Why is Ottawa disarming Canadians?

Before committing mass murder, governments typically disarm any many people as possible. That happened in Germany, China, the USSR, Cambodia, and Turkey among other countries in the 20th century.

That would never happen in Canada. Of course.

Ottawa would never decide to murder an unappreciated minority, whether Jewish or Indigenous or Albertan. Nor would the authorities stand aside while the minority was being butchered by a client group, as happened in Rwanda. Never.

Canadians trust the police, even though the RCMP and local police have basically stood aside while Islamic activists terrorize the Jewish community. Like most Canadians, Jews are hard-pressed to defend themselves, because Ottawa has disarmed them. Exceptionally few Canadians can legally own a firearm for self defence. Although under some conditions, Canadians may be able to use their “sporting” firearms to defend their families and community.

On the other hand, progressives claim that past Canadian governments have engaged in “genocide,” against Indigenous peoples and possibly even minority groups – even abusing and murdering children in residential schools. But no one believes a future Liberal Prime Minister would countenance mass murder.

Power corrupts. Juvenal pointed this out centuries ago.

Governments claim to be our protectors, our guardians, but they require watching. Not just to keep the politicians honest, but more importantly, to protect the public from the government.

Gun control proponents believe armed government officials (the police) will protect civilians. They assume that normal civilians can’t be trusted with firearms, but they trust completely authorities who wield deadly force. Historically, this is a bad bet. In 1910 no one could have predicted that Germany, with its liberal constitutional monarchy, would give birth to the Nazis and launch a holocaust of mass murder in the 1930s and 1940s.

Armed citizens are key

Gun control (despite whatever supporters may claim) eventually means disarming ordinary citizens. But disarming the citizenry removes an important deterrent to tyranny. In democracies or republics, armed citizens provide the best bulwark against government abuses. Armed civilians provide an important deterrent to potential tyrants. It is difficult for government to launch a mass murder campaign if they face armed citizens. Almost all of the mass murders by government over the 20th century took place where the citizens had first been disarmed.

Despite lurid media reports, the dangers of civilian criminals with guns are wildly exaggerated, while the dangers of armed powerful governments are typically ignored. Governments over the 20th century have murdered more than 5 times as many innocent people as have civilian killers.

How many criminal murders have been committed during the 20th century?

The best source of worldwide statistics on criminal murder (or intentional homicide) is the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which publishes compilations of murder statistics from UN member countries. The UN Global Study on Homicide, 2023 , reported 458,000 intentional homicides across the 193 member states; close to the highest number of homicides committed in recent years. Multiplying this number by 100 gives a rough estimate of the number of homicides during the 20th century. The real number might be lower, but it’s unlikely to be higher. [Updated from an earlier post].

Murder in the 20th Century

Government mass murders in the 20th century

Governments murdered their own citizens at much higher numbers than were killed by all the criminals during the 20th century. Estimates vary. Perhaps, five times as many, perhaps much more. And all were innocent civilians. Note: these counts do not include civilian deaths by either bombing or war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition..

Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii, the renown political scientist and statistician, estimated that at least 272 million innocent, non-combatant civilians who were murdered by their own governments during the 20th century. According to Rummel, this estimate is his lower, more prudent figure, stating that it “could be over 400 million deaths.” Professor Rummel coined the word “democide” to denote all mass murder by government, regardless of whether the victims were selected for ethnicity, politics, economics, or other reasons. He included famine in his death counts if he deemed it the result of a deliberate policy, as he did for the Holodomor.

Illustrative examples of government mass murders (Not a complete list)

Trusting armed government officials has historically been a bad bet. A reasonable question to ask is could it happen here? Perhaps. We’ll see.

Power corrupts.

Disarming citizens is a dangerous step down a slippery slope to tyranny.