Becky Sarwate

“A few months ago while visiting Vancouver, it took me a full weekend to pinpoint exactly why I felt safer traversing the streets of the beautiful mountain town. Then I remembered Canadian gun laws. They go like this: ‘In Canada, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms except those registered before 1978, handguns with a barrel of 105mm or less in length, and specifically modified handguns, rifles or shotguns.’ In the absence of fear for life and safety, the high internal alert that US gun culture forces most of us to adopt in our schools, neighborhoods and homes took a powder. And it was wonderful. For so many reasons, including nationalized health care, education and sensible gun laws, there aren’t Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin catastrophes north of our border.” – Becky Sarwate in Why Ferguson is Also, And Again, About Guns [at politicsusa.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

108 COMMENTS

    • That’s the beauty of the USA. If you dont like the way things are you can leave. So if guns bother you move the hell out of here!

      • So before extremely recently, almost all firearms of all types were banned and illegal in Chicago. Would she have felt safe walking alone in certain neighborhoods of the southside? If you got rid of the guns would all of Chicago’s other problems magically go away?

        It’s not the guns, it’s the people and the environment

        • In this case, it’s not the environment, it’s a false sense of safety based on a misconception of what causes the danger.
          Apparently Vancouver has one of the worst crime rates in North America. Apparently it also has one of the worst poverty rates. Perhaps they need some socialized this and universal that to fix the problems caused by the universal this and socialized that.

          But those are just pesky facts. What matters is how she feels about Vancouver. And she feels safer there, so Vancouver is better.

      • While I do not have the actual statistics, if Canada is such a wonderful place why are so many Canadians emigrating to the U.S.?

        I heard a Canadian comedian refer to Canada once as “The apartment above a REALLY good party…” I think that about sums up the situation.

        And by the way, if a nationwide “Gun-Free Zone” is her idea of heaven, why doesn’t she move to London?

        • Your risk of being murdered in Canada is actually higher than in the US if you are not in a gang or a felon (90% of US murder is criminals killing criminals).

          I am not in a gang, and am not a felon, and I understand statistics. So I am comfortable in being more 19% safer from murder in the armed USA compared to Canada.

      • Bummer, man. Are you sure? We would throw in Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein AND the Obamas! Plus an unnamed draft pick for the Toronto Blue Jays to be determined later.

        • We’re willing to take all your freedom-hating politicians on a straight-exchange for some of our gun nuts. I’ll volunteer myself as the first trade.

        • To be fair, Jim Carey actually used to be funny. He can possibly still put in a good acting experience. What she is, is a down payment on the interest accrued from us taking Justin Beiber off their hands. If they take Obama, Pelosi, Frankenst… errr Feinstein, Bloomberg, and the Moms Demand Action crowd, we might touch the principal on THAT debt…

    • When ANY other country (or entity) saves the world a few times and sheds their own blood to bring freedom to hundreds of millions (billions?) of people who aren’t their countrymen…. THEN we can entertain a discussion about the merits of the American way of life versus this other other country/entity (which currently is only a leftist wet dream). In the meantime, shut your piehole.

      Ingratitude is a horrible personal trait and very common for people of the Left.

      • LOL I wonder what My life would be like if I drew my entire knowledge of history from bad Hollywood movies like you do. you must live a neat life

        • Let me guess…you’re a graduate from a university in the past 20 years and took mandatory courses that taught you that the U.S. is the biggest troublemaker in history….how close am I to the truth?

          Thousands of dead American GI’s has kept 60 Million South Koreans from living in the largest concentration camp on earth for the last 50 years.

          http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/north-korea-by-night-satellite-images-shed-new-light-on-the-secretive-state

          Just one of a myriad of examples you fool.

        • Dennis.

          Imagine a world where in the past 100 years there had been no Germany. Infinitely better. Image a world without china the past 100 years. Without Russia. All better.

          Imagine a world without Canada or France. No difference whatsoever.

          Imagine a world without the USA: You, and everyone — would be living in either a Nazi or Stalinist empire.

        • HA! So far off base you have No Idea doesky2 LOL! I can’t help but notice that you have also made claim that the U.S. is solely responsible for saving the world on several occasions? (you know Independence day was a fictional movie right?) and “shed their blood for freedom” etc. ya the U.S troops labourers and contractors will always have my gratitude…. as will the British, Canadian, French, Australian, Russian, Chinese, polish, Dutch, Norwegian, Yugoslavian, and many more…. I’m sure that it may have occurred to you that it was called a “World war” and not “America beats up Italy Germany and Japan without any contribution from anyone” personally I like the U.S. I visit whenever I can, and have a great respect for many of their accomplishments (I just find it laughable that some feel that credit for all sorts of world changing events come from the loudest participants :D) oh and btw The Korean war was a U.N. NOT JUST a U.S action. Fool lol! look up the Battle of Kapyong and there are “more than a few” others.
          And as for you Chris B if you’re dumb enough to think that the only positive contributions have been made by the U.S. You really need to have your sense of reality examined without Canada you wouldn’t have the A-bomb (chalk river), insulin, Gas masks, SONAR, plexiglass, the pacemaker, and the Alkaline battery without the help of the French underground and the Canadian sacrifice at Dieppe there would have been no D-Day. without France hmmm let’s see um there’s antibiotics, pasteurization, antipsychotics, the tuberculosis vaccine, the Identification of the HIV virus, Computer Aided manufacturing…. ya pretty much nothing useful… let’s check out the baddies. Germany…. too easy (see operation Paperclip.) Russia the LED, Drones, underwater welding, blood banks and transfusion advancements, airborne fire-fighting, the modern multi-stage rocket, massive advancements in life support, carbon nanotubes, most of your space technology, 3D Holography, Graphene,
          China (you do realize that almost everything you enjoy is made there right?) contributed to the Manhattan project (Dr.Chien-Shiung Wu specializing in Uranium enrichment helped develop Gaseous diffusion process) MANY medical treatments not to mention a Massive contribution in agricultural, Logistics, construction, and above all else mass production. As I said I Like the U.S. you’ve done some Great things. but you couldn’t have done most (really any) of them without your friends too. just saying try not to forget that too.

  3. Yes, that’s right. It’s all about guns. It’s so much easier to place the blame on an inanimate object than to take a look at the socio-economic, policy, and educational problems that directly contribute to a thug mindset (not to mention an entitlement mentality and the total lack of personal responsibility growing within our society). I feel safer while carrying, but you go ahead and believe that feeling safer in another country is magically linked to their strict gun laws. Better yet, why not try for the same feeling in Mexico. Their gun laws are just as strict.

  4. ‘In Canada, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms except those registered before 1978, Gee, so in the USA, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms except those registered before 1986. So what?

    • Anti guns get really confused when they read the word “automatic” because that can refer to a self-loading firearm or a full auto firearm. Most of the time it’s the former definition, isn’t it?

  5. I feels dumber now…

    Read the whole thing, it’s like breathing paint fumes.

    You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

  6. Remember the southpark dawn of the dead send up, where they herded all of the homeless to california?

    “Can-a-da…. is cool to the liberals…”

  7. I can’t help but wonder, is she afraid of “The gun culture”, or just everything in general? Is she also afraid of getting in a car accident? Drowning in a swimming pool? Falling down the stairs? Or is it just firearms and the people that own them? I honestly can’t comprehend the mindset of someone who leaves their home every day afraid that they’re going to be killed by someone with a gun, and only by that. Sorry our freedom scares you. Maybe you should stay in Vancouver…

    • Sounds like she’s more afraid of old white guys than anything else:

      “Did that fear stem from the historical tyranny of white male patriarchal ideology and the growing threat of its disappearance in a diversified 21st Century global community? Undoubtedly, it was an influence”

      • She’s not afraid of old white men…

        When she was traveling through Canada do you think hung around the old white men part of town, or the young black men part of town?

        Judging by the well-to-do looking lounge picture of her sipping wine she doesn’t spend her time in Mike Brown parts of town.

  8. Just because you cross the border into our Northern neighbor doesn’t mean you have somehow entered the land of peace and tranquility. Vancouver specifically has a terrible gang and drug fueled problem. Killing and yes even FULL AUTO drive by’s are actually common. Toronto has no-go areas that are really bad and of course Montreal is home to one of the Mafia’s long time familes of crime that regularly kill each other and intimidate citizens. Ottawa just had a couple of jihadi’s kill fellow citizens. And let us not forget the Chinese cannibals riding your buses in the middle provinces. So get your head out of your backsides and wake up. Canada has its share of condition white, liberal, idiots.

    http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/vancouver-shooting-victims-are-two-men-from-rival-gangs-1.1123591

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean

  10. For entertainment purposes, Jason Easley’s site can’t be beat. I am not aware of a better example of paranoid left-wing lunacy on display. Spend some time and read a few posts, you will see what I mean.

  11. Ah, the old “I feel safer, so I am” nugget. A staple of Liberals everywhere.

    I also love how she feels Ferguson is all about guns when the only firearm involved belongs to the police. You know, the only people that Liberals think are qualified to own them….

    • But facts don’t matter. See how angry she looks? The picture was taken right after someone threw a fact at her. Obviously it missed her head.

  12. US states like Montana, Utah and Idaho have lower murder rates than most Canadian provinces. Montreal has had at least two horrific mass college shootings, while my TX city has had none. Vancouver riots over sports events; my Texas city only becomes more peaceful every time the Spurs win one of their regularly scheduled championships. I could go on and on.

  13. Glad she found her new home. Hopefully she wont come back. I am sure the folks of BC would be happy to have another illegal from the US. Maybe they can teach her the difference between an automatic and semiautomatic firearm.

  15. Michael Brown is only a catastrophe because Marxists and race hustlers worked together to destroy Ferguson’s black middle class over a drug addled street thug. The only businesses not burned and looted are those that the owners and friends protected using those evil firearms.

    • Yes indeed, because Mexico has FAR more stringent gun control laws than Canada – including only ONE legal gun store, run by the Mexican Army, located in Mexico City. That’s where all of the law-abiding drug cartel members get the guns that the US BATFE cannot provide them.

  17. Summary of her article in hash tags:

    #OogaBoogaGuns
    #OogaBoogaGunCulture
    #OogaBoogaGunLobby
    #OogaBoogaNRA
    #FuhDeChillunz

    There.

  18. “I felt better because I could feel the lack of bad mojo and cooties which emanate from guns (like Wi-Fi.

    I was comfortable in knowing that no one around me possessed a handgun with a barrel of less than 4.133588 inches because everyone knows evil concentrates in barrels shorter than that.

    I also felt more comfortable knowing if I was shot with an automatic weapon manufactured before 1978 or a handgun of 106 mm or longer, I would receive prompt treatment from the awesome nationalized health service within 3 weeks.

    I’ve never felt more relaxed in my life.”

    Did that about get it?

    When I’m in other countries, I can often “feel” things like the tax code so I know exactly what she means…

    • Actually, according to her words as quoted, it’s guns with a barrel length of LESS than 105 mm that are legal there, as well as automatics before 1978. She actually got it wrong. Snubbies are illegal up there, the big scary handguns are OK (terms and conditions apply as any handgun not “prohibited” is considered “restricted.”).

  19. I fear Becky Sarwate (“Why Ferguson is Also, And Again, About Guns [at politicsusa.com]”) more than I fear gun owners in the US. She is the epitome of ignorance and liberalism, desiring to force her world view upon the rest of us. She and her Democratic allies are out to transform America in ways that most of the population reject. Yes, I fear the likes of Becky Sarwate. She may be a nice person, but evil lurks in her heart as it does most liberals of her ilk. They infest our society like cockroaches. I encourage them to all to move to Canada. We will see how long that country remains the “promised land.”

    • ‘She is the epitome of ignorance and liberalism…’

      She’s worse than that, she’s a pseudo-intellectual. She’s blind to her own ignorance and believes she’s enlightened. It’s not the ignorance that’s the problem, we are all ignorant about something (I for instance know very little about micro-biology), but most of us have the humility to acknowledge our intellectual deficiencies. It’s the people who deny their own ignorance that are dangerous.

  21. This is something that Michael Moore reviewed in the film “Bowling for Columbine”. I am a firm believer in keeping an eye on what the enemy is saying. Overall the movie was just Moore trying to make himself valid on a topic he knows little about. But he did address Canada as well. The big thing that I took from it was Canadian news does not focus as much on the negatives. Not to the extent of American news. Let’s face it almost all American news companies were having orgasms from the Brown grand jury. They couldn’t have planned it any better and they spent the week prior to the announcement trying. The last time I was in Canada I took a little time to view the difference for myself and it is a big difference-very evidence based. I think this leads to a certain amount of calm because they don’t focus on doom and gloom that could occur.
    While I understand freedom of speech and everything, it is hard to call what we have “news” it opinion built upon current topics. Canadian news- if you can’t prove it, it’s not news.

  22. I highly recommend to everyone who wants a good laugh out liberal dumbfuckery to read the linked article. It basically switches between “Ferguson because guns” and “Ferguson because racism”.

  23. Canada is far more monotonic culturally. It has a population less than just California. And I suspect the rate of intact families is higher as well.
    It is not guns that result in violence in the US. I can’t recall where I read it, but a study was done regarding those incarcerated for violent crimes. The hope was to blame the incarceration rate differences on race. But it didn’t work. The only factor that was found to be correlated was the lack of the biological father in the home.
    Single parent mother headed households produce the vast majority of violent criminals.
    The only way to reduce violent crime in the long term requires ending the welfare state that encourages people to have babies they cannot afford to raise and demands that the father not be there.
    But because this is a problem created by liberals and government, don’t expect the government to ever undo what they have deliberately done.

    • Vancouver is an extremely diverse city, ethnically. 30% of the population is of Chinese origin, and many of these immigrated recently, since 1980. 52% of Vancouver MSA’s population do not speak English as their first language.

  24. I wonder how she will prevent being impaled by the unicorns that she no doubt believes are free to roam the Great White North of Canuckistan!

  25. She left out the fact that Canada has the luxury of having a big brother that will protect it without exception. It’s pretty easy for Canadians to criticize and even act smug but the fact remains that they could be taken over by most countries within a few days if it weren’t for the US. Just shut up and be grateful, and keep making good beer. That’s really all we expect of Canada.

    • I wasn’t aware that the author of that drivel was from Canada, I though she was a Yankee. Am I wrong ? So, how does a stupid AMERICAN blogger become a Canadian criticizing the US?
      Why are you bashing Canada over an article written by an American ?
      And guess what MarkP, the ONLY country to try and invade Canada was you idiots and we kicked your butts.
      So, shut up and keep making Wild Turkey for us because that’s all we really expect from the US.
      FYI, I used to really respect America and I’ve served alongside your military for several years. Canadians don’t like pointless criticism any more than Americans.

  26. Yet again a poor soul thinking that a few pieces of paper will suddenly change people. The definition of naivete.

  28. And at the end of the article, one can vote for “I liked this article” or “this is not for me”.
    22 likes, 27 dislikes as of now.

  29. The simple answer to why she felt safer is likely because Vancouver IS safer or perhaps she just feels safer! Why would that be? Curious that a major city controlled by organized crime would be “safer” than a US city. With a $7 billion dollar (canadian) annual drug trade you would think there would be problems. I guess that thinking is wrong. Maybe more organized crime and gangs make for safer cities? Or maybe there is something else at work? Maybe the way things are reported?

    How does “Vancouver crime among worst in North America” sound?

    “Vancouver has the third highest crime rate of 17 major North American cities surveyed, the report said.

    The figures show people are far more likely to have their car stolen or be the victim of a break and enter in Vancouver than in New York City.”

    From: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-crime-among-worst-in-north-america-1.967033

    From the United States Department of State OSAC Bureau of Diplomatic Security web site.
    https://www.osac.gov/pages/contentreportdetails.aspx?cid=12304
    “Regional Terrorism and Organized Crime

    The 2011 United Nations World Drug Report lists Canada as the global manufacturer of ecstasy with most of it destined for the U.S. Their report also indicated that ecstasy trafficking used to be inter-regional (from Western Europe to North America) but has now become mainly intra-regional, with deliveries from Canada into the U.S. This volatile market is being fueled by the various gang organizations that have embedded themselves in metro Vancouver. Canada has over 950 gangs, and Vancouver is considered ground zero for their CA$7 billion annual drug trade. The United Nations, Red Scorpions, Buttar, and Sanghera gangs operate throughout British Columbia as a part of Asian organized crime and outlaw motorcycle units who export their illicit goods to the U.S., Australia, and Japan. The gangs are heavily into “marijuana grows,” cross-border trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and homicides. Although 2011 was comparatively calm, a number of recent gang-related murders and indiscriminate shootings in Vancouver and surrounding suburbs have kept gang tensions consistent. This violence largely revolves around international drug distribution networks and has involved a diverse set of nationalities, including Sikh, Asian, Punjabi, and Mexican organizations. The U.S. private sector interests have not been impacted significantly by these recent activities; however, there is a prevailing concern that this on-going gang violence could harm the general public. “

    • as i once overheard downtown mikey brown say, “the united nations sucks the camel’s ass.”
      he was, of course, paraphrasing wesley willis, god rest his tormented soul.

  32. I can’t wait until she learns about the Dominion Arms Outlaw (12 gauge with a 12 inch barrel), or the Tavor, or the Norinco T-97, or the MR1, or the Vz58 sporter, or the SVT, or the BRS-99, or the Dominion Arms Grizzly (12 gauge pump action mag-fed with an 8.5 inch barrel), etc.,etc.- all non restricted. Then I’m looking forward to her learning that we have no feature bans on our AR-15s (fix bayonets!), we can own Skorpions (sometimes it’s Klobbering time), Norinco can sell all the guns they want, and that open carry of NRs is perfectly legal.

    Perhaps she’ll choose to stay at home, because we have enough statists. Or perhaps she’ll be enlightened and realize that guns in the hands of lawful owners are not the problem. It would be nice.

    (I take it she avoided East Van- though it’s been a while since I was in BC and had to avoid East Van, maybe it’s better now. Maybe the junkies don’t snap their needles off on telephone poles any more.)

  36. Wait, so she and her liberal buddies are the ones on perpetual “high internal alert” in the U.S.? And she and her ilk have the audacity to call us paranoid for carring a self-defense sidearm? Oh that’s rich.

  38. …there aren’t Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin catastrophes north of our border.

    She forget another reason, the percentage of black Canadians is about 3%. Most of the black population is either of Jamaican or Haitian ancestry, so you have a different culture versus the United States. Canada also abolished slavery early in their history under British rule.

      • It was a political calculation since the British wanted the slaves in the colonies to revolt and join the loyalists during the Revolutionary War. They offered the slaves freedom in return for their service. When the war ended a large group of the black loyalists relocated and settled in Nova Scotia. Some descents of the original group still remain to this day.

  39. It must be exhausting living your life in abject terror of fanciful nonsense everyday.

    Somebody needs more cats to hug.

  41. Every day someone comes out of the woodwork and takes the mantle of Stupidest Person in the World from the previous holder. She is today’s winner.

  42. She ignores the plight of the First Peoples and the racially mixed. They make up 3,8% of Canada’s population, but account for 18% of the federal prison population.

    Were this found in the United States there would be loud criticism about racial discrimination. That a very small minority was being incarcerated far in excess of they actual numbers.

    Also missed was the Quebec separatist movement and their active discrimination of the English speaking minority and history of violence. Finally there is the forced resettlement of peopl into the far north simply to ensure Canadian claims to the Northwest Passage.

  43. I’m not very good with computers. Would someone please take the time to send this whole post to her facebook page.

  46. 74 responses, yet nobody mentioned Robert Pickton?

    Becky Sarwate just needs a bit of time to ramble about the city and its environs, in order to experience the Twin Peaks nature of the place. She can drive a bit north and visit one of the largest polygamous cults in North America. She can head to the southwest fringes of the city and, getting up her nerve, inquire about the Chinese criminal gangs that Resident CT delineated in a comment above.

    Then she can read about Robert Pickton, who less than a decade ago was convicted of murdering six Vancouver women, had his trial on 20 other counts of gynacide stayed, and admitted in conversation with an undercover that he had killed 49 women, wishing he could kill one more to make it a nice round 50. While Pickton repeatedly came to the attention of police, and while the remarkably frequent disappearance of women from the streets of Vancouver had long been noted….the police took years before bothering to arrest Pickton.

    Vancouver has a beautiful physical setting, but it has devolved into a multi-ethnic Twin Peaks. For some, that may be entertaining. For the city’s working class, not so much.

  47. Question…do goofy gals like this know her comments are getting a large audience on TTAG? Ah the miracle of the interwebz…

    • Yup, they know it’s covered by all the major dot coms, like match, ilovemycat, and let’s not forget xvideos.

  48. Oh yeah? I was in Vancouver on business staying at the Sheraton Wall Centre when this happened right in the lobby restaurant. I had just left the lobby and was on the elevator:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gangster-shot-dead-at-vancouver-s-wall-centre-1.1223071

    Can’t convince me that there’s no “gun crime” in Canada. I’ve traveled all over the USA and the world on business and NEVER EVER been inside a hotel where a shooting took place while I was there.

  49. Cripes. There’s a police officer accused of needlessly shooting someone in MY town on Vancouver island.

    She just needed to go a few more KMs out of town to get into some pretty gang-heavy areas.

    Firearms are alive and well in Canada. Different rules for sure but there are loads of people enjoys all aspects of shooting and hunting. She just didn’t come across anyone!

  50. Quick! Close off the border before she gets back! Help her find housing up there! Tweet all her friends about how happy she is and get them on a bus!

  51. Of many, many (too many) times I have been out to the pool hall/watering hole drinking, carousing, and generally having a good time in the USA, I have been involved in precisely 1 physical altercation. And it was an old “friend” from high school that had a score to settle.
    I spent 1 month on Canada volunteering to band waterfowl and while enjoying tasty beverages was jumped by a gang of Canuck “skinheads.” Granted, they were after the aboriginal gentleman I was sitting next to, but the incident told me what I need to know about safety in the Great White North. I’ve not sat with my back to the door of any establishment since.
    Worst part was that after I got out of the hospital for the broken and fractured face bones I received the Mounties knew exactly who did it, but seemed quite powerless or unwilling to do anything about it.
    Oh, and 2 months after getting home I got a $1500 bill for the cat scan at the hospital. Free health care my a$$. They didn’t get a dime. I’m probably not welcome back to Saskatchewan. Oh, Canada indeed.

  52. Move to canada, lady. They’d be happy to have you. Besides, it doesn’t sound the you have the spine to be a proper American. Best wishes!

  53. The most important words in that quote are, “I FELT safer”. Obviously, her whole editorial is based on liberal-based feelings, not on any real-world facts.

  54. I too, was in Vancouver a few months ago. It’s a lovely city, albeit expensive. While wandering around upscale neighborhoods like West End, Yaletown or Coal Harbor, full of shiny happy locals and wealthy Asian visitors, I’m sure that Ms. Sarwate felt completely at ease. I did, too. It’s entirely possible, though, that I may have travelled a bit further afield than our intrepid opinionater. Maybe she missed the streets Downtown, sidewalks literally carpeted with addicts either nodding out or spare changing. Areas rife with petty crime and violence. Perhaps she didn’t visit any of the nearby suburbs, easily accessible by the fantastic public transit system, where the news was full of gangs, drugs and even a couple of shootings (with GUNS!?!). Maybe she didn’t peer far enough into the underbrush in Stanley Park, one of the loveliest city parks I’ve visited, to see the camps of the homeless people. Maybe she missed the M4s in the Vacouver PD’s patrol cars, presumably there to enable them to counter violent armed felons. It’s likely that she didn’t speak with any British Canadians whose outlook didn’t mirror her own rose colored fantasy of a Canadian utopia free from the evil gun, and by extension free of racism, paternalism, injustice, et al.

    If she had bothered to talk with them, many Canadians would have told her that, though awesome, Canada has it’s problems, historical and modern, including some of Ms. Sarwate’s bugbears; racism (“White Canada Forever” anyone?), injustice (Indian schools?), paternalism, rapacious capitalism at the expense of the environment, religious intolerance, “old white cowboys” and, yes, violence committed with and without guns. Some of them might have told her that they don’t appreciate the overbearing and intrusive nature of their government as it has come to be. Some might have told her that they actually envy some of the freedoms enjoyed by their neighbors to the south. Some, on both ends of the political spectrum, might have told them of their pride in ownership and use of firearms and that it would be foolish, in such a huge wild country, to not go about armed at times. They also might have told her that Canada is not, as she seems to believe, a more perfect US with universal health care and draconian gun laws, but a different country with a very different historical, social, cultural and demographic background than our proximity might suggest.

    These conversations, I’m afraid, might have upset Ms. Sarwate’s feelings and perhaps her sense of ease and safety. Anti-gun rights opinionaters can’t have that. Feelings are important. More important than anything. They seem to be the foundations upon which beliefs are built. “I FEEL safer in Vancouver and they have really tough gun laws ergo I BELIEVE I am safe and Canada is BETTER and less racist, unjust, etc…” Well, I’m not so sure about that. There are a myriad of factors at play when it comes to personal safety. Among the most important: Who you are, where you are and what you are doing. Some may say that these things shouldn’t matter and, in a perfect world, I would agree. But in this imperfect world, they can be the difference between life and death. For example: If you are a 17 year old black male in my 90+% African American neighborhood on Chicago’s West side, involved in the very active drug trade, your chance of being the victim of a violent crime are orders of magnitude higher than those of a 35 year old white female on her way to a yoga class in Burlington, Vermont. Her chances of being victimized are considerably LESS than those of a 47 year old Indo-Canadian retailer walking home from work in Surrey, B.C. This, despite the fact that the Chicagoan and the Canadian are “protected” by nearly identical, highly restrictive gun laws while Vermont has hardly any gun restrictions at all and a guarantee of unfettered gun rights enshrined in the state constitution. The outlier here is is my neighbor. If we were to compare maples to maples, as it were, British Columbia comes out the more dangerous place. In fact, more than 9 times more dangerous. (In 2012, BC reported 1382 violent crimes per 100K Vermont reported 142).

    And this brings me to a touchy kind of thought. Perhaps Ms. Sarwate’s sense of ease and safety did not originate where she felt it did, in enlightened political thought and well intentioned legislation. I hate to project, but the antis do it all the time and, well, turn about is only fair play. Maybe our intrepid opinionater felt safe because of the absence of African Americans. I noticed it; the almost total absence of black people of any kind in Greater Vancouver. Is it possible, despite her convictions and writing and loudly stated opinions, that Ms. Sarwate is really just afraid of black people?

  55. The way I see it the progressives should all move to Canada and freedom-loving Canadians move here to the U.S. A fair trade.

    The Constitution can be properly restored in the USA and the Progressives in the north can keep making laws to build the utopia that will never happen.

    Sounds fair to me.

  56. No Mike Brown cases here? There’s a recent one in Toronto. Kid named Sammy Yatim. He was committing a crime on a streetcar and a cop shot him a whole bunch of times. He was tazered after being shot as well.

    He was alone on the streetcar with a 3 inch knife and he was shot for getting too close to the police. He was on the streetcar. The police were not. This is a perfect example of the police having other options to contain him. There’s videos of the shooting all over the internet, just Google the kid’s name.

    And yeah crime rates are quite high in parts of Canada just like in the US. Poor neighborhoods.

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