Stephen Harper's right.
I am tired of being "treated like a criminal."
For me, it all started when I was 16.
I was photographed. My personal details were recorded. And I was forced to carry around a card identifying me. Any police officer could ask to see it. And every five years, I have been forced to present myself before a civil servant so that I can be renewed.
I don't know why the Conservatives are not pushing hard to abolish driver's licences. They are an intrusion on our privacy.
They cost money.
There is even a two-year probationary period, now, with severe restrictions.
And a driver's licence doesn't stop criminals from driving. Indeed, it gives many a licence to commit criminal acts.
Just drive around town on any day. The number of people driving in excess of the speed limit is astounding. (The number driving well in excess of the speed limit is even more astounding!)
It is time the federal government takes a stand. It is time that they ensure that the people of the regions of this country are no longer treated as criminals. It is time that they abolished licences!
Not just drivers' licences, all licences. Take pity on the family pet. Not only do they need to be licensed but they have to display that licence dangling from the chain around their neck.
Everywhere they go, people know, people know.
The utter humiliation.
Or, consider anyone that wants to get married. You need a licence for that, too. Just because you want to spend your life with someone else, you are "treated like a criminal." The government has their eye on you!
OK, that is hyperbole. But what is the deal with the long-gun registry?
Why did our Prime Minister go out of his way to make the following statements:
"After 15 years, opposition to the long-gun registry is stronger in this country than it has ever been. With the vote tonight, its abolition is closer than it has ever been. The people of the regions of this country are never going to accept being treated like criminals and we will continue our efforts until this registry is finally abolished."
The italics are mine because I am simply don't understand why licensing someone to own a gun is different. Why is it "being treated like criminals?" There are lots of things that we require people to get licences for -- everything from running a business to catching fish. Why is this one singled out as treating the people of this country as criminals?
Is it because there is a test involved? Seems to me there is fairly onerous testing involved in getting a driver's licence.
Because people have to take a course to demonstrate competence?
Again, Driver's Ed is the best way to learn to drive a car.
Because there is a waiting period?
Our graded driver's licensing system creates a two-year probationary period and all sorts of mandatory waiting times. Plus the whole thing costs a lot.
Or is it simply that the registry is new? That for a hundred years or so, people were allowed to carry and use guns without any restrictions and putting restrictions in -- well, that just seems wrong?
I don't own a gun and probably never will.
I do know a lot of people that do. And while many of them have groused about the inconvenience of the whole registry system, no one has told me that the whole thing is untenable.
A joke, maybe, but not something that they couldn't handle.
That, of course, could be a legitimate reason for getting rid of the registry -- so many people are simply not registering their long guns that the system is fatally flawed.
However, in talking with police officers, social workers, and other individuals involved in incidences of violence, they say that the long-gun registry is helping.
It is making their jobs a little easier. It is making our peace officers a little safer, although that is a hard thing to measure because there is no way to measure how often someone isn't being shot. Just how often they are.
Still, if law-enforcement officials tell me that it is working, I tend to believe them. I tend to think that it is a reason for keeping the registry. But there are many good, legitimate reasons for scrapping the registry as well.
For example, some would argue that the cost is too high -- although that would sound a little hollow coming from our prime minister, considering that he spent well over a billion dollars on a three-day party with world leaders at the G8 and G20.
However, that the registry results in people being "treated like criminals" is just not one of those reasons.
It is politics.
Wedge politics, no less.
And absurd.
