Mark
What really scares me about the current arms control legislation is that none of it would have prevented the March 15 terror attacks.
The fact remains that Brendan Tarrant had no criminal convictions; he easily obtained a firearms licence and nobody knew what was coming – until it was too late.
Since our existing processes didn’t work, what would have? The only indication of what Brendan Tarrant was actually like inside, was his extremist views. How do you prevent or detect that?
Well, the options make pretty grim reading, unless you hold the extremist view that the government should have the right to spy on and control everything.
They are already thinking of mandatory reporting for doctors, but would even this have been enough to have stopped Tarrant? I don’t believe Tarrant was on serious medication and who spends $50 on a consultation to make small-talk about politics?
So, now we would have to allow government auditing of the online activity of everyone with a firearms licence. The cost of ‘privilege’, I guess. Or would we need hidden microphones at gun ranges as well?
There are two big problems here. The first is when the criteria for anything of concern in a licensee are politically determined; to the point where any criticism of anything, will have the armed offenders squad knocking on your door with a seizure order.
The second is when somebody goes nuts with a knife or a car. Then, suddenly, mandatory reporting is not limited to firearms licence holders. Everyone is fair game. You criticise the government, you’re toast.
Before you know it, we will be living in a spying police state that Stalin would have been proud of. As Baron Acton said: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”