWAT teams and civilians need permits to own any gun, all guns have to be registered, machine guns are banned, and you need to permit to even transport a handgun. Is it any surprise that rights abuses like Robert Dziekański Tasering occur far more frequently and that many Canadians feel fear when they see the police driving behind them?

But all this has to be ignored because morally self-indulgent and arrogant Central Canadians -- who think guns are immoral -- have to impose their vision of Canada on the rest of us.

And, of course, this is to say nothing of the dangerous historical precedent of gun registration. The Weimar Republic instituted gun registration to prevent the growing criminal threat posed by the Nazis. When the Nazis came to power, they immediately used the lists to seize the guns of all Jewish citizens to prevent any possibility of resistence. That really happened in real life and cannot be ignored. Further, it is only through radical arrogance that we could maintain that a tyrannical government could never set up shop in our country and so we don't have to worry about the dangerous aspect of gun registration.

"Notwithstanding that, most civil servants I know are extremely grateful for their jobs and their pay, but are also motivated by a sense of duty to the public, believe it or not. And they even understand that restraint measures are sometimes necessary, even in the context of a Wall-street generated financial crisis."

Given that public sector employees have noble motives, shouldn't their pay reflect this? Isn't is right, morally speaking, to pay them the same as the non-profit sector? That's how things used to be in Canada prior to the Pearson-Trudeau junta.

And the crisis was generated by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, U.S. government controlled lenders.

If centrally directed wages, not exchange-generated wages, are just, why not centrally-direct all pay? What's the worse that could happen? Right Thwim?