I Guess!

It's possible that the police didn't have any choice, but, if they did, this is a good example of their not knowing what their job is. Their job is to enforce the laws, not to assign penalties. Telling Mr. Fiorito that he had to register his shotgun in the next two weeks or they would then confiscate it is enforcing the law. Confiscating it now is simply assigning penalties. The object of laws is to get people to obey them. You penalize people only when they've refused to obey them, not when they've inadvertently failed to.

Yep! This guy has a moral dilemma. Lefties hate cops but despite his instinctive support of things lefty....his ox got gored....

FOI request:

Q: How many criminal offenses were committed with magazines properly blocked to 5/10 rounds for long guns/handguns versus offenses with full capacity magazines?

A: We don't know.

Q: How many criminal offenses were committed by the persons licensed to possess prohibited, restricted and non-restricted firearms versus persons not licensed?

A: We don't know.

Q: What was relative fatality of criminal offenses where a firearm was discharged with barrel length of 105 mm and shorter versus those with 106 mm or longer?

A: We don't know.

Entire volume of firearms laws and regulations in Canada has been put on the books and never monitored for compliance and effectiveness. The government signed under this admission of failure multiple times thru FOI responses, but still not ready to reverse this fiasco.

Bans don't work, but we are those idiots who insist on doing the same thing over and over.

Are cops really in the habit of asking someone to go get their gun for them??? It reminds me of the old Jack Handy Deep thought:

I think a good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver. And since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and hand it to him.

Let's see how he reacts to his wish for only police to have arms, now that the armed police have come to his home based on a government list and taken away his property.

I like Joe because he is passionate. He is ableeding-heart socialist of the highest order, but I enjoy him on the radio. For those that know him and his politics...this is a million different ironies rolled into one; the cool thing is is that Joe gets that. I thought it was cool that he chose to write about this...if anything, it's brave to admit that perhaps you were wrong about things.

talk about effective use of police resources. I feel safer already.

This is the type of crap opponents warned about, wasting limited police resources policing law abiding citizens. But to a leftie there is not such thing as limited resources just spend more.

Did you ever notice that the Liberals are all for some stupid law, till it gores-their-bull?

Where was this idiot over the last 10 years when we were bitching about this, Oh yah sipping Latte and sniveling about the Neo-con knuckle draggers.

What an ass

Joe Fiorito sounds bitter, yet he didn't cling to his gun.
Clearly Obama was wrong about the relationship between the two.

Cops.
Our first line of defence.
(at least they weren't out shaking down citizens at a speed trap)

Fiorito's lifelong 'convictions' came back to bite him.

I had little sympathy when I blogged about this last week:
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-2010-01-29-0003/

The cops acted like getting a warrant was a pain, when in fact it was their duty, part of their job. Sheesh.

Anyone who thinks the cops are their friends is naive.

PS: passion is overrated. The 9/11 hijackers were passionate too. You actually have to be passionate and correct.

You wrote exactly what I was thinking robins 111. He has only himself and his ilk to blame.

A bit like Danny Williams and Medicare - the rules are only for 'others' attitude - this writer is fine with the gument seizing people's guns - it is just wrong when it is HIS gun.

I'm surprised they didn't taser him. Good thing he wasn't holding his stapler in a threatening manner.

I'm surprised they didn't taser him. Good thing he wasn't holding his stapler in a threatening manner.

Holy molly, does that sound familiar. I knew a guy that grew up in Northern Ontario back in the day. He also got a 20 gauge single shot long gun to scare partridge. Got it at a barbershop that had some hunting and fishing gear along with old copies of Argosy and True Detective to read. No shampooing there.

I believe he even went and finally registered it, mainly because he was with the military at the time so you "follow orders" as it were. He went to work in the southern US of A for a while and put all his stuff in storage. He got a nastygram forwarded to him eventually that said he had to renew his registration but had to have a Hunter Safety course first. Not any course mind you but a Canadian one. 3000 miles is a long trek for a hunk of paper so to this day he is hiding out waiting for the cops to show up at his door.

I'm sure he is glad that he hasn't heard of Project Safe City either. Rumour has it that he may even have a filleting knife or two.

Any resemblance between this poster and the lad described is purely circumstantial.

*
c'mon kate... this was a legitimate police operation.

i mean, look at that picture... he's obviously
wearing gang colours.

*

I've never read a Toronto Star, don't know if it is even available out here. Hope not. Joe has just been mugged by reality, too bad really. No sympathy here. The cops are doing what many of them do best; being arseholes! Whose that bangin' on my door?

why is the much reviled MSM cited for a story that supports the right wing opposition to the 50 million dollar gun registry?

I agree: nobody wearing a beret should be allowed to have any sort of weapon.

You know, lately, Kate, your topics have been very depressing. Can folks in Saskatchewan form a Wildrose Party? Or do we have to call it the Tiger Lily Party? Branding is important, and I just think Wildrose has much more cachet.

As I commented at The Star, this is precisely what GR opponents said would come of the new tool; harassing the law-abiding in order to appear to be combating gun crime.

This, my friends, is why you need to be wary of the State: its laws are malleable. What is one's freedom today is his vice tomorrow.

Hopefully Fiorito has learned his lesson.

Anyone that can't see the disconnect between the lack of harm in owning a shot gun but advocating against the freedom to own a handgun has a dysfunctional CPU. Small consolation to see lefties eating their own.

Well at least thank heavens the Conservatives are in charge!!!

Posted by: curious_george at February 2, 2010 12:34 PM

It's not reviled george - it's the revulsion at the jackboot of the state harassing citizens.

The irony - that you missed - is that the Cons on their 'law and order' minimum sentencing laws and small drug offense crackdowns are going to metastasize law enforcement, creating massive new bureaucracies of sworn and unsworn cops.

And they need to keep busy, after all.

This is where the socon moralists crash head on to the libertarians. It's irreconcilable, and will do little for the quality of life in the nation.

Unless your a cop who needs new rims on his truck this spring.

Posted by: curious_george at February 2, 2010 12:34 PM

It's not reviled george - it's the revulsion at the jackboot of the state harassing citizens.

The irony - that you missed - is that the Cons on their 'law and order' minimum sentencing laws and small drug offense crackdowns are going to metastasize law enforcement, creating massive new bureaucracies of sworn and unsworn cops.

And they need to keep busy, after all.

This is where the socon moralists crash head on to the libertarians. It's irreconcilable, and will do little for the quality of life in the nation.

Unless your a cop who needs new rims on his truck this spring.

curses! 2x post! Ack!

Our first line of defense is not letting this kind of crazy law get created in the first place.

So, time to get ahead of things before we have a knife registry!

Think I'm kidding - look what's going on in Saskatchewan right now.

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/Police+chief+pushes+knife/2511825/story.html

___________________
Combating a proliferation of knife crimes would be easier if the province drafts legislation that edges Saskatchewan closer to a provincewide knife ban, says Saskatoon police Chief Clive Weighill.

In meetings with provincial Justice Ministry officials about new legislation, Weighill argued for a provision that would allow police to seize a knife -- or a sword or a machete -- even if it hasn't been used in a crime or there's no discernible intention to commit an offence.

______________________________

This is no joke. In Britain it is illegal to have a folding knife with a blade more than 3" long, or which is lockable (i.e. excludes Swiss Army knives, but includes nearly all other folder).

Do we want this in Canada???

What is being done in Toronto is an abuse of the Firearms licencing system by local police and the local CPFO. I suspect they are carrying out an agenda of legal harassment of law-abiding firearms owners with the full support of two malicious civilian disarmament political regimes - the Communist mayor Miller of TO and the gunowner-hating McGuinty. They probably think a police state door to door intimidation agenda will discourage lawful gun owners from continuing to engage in sport shooting. Meanwhile GTA is a gangster's shooting gallery which police and government are too cowardly to deal with in any practical manner. It's easier to goon over law abiding sports shooters and lie to the public about doing something about the "gun problem" Of course sport shooters were never part of the "gun problem" in the first place, but scapegoating them reveals the inherent moral and ethical cowardice of the politicized police function and their craven political masters.

This is part of a local police knock and talk of firearms owners who have failed to renew their firearms licence within the required date. There is word of some people who had their firearm stolen by police who were less than a week in expiry default.

It is standard procedure for the RCMP-CFC to mail a firearms licence holder a reminder that their licence is about to expire and the paper work to renew, months before expiry. If the owner has moved without telling them though, that mail may not get redirected and the owner may be unaware he must renew leaving him in 100% criminal liability.

It will soon come to light if GTA police have taken this federal statute enforcement task upon themselves or at the behest of the Provincial Firearms registrar via the Premier's office. There is potential liability in their actions for charges of abusive enforcement among other process breeches. I'm aware Stock Day had to slap Dolton and Miller back into constitutional civil deportment once when they wanted local bans, so perhaps this is their snotty little come back at Day's rebuke of their ultra-vires gun ban mania.

I note the cops misinformed this owner in his options after his licence expired...he didn't have to hand it over to police, he could have transfered it to a friend or relative who had a valid PAL until his licence was renewed. As I say, the police he dealt with were confrontational, bullying and abusive. That approach elicits more resistance than compliance. Perhaps this is why there are still millions of unregistered long guns.

Once again we see the dangers in these 'zero tolerance' laws and law enforcement that put 100% criminal liability on paperwork infractions. We also see the abuse potential laws that are inconsistent with charter section 7 opens us to - police state home invasions. We note that the Tories had bills that would eliminate this police abuse of lawful firearms licence owners by eliminating the liability of licence renewal (licenced for life) shot down by Liberal and NDP opposition. Obviously governments they will form are focused on using the abusive potential of badly written gun laws to maliciously harass lawful firearms owners.

I will let them regi mine when they DO pry it from my cold dead hands and not 1 second before.

All he had to do was renew his damn license before it expired. I don't agree with the law but that's the way it is. I renewed my permit precisely because I didn't want the cops beating on my door. I can't say I feel too sorry for Mr. Fiorito, it kinda looks good on him, after all this IS what the lefties wanted, right?

"All he had to do was renew his damn license before it expired. I don't agree with the law but that's the way it is."

Hardly the attitude of someone who values their civil liberty.

I don't care if the guy was a screaming Marxist-Nihilist, the fact remains we have a BAD law which subverts private property ownership to the state and allows for invasive police state enforcement and confiscation in absence of mens rea, due process, due compensation or due diligence - just like Cuba or China or some other despotic uncivil back water.

If you've no empathy with this guy don't whine when they turn the screws on you. We're all in this together, whether you own a gun or not. Everyone's rights and security have been compromised by this very civilly malicious gun law.

I heard a nasty rumor that many western Canadians, not being entirely trustful of federal government programs, only partially complied with the gun registry. Some farmers and hunters may have only registered one run-down POS rifle that they didn't really care about and then waited to see where the program was headed. I doubt that the gossip was true because it is unthinkable that low IQ, redneck hicks could be smarter than the educated class living in places like Toronto.

Luckily, I have a POL so I can borrow far superior rifles than the one I registered.

"I hate to write this.

I know who's going to respond and how. Let me be clear: I am not one of those "pry it out of my cold, dead hands" guys. No one in the city but a copper ought to have a handgun. And so on."

So, how do you feel about members of criminal street gangs possessing firearms,then?

The reality of life in the Big City is armed government sanctioned thugs, and armed non-government sanctioned thugs,though the latter don't have access to a data base of gun owners yet,so they won't come and seize them from you.

The police are NOT your first line of defense,they're usually janitors who clean up after the crime. You are your first line of defense,and what you choose to use as a defensive weapon is your choice.

Break and enter artists are very nervous about B&E's in areas where gun ownership is common,and rightly so,you can never tell when some lunatic homeowner is going to violate your Charter Rights while you're just trying to earn a living.

Toronto is getting safer and safer for home invaders and B&E'ers ever day.

As dmorris said - "No one in the city but a copper ought to have a handgun."

Well, funny thing there. People who aren't cops will and do - and they're the reason that people who aren't cops or criminals should be able to.

(For that matter, even if we assume a magical fairyland where literally only the cops have handguns... and even if we also wave away the criminals who took the long arms that he wants to remain legal and cut them down illegally... the criminal types will still have knives and sticks and fists, and the inclination to use them, and roam in packs now and then.

None of which is counterable by an ordinary person except through the use of firearms; and in this context that must mean the dreaded, evil, horrible handgun.)

Gang and organized crime are out of control, what do the cops do shake down law abiding citizens for their registered guns. I guess there is less of a chance getting harmed picking on us law abiding citizens?

Sigivald said:"the criminal types will still have knives and sticks and fists, and the inclination to use them,"
I disagree. They will always have guns. Guns are not very difficult to make. In that Northern Province of Pakistan, children in dirt floor street side workshops turn out counterfeit Walther's and Beretta's that only a expert collector can spot.
Safer streets come from an armed citizenry. Peer reviewed studies in North America and Europe provide ample evidence of this.
Joe is an idiot.

The Gun Registry has become a 2 billion dollar, make work project for liberals, a bunch of otherwise unemployable bureaucrats willing to sell our freedom down the river for the sake of their paychecks, pensions and saving the empires they've built.
They know Harper will cut the gun registry if given a majority in the next election and they're scared.
If the libs dipps and separtists don't form another CCCP out of Canada after the next election, then the rent seeker's jobs at the gun registry are history.
The bureaucrats are trying to make up some crime stats. quickly now that they have successfully made "inadequate paperwork" a crime they can sell as gun violence on "The News" this is no time to hold back.
During the next election the mouthpiece activist lefty journalism (MSM) will use these fake crime stats to bash Harper for getting rid of the gun registry while all the stats will clearly and fundamentally show an increase in gun related incidences.

Fire them all.

The cops are also checking addresses, so if you haven't notified the fine folks at the gun registry that you've moved they'll come a knockin.
I understand it's the Organized Crime Division in Toronto that's surfing the gun registry looking for criminals like the Toronto Star writer.

If they come to my home, they'll likely bring an armoured vehicle, or at least a swat team. That's because I've registered pretty well everything. I'm not going to put up a fight, but I guarantee, they won't find many guns inside. You've all heard of geo-caching? Well, I was into it long before it became popular.

Hey, maybe I can start a club. Sort of like the white bicycle principle. If you need it, help yourself, then leave it for the next guy.

never heard of Mr Fiorito before, but with THAT name, wearing a beret, and a 20 gauge, it screamed liberal:-))

looks good on the fool

Hey labren, agreed. BTW, What did Ice Cube say about the police?

Personally, I'm less likely to fret in the presence of an armed criminal than I am in the presence of a police officer. At least I know the crooks motives, and who's pulling his strings. IMO police are the willing enforcers of today's political correct tyranny. Look at the political causes the police forces collectively support, and you can plainly see they are not on the side of liberty (generally speaking). They are part of the government/security industry, and look at average Joes as "un-convicted criminals walking freely in public", or better yet, unclaimed purchase orders. Turn your purchase orders in, and collect your check; but, make sure it’s the right color of purchase order. We already have too many of certain colors, so make sure you bring the right ones in regardless of how low the value of that purchase order is. BRING THE RIGHT COLOR! Furthermore, if you do bring the wrong color of purchase order, regardless of the value, we will decline it and reprimand you for profiling.

Someone said it well a while back, they said "the only god a civil servant prays to is the pension god" or something like that.

One can only hope the writer of the article has learned something, but I won’t hold my breath.

if I don't renew my car registration, do the police show up and seize my car? Welcome to the police state comrades!

It's not just in canada that derkops despise rights&freedoms. NYC apparently.

Whenever the gun grabbers ask me how I could possibly oppose the "benign" registration of firearms while tolerating the registration of motor vehicles, I remind them that EVERY instance of gun registration has led to subsequent confiscation.

I know of no instances of law abiding drivers losing their cars to the government.

Now that we have a balanced Senate it looks like the gov't can make good on the promise to remove long guns from the registry. Patience me hearties!

Typical of the Tranna male... he gave up.

2 points:

a) Nobody who takes a salary from the Red Star has any right to complain when agents of the state show up to compel obedience to laws and regulations that that socialist rag has championed incessantly. Why do liberals always assume that the nonsense they support only applies to the lumpenproletariat and not to the illuminati like themselves? This is like Robespierre complaining about being guillotined. What - you thought you were special?

And

b) Instead of harassing law-abiding citizens like this chap, why aren't the Hogtown Fuzz going door-to-door at Jane and Finch, demanding that the occupants of that feculent corner of purgatory surrender the arsenal of non-registered, restricted firearms that tend to get used in murders? Answer: because the long-gun registry, whatever its original intent, is functionally designed to victimize honest citizens while having no impact whatsoever on actual gun-toting criminals. Which leads us to another typical liberal whine about unintended consequences (assuming that this consequence is unintended, which may be a stretch): "But we were trying to do the right thing!" Yeah, well, so did the eugenicists, the eco-nuts, Stalin and Mao.

You know what I like best about this story? The fact that Fiorito was surprised. I love it when these people get mugged by the reality that they helped to create.

2 points:

a) Nobody who takes a salary from the Red Star has any right to complain when agents of the state show up to compel obedience to laws and regulations that that socialist rag has championed incessantly. Why do liberals always assume that the nonsense they support only applies to the lumpenproletariat and not to the illuminati like themselves? This is like Robespierre complaining about being guillotined. What - you thought you were special?

And

b) Instead of harassing law-abiding citizens like this chap, why aren't the Hogtown Fuzz going door-to-door at Jane and Finch, demanding that the occupants of that feculent corner of purgatory surrender the arsenal of non-registered, restricted firearms that tend to get used in murders? Answer: because the long-gun registry, whatever its original intent, is functionally designed to victimize honest citizens while having no impact whatsoever on actual gun-toting criminals. Which leads us to another typical liberal whine about unintended consequences (assuming that this consequence is unintended, which may be a stretch): "But we were trying to do the right thing!" Yeah, well, so did the eugenicists, the eco-nuts, Stalin and Mao.

You know what I like best about this story? The fact that Fiorito was surprised. I love it when these people get mugged by the reality that they helped to create.

2 things:

1: I can't help thinking that Toronto Star journalists deserve to be harrassed by the government as a matter of principle.

2: This article must make violent criminals smile. I mean, if the cops are all out persecuting average people when they aren't raising revenue (tickets for everything and whatnot) then they aren't out solving real crimes.

That just aught to make the sociopathic thug smile.

So ... we'd like to have armed men come to our doors and confiscate our weapons? We'd welcome them with open arms because we support the police? Down tigers! Joe's a good guy. He wrote a good article. It's eye opening, ain't it? The Star's readers have had an invasion of reality in their "culture". Don't you want liberals to finally see the light? A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, after all.

It looks good on the Liberal latte swiller, and maybe next time he starts in mouthing off about how "there oughta be a law!" he will remember how this one turned out, and shut his Liberal face.

When Liberals say "People are stupid, they have to be controlled" they always mean -other- people. When they get swept up in one of their good ideas along with the rest of us "stupid" people I always cheer. F- 'em.