He writes, of what happened up in High River , where RCMP officers took guns from homes abandoned after this summer's floods in Alberta:
Nearly a half hour into his grilling by residents, Shardlow was detailing how many hundreds of guns had been forcibly removed from homes and how many had already been returned.
During his enumeration, Shardlow stated matter-of-factly that in addition to firearms, Mounties had also “ burned approximately seven thousand, five hundred pounds of compromised ammunition.”
Upon hearing that, the first thing that occurred to me is that in the small boats and dinghies Mounties were using, it must have taken dozens of trips to collect nearly four tons of ammunition. That means that rather than searching for survivors, their door-stomping rampage must have been first and foremost about taking guns away from law-abiding citizens, otherwise they wouldn’t have devoted so much overtime pay and scarce equipment to the effort.
So, I am willing to bet that Shardlow meant or in fact said rounds rather than pounds, and that Gunter is just too dumb or conspiracy-minded to see this. I mean, that's the natural way to describe units of ammo. And if I am proven wrong, I will buy Lorne Gunter an ice-cream cone. But, as per usual, only one scoop. For I am not made out of money.
PS. All this talk of the wrong done by the RCMP up in High River is, as far as I'm concerned, pandering to gun nuts. Gunter is either playing dumb to fan the flames,or he isn't playing.
Update here.
How about a pound of ice cream?
ReplyDeleteI could buy it from Walmart.
ReplyDeletehttp://bcblue.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/rcmp-took-4-tonnes-of-ammo-out-of-high-river-homes-during-flood/
ReplyDeletetry research before rant once in a while. This post of yours is the epitomy of stupidity
Hahaha! Because BCblue is the epitome of honesty, integrity and straightforward "reporting". Thanks for making my day, Bozo!
ReplyDeleteit is a direct quote of RCMP staff sgt, get off the BCgreen and you may have seen that
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2013/09/20130922-080109.html
ReplyDeletethe same quote word for word in a publication you must like then. Try read it when you come down a bit.
http://nfa.ca/news/nfas-third-letter-rcmp-public-complaints-commissioner-september-13
ReplyDeletetry this one maybe
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ReplyDeletehttp://www.highrivertimes.com/2013/09/09/town-hall-meeting-ignites-anger
ReplyDeleteanother link, you have my permission to STFU now
I suspect he either misspoke or was misquoted
ReplyDeleteFour tonnes of ammo - seems like the RCMP would require a commercial barge for that scale of operation. Now who exactly were the locals planning on going to war with? Was the Wildrose/ Freedom Cruise militia planning a coup? This sounds like an operation of the Free Syrian Army.
ReplyDeleteIt's municipal election season in AB - the Sun papers are trying to fan the flames of anything that will get support over to the far right.
ReplyDeleteI highly doubt that 4 tonnes of ammo was confiscated by the RCMP in High River.
They are also gunning after Calgary Mayor Nenshi - with a lot of distortion, misrepresentation and outright lies.
4 tonnes? In High River? You'd have to be brain dead to believe that was true.
ReplyDeleteWhile I would say I generally don't like pandering to gun nuts, the High River case is not about that. Really, it's about the use and abuse of police power. In this case, we're talking about guns rather than drugs as the reason for it, but by and large the modality is exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteThe schadenfreude I'm feeling is coming from watching a bunch of people that never thought they'd be the object of the misuse of police power ("we're not like those other people down in East Van... you know, indians, druggies, and dope peddlers) finding out that they themselves are not actually immune to it. That said... it's symptomatic of the larger problem that has arisen this century in police culture all across North America, where abuse of process has gone systematic on a nearly industrial scale: G20, Pittsburgh, Occupy Oakland, and now High River.
PO, we've seen a lot of claims of abuse of police power lately. This is the one I take least seriously.
ReplyDeleteLike the old sayings 'a liberal is a conservative who just got arrested' and 'a conservative is a liberal who just got robbed'
ReplyDeleteHaving the police break in & take their guns leaves the poor things torn between which knee to jerk.
PO: High River is not comparable to those other situations.
ReplyDeleteThe police in High River were given orders to go house to house in a flood situation to ensure that nobody was trapped in those houses.
The firearms confiscation order appears to have been a result of finding improperly stored firearms in some homes, and the house was no longer secured.
As much as people like to characterize it as an abuse of power, I don't think it's anywhere near as clear cut as (for example) the G20 protests in Toronto.
Except not every home was entered, but all homes with firearms were entered.
ReplyDeleteExcept the police actually broke into safe storage to take firearms.
Except the police had to break into houses to take firearms _after_ being told there was no one in the house.
Except the police @ G20 had a riot on their hands, not a compliant citizenry who followed evacuation orders.
Yeah, except for all those exceptions, exactly the same.
What riot at G20 They arrested people who were not even demonstrating, and kettled peaceful demonstrators.
ReplyDeleteHolly, other than the mischaracterization of what happened at the G20, he's still right about the rest of it... and when you put those two together, they support my POV on it: it's a serious overreach of police power.
ReplyDelete