Tag Archives: Ban

News

Should this ad opposing gay activism in Ontario schools be censored?

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Here’s the ad, from the Institute for Canadian Values.

Brian Lilley, a journalist with Sun News, explains why he opposes censorship of the ad.

Excerpt:

Michael Erickson, a high school teacher in Toronto and a candidate for the New Democrats in the last federal election has petitioned the board of directors of our parent company Quebecor, the Canadian Broadcaster Standards Council and the Advertising Standards Council over our decision to air an ad that he doesn’t like.

The ad, from the Institute for Canadian Values, is against the introduction of the McGuinty government’s graphic sex-ed curriculum.

[…]Erickson’s complaint and his online petition, claim that “This ad promotes intolerance against people who might stand out from traditional male or female gender roles.”

I’d disagree with that and I have several times. The ad highlights what was in McGuinty’s proposed curriculum and what has been found in existing guides for teachers at the elementary school level.

Is teaching about transgendered issues, gender identity and gender fluidity in grade three a good idea?

Dalton McGuinty thinks that it is a good idea. He is the Liberal premier, and most people in Ontario supported him in the last election, because he loves to spend money buying votes with social programs.

Here’s more about the proposed curriculum of the the Liberal party of Ontario.

Excerpt:

The new curriculum, replacing a previous version from 1998, aligns with the Ministry’s campaign to p romote “equity and inclusive education” in Ontario’s schools, which includes the advancement of homosexualism and transgenderism. A notable aspect of the curriculum’s revision is the attempt to instil a sense that homosexuality and transgenderism are normal.

Under the curriculum, students begin to explore “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in grade 3, as part of an expectation to appreciate “invisible differences” in others. In grade 5, a student is expected to recognize that “things I cannot control include … personal characteristics such as … my gender identity [and] sexual orientation.”

In addition to learning about masturbation in grade 6, the curriculum suggest that students can better understand “sexual orientation” by “reading books that describe various types of families and relationships,” including those involving two “mothers” or “fathers.” In grades 7 and 8, “preventing pregnancy and disease,”“gender identity,” and “sexual orientation” become “key topics.”

Grade 7s are expected to be taught about “using condoms consistently if and when a person becomes sexually active.” In grade 8, the use of contraception is a key component of the curriculum, and students are expected to “demonstrate an understanding of gender identity (e.g., male, female, two-spirited, transgendered, transsexual, intersex) and sexual orientation (e.g., heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual).”

More:

In February, homosexual Liberal MPP Glen Murray, who serves as Minister of Research and Innovation, praised the new revision of the curriculum and said it will be coming soon.

Dubbing opponents of the graphic sex ed program “rightwing reactionary homophobes,” he told Xtra that the main issues that offended parents are already being covered under the current version of the curriculum from 1998.

“I have to tell you, many of the things that offended people are already in the curriculum. We talk about all kinds of families and human sexuality in our elementary schools,” he said.

I am not sure why Dalton McGuinty, the Liberal premier of Ontario, wants to force the gay agenda onto young, impressionable children. But that’s what liberals and leftists believe. Recall that the Liberal party is the socialist party of Canada, and the NDP are the communist party. Is it really surprising that political parties on the secular left are anti-family values? When you vote for left-wing parties, this is what you get.

UPDATE: More here from Brian Lilley. (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

The video above was posted by SDAMatt and he notes that the Erickson person is gay. What a surprise!

News

Crime rates in Chicago and DC drop after gun control laws are struck down

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From Fox News – what happens to crime rates when gun control laws are repealed? (H/T Reason To Stand)

Excerpt:

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Politicians predicted disaster. “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence,” Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision.

Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would “go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle it in the streets…”

The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court’s “unwise” decision that there is a right for people “to keep guns in the home.”

But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn’t rise after the bans were eliminated — they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

Not surprisingly, the national media have been completely silent about this news.

One can only imagine the coverage if crime rates had risen. In the first six months of this year, there were 14% fewer murders in Chicago compared to the first six months of last year – back when owning handguns was illegal. It was the largest drop in Chicago’s murder rate since the handgun ban went into effect in 1982.

Meanwhile, the other four most populous cities saw a total drop at the same time of only 6 percent.

Similarly, in the year after the 2008 “Heller” decision, the murder rate fell two-and-a-half times faster in Washington than in the rest of the country.

It also fell more than three as fast as in other cities that are close to Washington’s size. And murders in Washington have continued to fall.

If you compare the first six months of this year to the first six months of 2008, the same time immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s late June “Heller” decision, murders have now fallen by thirty-four percent.

Gun crimes also fell more than non-gun crimes.

Robberies with guns fell by 25%, while robberies without guns have fallen by eight percent. Assaults with guns fell by 37%, while assaults without guns fell by 12%.

Just as with right-to-carry laws, when law-abiding citizens have guns some criminals stop carrying theirs.

Read the whole thing, there are more lovely facts in there. If you ever need to debate this, I recommend buying these academic studies published by the University of Chicago Press and by Harvard University Press. The former shows how crime rates dropped in the USA when Americans rescinded gun control laws, and the latter shows how crime rates rose in the UK when the British strengthened their gun control laws. Sometimes is good to have the data handy.

Let’s learn about the issue from the news

ABC News explains in this short 6-minute clip:

And here is a longer 44-minute show from Fox Business: (featuring a debate between economist John Lott and the Brady Campaign spokesman)

There are other debates in the show as well.

Now watch a 3-on-3 debate on gun control

This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).

Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.

Here are the remaining speeches:

This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.

News

Do gun control laws cause crime rates to go down?

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First, here’s a story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch regarding their new law relaxing restrictions on legal firearm ownership.

Excerpt:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found.

Columnist Don Surber adds:

So the gun crimes dropped and the gun crimes that they had were not by people with concealed gun permits but rather by outlaws.

In fact, the newspaper reported: “Only two fatal shootings occurred during the last fiscal year — one outside a Petersburg nightclub and the other at a Radford restaurant — but neither involved concealed-gun permit holders. And only two of the 18 aggravated assaults reported could be linked definitively to concealed-carry holders.”

Once again, our moral and intellectual superiors on the left are wrong.

But is that the normal outcome of relaxing gun control laws, or an anomaly? What do the government statistics show?

Even the leftist MSNBC agrees that legal gun ownership reduces crime.

Excerpt:

Americans overall are far less likely to be killed with a firearm than they were when it was much more difficult to obtain a concealed-weapons permit, according to statistics collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control. But researchers have not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as the concealed-carry movement gained steam, Americans were killed by others with guns at the rate of about 5.66 per 100,000 population. In this decade, the rate has fallen to just over 4.07 per 100,000, a 28 percent drop. The decline follows a fivefold increase in the number of “shall-issue” and unrestricted concealed-carry states from 1986 to 2006.The highest gun homicide rate is in Washington, D.C., which has had the nation’s strictest gun-control laws for years and bans concealed carry: 20.50 deaths per 100,000 population, five times the general rate. The lowest rate, 1.12, is in Utah, which has such a liberal concealed weapons policy that most American adults can get a permit to carry a gun in Utah without even visiting the state.

The decline in gun homicides also comes as U.S. firearm sales are skyrocketing, according to federal background checks that are required for most gun sales. After holding stable at 8.5 to 9 million checks from 1999 to 2005, the FBI reported a surge to 10 million in 2006, 11 million in 2007, nearly 13 million in 2008 and more than 14 million last year, a 55 percent increase in just four years.

So even liberal MSNBC thinks that legal firearm ownership reduces crime rates.

Let’s learn about the issue from the news

ABC News explains in this short 6-minute clip:

And here is a longer 44-minute show from Fox Business: (featuring a debate between economist John Lott and the Brady Campaign spokesman)

The debate is about John Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime”, published by the University of Chicago Press. There are other debates in the show as well.

Now watch a 3-on-3 debate on gun control

This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).

Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.

Here are the remaining speeches:

This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.