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I'm not sure who this Frank Reid is but what an idiot...Just heard an interview with him on CFRA and he said all guns within any city in Ontario should be locked up at a central location and we should visit it if we want to use our guns. What an ar$e! I just can't believe it was printed in a paper!
[i]Frank Reid says the idea came to him several years ago, back when he was a regional councillor. Perhaps it was the year he ran for regional chair, in 1991, when he was spending a lot of time looking for campaign planks and thinking about how to solve the problems of a large city.
Twenty-one years. The idea just might be kicking around that long. It feels that way.
Reid still thinks he has a winner. An answer to a pressing societal problem that is so simple, so obvious, it is the veritable “solution lurking right under our noses.”
Some years ago, Reid decided it was time to jot down what he was thinking, this grand idea. He would organize his thoughts and put them into words, to see if there was a hidden flaw also lurking somewhere under the nose.
“No more fire arms in our cities!” he wrote.
He stopped and looked at what he had just written. Yes, that was it exactly. Rather succinct, in fact. He continued:
“I see no reason for residents of our cities to have firearms of any type in their homes. This applies to all residents — law-abiding gun owners and those who have them in their possession for criminal intent. Take away firearms in our cities and the safety of all will improve and the cost to taxpayers will be a fraction of the cost of adding extra police officers to gangs and gun units.
“At this time in Ontario, it is illegal to discharge a firearm in urban areas,” he wrote quickly, warming to his argument. “Conversely, in most rural areas, the use of guns, rifles and pistols is permitted. These laws are regulated under provincial statutes that give local municipalities, normally via police service boards, the right to regulate, through bylaws, areas within municipalities where the discharge of firearms is allowed or not.
“So it is recommended, through amendments to federal and provincial statutes, that local municipalities be given the expanded rights to deem that the possession of firearms of any type in urban areas is also illegal.”
Reid stopped writing, looked at what was on the sheet of paper in front of him, read it, read it through again, until a contented feeling came over him, an almost glow.
He had been right. It was that simple.
“What makes it all work is that it’s a municipal bylaw,” says Reid, talking to me about his idea and having difficulty containing his excitement. “That’s the trick. By making gun control a municipal responsibility you solve all sorts of problems.
“Police costs, court time, revolving-door justice, budget overruns. I mean ALL OF IT JUST GOES AWAY!”
Under Reid’s plan, registered gun owners would not have their firearms confiscated but would need to store them in a secure warehouse. They would then sign out the guns when they needed them.
The penalties for breaking the bylaw would be severe. Reid imagines a series of bylaws with real teeth — forfeiture of property, hefty fines, incarceration for repeat offenders.
As for the civil liberty argument that law-abiding gun owners would be getting picked on, Reid says:
“Come on, there is no need to have guns in the city. NO REASON!”
Anyway, after hearing Reid’s near-evangelical entreaties, I contacted the head of the Ottawa Police Services Board to see what he thought of the idea.
“I do not know if in a democratic state we want bylaw officers to have the right to come into our houses and check under our pillows,” says Coun. Eli El-Chantiry.
The councillor goes on to say handguns are prohibited anyway. You can’t march into a store and buy a handgun, and that’s what creates most of the gun crime in the city.
Only police, military and a small number of registered gun owners — shooters, collectors and the like — are allowed to own them. Reid’s idea will simply penalize a small group of law-abiding citizens.
“Frank has been in touch with me and the mayor about this idea,” says El-Chantiry. “Like many ideas, it is well-intentioned. But whether that makes for a good plan — that’s always decided in the details.”
There is a meeting being planned for the three men to discuss a gun-free city, “In the near future,” says El-Chantiry.[/i]
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. I'm not a fan of everything OFAH does....specifically their prior support of the Atlantic Salmon program but it's pretty obvious we need some kind of lobby group to protect anglers and hunters from genius' with too much time on their hands like this guy. 