I don’t read much of AR15.com–mostly just when I see hits coming in on Boomershoot.org from it.  Today this link was posted on an public folder at work.  Some of the AR-15.com crowd claim it’s the funniest post ever.  It could be–it’s very good.  But you probably have to be a moderately well trained gun person to get the totality of the humor.

Aside from the humor there are some important lessons to be learned from the pictures and the comments.  I’ll leave those lessons unstated so that it is less likely inappropriate people learn them.

The Canadian Shooting Sports Association invited Glen Caroline, director of the NRA’s grassroots division, to be a keynote speaker and is give a seminar. Wendy Cukier (I wrote about her before) and other anti-freedom advocates are all bent out of shape about it. They apparently have a problem with freedom of association and freedom of speech as well as freedom to keep and bear arms.  From The Star:

U.S. gun lobbyist here to `counsel’

Canadian shooting group enlists NRA Official denies interfering with election

Nice.  The paper doesn’t say the NRA is interfering in the election–they just plant that thought by saying the Canadian shooting group denies it.  Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and Mother Therese would have denied being mass murderers too.

Dec. 3, 2005. 01:00 AM

BETSY POWELL
CRIME REPORTER

A crime reporter!  How appropriate for a political story.

…

But Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, said she’s astonished by the blatancy of the NRA’s involvement because the group’s influence in jurisdictions outside the United States, while well known to people who monitor gun control issues, is not as familiar to the public at large.

“I don’t think the average Canadian understands how powerful the gun lobby is,” in opposing attempts to block tightening of gun control legislation and bans on handgun sales, the Ryerson professor said.

“It is ironic because it’s three days before the anniversary of the Montreal massacre, it’s in Toronto where most people are currently preoccupied with trying to prevent gun violence.”

The NRA has a well-established tradition of “interfering” in other countries, Alun Howard, of the International Action Network on Small Arms, said yesterday by phone from London, England. “We’ve seen them working in Central America … their arguments have appeared in England and Australia, so it’s certainly a worrying trend that the NRA has gone global.”

Most recently, the NRA’s influence was credited — or blamed, depending on your viewpoint — with influencing the outcome of Brazil’s national referendum in October on a proposal to ban the sale of guns.

In a country with one of the world’s highest firearm murder rates, the proposal was soundly rejected.

NRA public affairs director Andrew Arulanandam said yesterday that the organization is only too happy to provide “counsel” to organizations in other countries to help ensure that “gun rights” prevail around the world, adding “we’re really heartened with what happened in Brazil.”

The NRA was approached because members belonging to the association share its underlying mantra: that gun control laws don’t work, criminals don’t obey the law, and the only people affected by gun control are law-abiding citizens, Whitmore said.

I just “love” that a “crime reporter” wrote the story, not a political reporter.  And that the reporter describes as a mantra (mystic incantation) the verifiable fact “gun control laws don’t work, criminals don’t obey the law, and the only people affected by gun control are law-abiding citizens.”

After we are done in Iraq we need to liberate Canada from the bigots like this ‘reporter’.

I have often used the analogy in personal conversation, teaching self-defense classes, and sometimes alluded to it on this blog (here, here, here, and here).  But Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (Ret.) spells it out better on this page than anyone else I have seen.

Thanks to someone at work for pointing this page out to me.

Stunning photo:

And high praise:

Still on guard

Gun-control advocate keeps up the fight 16 years after Montreal massacre

TORONTO — Wendy Cukier didn’t stand by and weep for the 14 young women who were murdered by a lone gunman on Dec. 6, 1989, in Montreal.

Instead, she formulated a plan to eradicate the use of illegal firearms, and has been working tirelessly towards that goal ever since.

The Ryerson professor, and founder and president of the Coalition for Gun Control, was lauded for her initiative 14 years ago when she was one of 10 winners at the Sun Media’s annual Women on the Move celebration in Toronto.

Today, Cukier is still a prof at Ryerson, as well as an associate dean of its business school, which is the largest business undergraduate school in Canada.

And she’s still involved in gun-control issues.

Cukier, mother to a 17-year-old daughter, says there’s still a lot of work to do in light of all the gunplay Toronto is witnessing.

“It’s important to continue the fight and ensure gun legislations that have been implemented are properly enforced, and not watered down,” says Cukier.

“It’s clear you can strengthen the laws in your own country, but if you are next to a country with as many guns as people and no effective gun control, you remain vulnerable,” she adds.

Currently, the dynamic activist is doing a lot of work at the United Nations level trying to establish international standards.

“Canada is often recognized as a model for other countries – they think we’ve done a good job. Amnesty International recognizes Canada’s gun laws as a model for preventing violence against women with guns,” says Cukier.

And even though there has been an increase in homicides by guns in Toronto this year, the death and injury rate by guns in Canada is at the lowest it’s ever been.

“Gang-related murders are definitely a problem and shows there is more work to do. Yet murders of women with guns is down 75%,” she adds.

“The big thing is, even though it’s been 16 years since the Montreal massacre, we’re still having to fight very hard to preserve the gains we’ve won,” says the author of The Global Gun Epidemic: From Saturday Night Specials to AK-47s.

“The gun lobby is fighting every step of the way and my message is for people … to speak out. Victims of violence and police officers are trying to get the attention of our politicians, but if the public doesn’t get engaged in the solution, then they become part of the problem.”

No mention of what really is important–the overall death and injury rate in Canada since they implement their “model” gun control.  Further questions include “How many people were injured or killed because they didn’t have the appropriate tool to defend themselves?”  And “Would the nearly two billion dollars spent on the failed gun registry have been better spent on more police officers, equipment, and prisons?”

And finally, “Has this paper ever given a pro-freedom advocate high praise similar to what they give this anti-freedom advocate?”