Reply #79: here's a dime

[iverglas]

go call someone whose statements you object to.

IN THIS FORUM, your invocation of "sensible" blahblahblah is an assault on STRAW ADVERSARIES.

Your demand that someone else explain / defend
- whatever the various people / organizations who have used such terminology mean by it
- however they mean it to apply in practice
is empty noise.

Hey, we should ask Nabeshin (once again feigning ignorance, just two months ago) what my own position on the matter is:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=162434&mesg_id=162655

"I go with the basic principles stated by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Oakes, as since refined and clarified." ... "There are similar principles of constitutional scrutiny in your system, as developed by your courts."

Oh, hell, I'll copy out the Oakes stuff for you:

Section 1 of the Constitution Act, 1984 (Canada), provides:

Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms
Rights and freedoms in Canada

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The summary of Oakes goes like this:

Two central criteria must be satisfied to establish that a limit is reasonable and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

First, the objective to be served by the measures limiting a Charter right must be sufficiently important to warrant overriding a constitutionally protected right or freedom. The standard must be high to ensure that trivial objectives or those discordant with the principles of a free and democratic society do not gain protection. At a minimum, an objective must relate to societal concerns which are pressing and substantial in a free and democratic society before it can be characterized as sufficiently important.

Second, the party invoking s. 1 must show the means to be reasonable and demonstrably justified. This involves a form of proportionality test involving three important components.

1. The measures must be fair and not arbitrary, carefully designed to achieve the objective in question and rationally connected to that objective.

2. The means should impair the right in question as little as possible.

3. There must be a proportion­ality between the effects of the limiting measure and the objective ‑‑ the more severe the deleterious effects of a measure, the more important the objective must be.


And then it's always wise to keep these wise words in mind:

http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/ConstitutionalChallenge.html

On February 21-22, 2000 the Supreme Court of Canada heard a provincial constitutional challenge against Canada’s new gun control legislation. The challenge was initiated by the Alberta government, joined by the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the territories.

... While the Alberta Government claims that there is no "proof" that gun control works, the standard of "proof" it is demanding goes far beyond what is required for justice reforms. Dr. Neil Boyd, Criminology professor at Simon Fraser University argued that the detailed evaluation of the 1977 legislation provides stronger evidence of the effectiveness of gun control than is available to support on most other reforms. Dr. Martin Killias, criminologist, University of Lausanne, has suggested that demands for conclusive "proof" are often a strategy for delay.

http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2000/2000scc31/2000scc31.html
(The issue was actually the constitutionality of the Firearms Act as a valid exercise of federal powers vs. an entrenchment on provincial powers, but the Court's comments are relevant to your questions.)

Held: The appeal should be dismissed. The impugned provisions of the Firearms Act are constitutional.

The Firearms Act constitutes a valid exercise of Parliament’s jurisdiction over criminal law. The Act in “pith and substance” is directed to enhancing public safety by controlling access to firearms. Its purpose is to deter the misuse of firearms, control those given access to guns, and control specific types of weapons. It is aimed at a number of “mischiefs”, including the illegal trade in guns, both within Canada and across the border with the United States, and the link between guns and violent crime, suicide, and accidental deaths. The purpose of the Firearms Act conforms with the historical public safety focus of all gun control laws. The changes introduced by the Act represent a limited expansion of the pre-existing gun control legislation. The effects of the Act also suggest that its essence is the promotion of public safety. The criteria for acquiring a licence are concerned with safety. Criminal record checks and background investigations are designed to keep guns out of the hands of those incapable of using them safely. Safety courses ensure that gun owners are qualified.

The Firearms Act possesses all three criteria required for a criminal law. Gun control has traditionally been considered valid criminal law because guns are dangerous and pose a risk to public safety. The regulation of guns as dangerous products is a valid purpose within the criminal law power. That purpose is connected to prohibitions backed by penalties.

The registration provisions cannot be severed from the rest of the Act. The licensing provisions require everyone who possesses a gun to be licensed; the registration provisions require all guns to be registered. These portions of the Firearms Act are both tightly linked to Parliament’s goal of promoting safety by reducing the misuse of any and all firearms. Both portions are integral and necessary to the operation of the scheme.

The problems associated with the misuse of firearms are firmly grounded in morality. However, even if gun control did not involve morality, it could still fall under the federal criminal law power. Parliament can use the criminal law to prohibit activities which have little relation to public morality.

I'm sure you're concerned about that reference to morality, so this will help you; "morality" refers to the "wrongness" of the acts that most criminal laws are directed to:

Yet another argument is that the ownership of guns is not criminal law because it is not immoral to own an ordinary firearm. There are two difficulties with this argument. The first is that while the ownership of ordinary firearms is not in itself regarded by most Canadians as immoral, the problems associated with the misuse of firearms are firmly grounded in morality. Firearms may be misused to take human life and to assist in other immoral acts, like theft and terrorism. Preventing such misuse can be seen as an attempt to curb immoral acts. Viewed thus, gun control is directed at a moral evil.

If you'd like a complete course on your own constitutional law, you might have to register and pay tuition fees somewhere.


It appears to me that a policy is judged “appropriate” (to use a neutral term) if it would meet the approval of someone who, like you, would like to live in a world without guns, but realizes that that is politically, culturally, and practically absurd.

Ya think? Ya don't think you're either making a claim based on actual ignorance of what *I* say on the point, or pretending to be ignorant of what *I* say on the point so you can make a false claim?

I have no clue what someone else thinks is "appropriate". What is "appropriate" TO ME, when it comes to legislation, is, in cases of this nature, that it not infringe constitutional guarantees as properly interpreted. I'm fortunate that I'm in broad agreement with how my Supreme Court interprets the guarantees in my constitution, most of the time these days. Your Supreme Court, much of the time, sucks, and your constitution itself has problems mine doesn't have; so if I lived where you live, I'd be making basically the same arguments, but without "authoritative" opinion to back them up.

I do know that my statement that I would like to live in a world without firearms ... much the way I would like to live in a world without pigeons ... has precisely fuck all to do with my own positions on firearms policy. Unless you have some evidence or argument to the contrary, and specifically some reason to claim that everything I have said in the past about the tests for constitutionality where I'm at and my overall support for them is false, you could stop trying to portray me and my words as what you know, or have no excuse for not knowing, I and they are not.