The Minnesota governor said that the path to tyranny “is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was testifying before Congress about his state’s handling of immigration when he learned Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security news conference Thursday.
The irony, he told the attendees of the Center for American Progress’ “Listening to Lead” event Friday, was in lawmakers grilling him and his colleagues, Govs. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y. and JB Pritzker, D-Ill., over the “incredible crime of treating people like human beings” as FBI agents tackled a sitting senator to the ground and handcuffed him in Los Angeles.
“I am not prone to hyperbole. I am prone to, like, popping off a little bit. I know that,” Walz said, prefacing his argument that Americans are living in a “dangerous” time. “I believed all along we were marching towards authoritarianism, and people were telling me in December, ‘You know, you’re overreacting.’ And I said, “The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting.”
I totally understand that overreach makes hunting and recreational shooting activities a lot more difficult.
On the flipside, it means that assembly in Canada is peaceful by default without the constant threat of escalation into gun violence as can happen in the USA. It means that in our cities, 19 times out of 20 we only have to worry about pointy objects being potentially used as weapons by people walking down the street rather than guns.
The styling of firearms is just for show over safety I agree. But maintaining a culture of responsibly using firearms as a privilege of partaking in the sport, rather than as a right, is a distinction that gives us Canadians a better quality-of-life overall. There’s far fewer grey areas in Canada as to where and what guns should be legally used for.
I absolutely agree with your entire comment and have little to rebuttal against however, with our current governments overreach I fear that we’re being treated unjustly given that the recent bans were enacted via an Order In Council by the previous PM and not through Parliament or the House of Commons.
I understand public safety is the primary concern here but it’s not licensed/registered firearms causing the increase in our crime, I’ve preached this numerous times on Lemmy, it’s illegal firearms smuggled across the US/Canada border that land in the hands of people intending to commit crime.
No person is going out of their way to pay & complete the CFSC, apply for a PAL/RPAL, agree to daily background checks from the RCMP, purchase a firearm that has to be registered to them to then commit petty crimes.
I should note that StatsCan does not differentiate firearm crime from illegal firearms and legal firearms which is ridiculous, we need this data for this debate.