We fought that battle a couple hundred years ago, and there was no way that Lord Cornwallis was going to beat Francis Marion and his irregular warfare in South Carolina. Marion bled them to the point of ineffectiveness, and the war for independence was essentially won.
Australia and Canada are still subjects of the Queen, so to speak, and their system still recognizes the supremacy of the centralized government rather than innate human rights, granted by God. That’s too bad. We see the effects of this in their gun laws.
Consider Australia:
A SOUTHERN Downs farmer has lost his fight to possess a handgun to kill the feral dogs he traps on his 604-hectare cattle property.
John James Shaxson, whose property west of Warwick borders Durikai Forest on the west, has been trapping feral dogs on his property since 2012 and trapping feral pigs since about 2000.
He grazes and breeds between 50 and 115 cattle depending on conditions on his property which he says is hilly and rough with an actual surface area more like 2000 hectares.
Mr Shaxson told the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal that he needed a handgun because he used a quad bike to get to inaccessible areas where he set traps and already had lots of equipment to carry.
He told the tribunal his rifle would catch on foliage walking through to the traps and it was dangerous shooting dogs with it because a bullet might ricochet off a steel trap.
QCAT member Michelle Howard said Mr Shaxson also wanted the 22 magnum handgun to have better aim shooting feral pigs he caught in mesh cages.
She said he admitted he had shot only six dogs in total after they were caught in the steel traps but was less forthcoming on pigs – saying he sometimes caught six to eight at a time and another time just two.
“He considered it was a requirement for the dogs, but for the pigs, it would be a bonus,” she said.
“Although a handgun may be desirable from his perspective to euthanise feral dogs in particular, I am satisfied that the other weapons licences and weapons he already holds and uses are appropriate to meet his occupational requirements.”
She’s satisfied, the report tell us. She’s satisfied, regardless of the state of the man who needed the gun. Now consider Canada:
Applications to carry handguns have skyrocketed in B.C. and Alberta in the past three years – likely driven by demand among people who work in the bush and want portable protection against wildlife.
Rates have held steady in the rest of Canada, according to RCMP figures show released in response to an access-to-information request.
We don’t know how many of these applications were approved because the RCMP won’t tell us.
We also don’t know how many were for concealed-carry permits for people facing “criminal threats” and how many are for openly carrying handguns in wilderness areas to defend against wildlife. RCMP Staff. Sgt. Julie Gagnon refused to break out the two categories.
The RCMP’s access-to-information office also refused to make that distinction, citing a section of the federal Access to Information Act exempting “information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to threaten the safety of individuals.”
What we do know is that more people are submitting these applications for “authorizations to carry” : The number of applications across the country rose from 386 to 564 between 2011 and 2013.
In that time period, they more than doubled in B.C.; in Alberta, they more than doubled from 2011 to 2012.
People in the territories submit far more application rates than the rest of Canada. The Yukon had 33 applications in 2013 – almost one for every 1,000 residents – while the Northwest Territories had 29. By contrast, Quebec’s 64 applications make for fewer than one for every 100,000 residents.
The number of applications and the authorizations issued are about the same, says Ontario’s chief firearms officer, OPP Supt. Chris Wyatt.
” If somebody applies for an ATC and it’s really deficient – they’re not a prospector, they don’t have a wilderness occupation, they just want it when they go camping –we just say ‘You don’t qualify,’ and they don’t pursue their application.”
We just say, “you don’t qualify.” They just seem to give up at that point. As for those of us who fought a war over this several hundred years ago, take note that no permission is necessary when God is the author of our rights. And we fought a war over this once – we can do it again.
