IN many circles, Wendy Cukier is known as Kooky Wendy. As the President of the Coalition for Gun Control in Canada, she’s written some pretty kooky stuff and, it seems to me, one of the biggest lobbiests of the Government to introduce the Firearms Registration. Kooky Wendy has a hard on for rifles. If Freud was right, Kooky Wendy is one horny chick and doesn’t know how to enjoy sex yet.
On a recent cigarette package that I purchased, Health Canada claims that tobacco use is responsible for more than ten times the murder and suicide rate in Canada. And that is total murder/suicide rates – and we know that those who commit murder or suicide don’t always use a firearm.
According to Health Canada, in 1996, there were 510 murders and 3,900 suicides. Their statistics also claim 45,000 tobacco related deaths in the same year.
That’s kind of interesting. Interesting that a stupid, costly, and ridiculous program has had billions spent upon it in order to prevent “deaths” while other things that cause death don’t get the same amount of regulation, control, and tax payer spending.
Apparently, tobacco kills 45,000 people a year. Want to go buy some smokes? Every corner store has them, and as long as you appear over 18, feel welcome to buy them.
A couple of thousand, if that, deaths are the result of the use of firearms. Most of those deaths are self inflicted. Want to buy a gun for the purpose of rodent control or protection of life and property? Ha! Good luck.. Spend tons of money on all sorts of licences, time on applications, and giving up your secrets about your love life and health issues to beurocrats. Smoking? No problem. Just as long as you are over 18, we don’t give a coon’s ass about your depressions or addictions.
If Kooky Wendy was really so concerned about needless death, you’d think she’d be more interested in tobacco use. At least, that would be a logical conclusion if you’re sane. Now, I’m not suggesting or even hoping that Kooky Wendy gets involved in Government lobbying about tobacco use – but needless to say, if you really believe in socialism and finding ways to combat needless death, it would seem logical to first focus on that which apparently (and I use that term loosely too.. who really knows why folks die when they do?) causes the greater number of deaths.
Otherwise, you are just showing yourself to be someone who is a logical idiot, and who can’t really think very well. You’re a person who is more concerned about some method of causing death than you are about needless death. But using emotional and illogical fallacies to get what you want in spite of what others want.
I have no idea what will kill me first. Tobacco use. Getting killed by some goon with an illegal hand gun on a rare visit to Toronto. A car accident. Too much drinking of Ancient Coast Vidal. Or maybe in spite of all that, I’ll live until I’m 101. I really don’t know.
But it seems we have some Kooky Kanadians employed by Health Canada. Earlier today, an aquaintance sent me a link to the Health Canada website, to an article that was published in something called “Chronic Diseases In Canada.”
According to the website (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/pphb-dgspsp/publicat/cdic-mcc/publica.html), Chronic Diseases in Canada is a “Scientific Journal.” Apparently it’s also peer reviewed.
And being a publication of Health Canada, it’s paid for by tax payers. And is available free of charge to anyone that requests it. And it seems to accept articles submitted by government policy lobbyists. Even those articles that use semantic language. How on earth any peer reviewer of a so called ‘scientific’ article could accept language that includes such terms as “serious,” “much higher,” and “serious threat to the health” is beyond me. Such words and terminology are completely unscientific and are at best, advertising.
But I suppose you get what you pay for. A free, peer reviewed journal might not provide the same “quality” (yes, another unscientific term) of information as a scientific journal that must be paid for through subscriber funds. But that’s another story.
The next problem is how in the world a government lobbiest was able to get past the peer review in a tax funded publication is also interesting. While Kooky Wendy may be a professor at Ryerson, she is best known for her Coalation for Gun Control work. And a decent professor worth their salt would realize that any scientific study must go beyond their own personal bias; this is practically impossible for someone who is also the President of a lobby group.
The next problem I see.. is how the peer reviewers who are publishing a journal on chronic disease in Canada would even accept a submission on gun control. By equating political policy with health, they are already showing themselves to be biassed peer reviewers themselves. Guns and Gun Control have nothing to do with the health of any resident of Canadian. But even if some inanimate object did, then shouldn’t we be spending more time and money on studying accidents (non gun related), which caused over 2,900 deaths in Canada in 1996?
If you get a chance, take a peek at Kooky Wendy’s article that your tax money paid for. See if you can find all the logical fallacies in it. There are quite literally, dozens of them. I was thinking of going through it all myself, but I don’t have time, needing some sleep at this minute. Maybe it would be an interesting project to fisk paragraph by paragraph.
The article is on your tax paid government website here: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/pphb-dgspsp/publicat/cdic-mcc/19-1/d_e.html
Yup. This Kooky Kanada. Where even Kooky Peer Reviewers are ok! As long as it’s free, of course.