Such a sentiment would be welcome any time, craig. Reference to effectiveness of no side games as fact comes from experience in helping to make successful public policy. Once a representative group gets together to find solutions it intuitively recognizes within minutes if anyone is in it for themselves.
Our provincial government, failing to meet its environmental and forestry goals, asked my association, acclaimed world-wide with knowing how to make things happen, to provide solutions. We did within a month, and the Province unprecedently turned over its private lands responsibilities to the association. Nearly 70 per cent of our forests are owned privately, the rest large industrial and Crown.
Responsible organizations don't manufacture "truths" for public approval or consent nor do they need majorities to convince publics that ideas and innovation for better management are more important than political manipulation of public affairs.I sent the following to a publication's letters column on the issue today, cribbing from what I've already said here:
"Good to see my hunting and fishing buddy Roger Porter (and worlds greatest dentist for decades) weighing in on the contradictions of the assault-rifle ban. Weve never agreed on anything but hes right as far as he goes.
Bans cannot prevent individual or mass killings by firearms or anything else. This ban will stick because emotion drives politics, as everything else. Assault rifles are an affectation. Theres no pulse in the gun community to fight the ban as it did with the long-gun registry. It will pick its battles to protect what it had before the Montreal massacre.
We may dig in the weeds, use all the old words engraved in gold of rights, liberty and democracy. Within the last 20 years weve seen their value after 9/11 and Montreal and Nova Scotia mass killings: the draconian Patriot Act attack on freedoms in the US and ever-tightening gun control in Canada.
The AR bans lack of clarity, purpose and contradictions is intended, Standard Operating Procedure for our federations famed accommodation of muddling through on complicated rights issues. If the AR lobby wants to keep its guns,
it will have to want them more than those who oppose them.
I see no sign of it among national shooting sports associations, gun clubs, gun shops or among my hunting buddies."
