Supremely Arrogantly Interfering

"[The Conservatives {current Conservative-led Government of Canada} have a sterling record on supporting] law-abiding hunters, farmers and sport shooters. [Crown prosecutors should be trusted] not to seek the mandatory sentences in cases involving only technical violations of fire-arms licensing laws."
"[The Supreme Court] used a far-fetched hypothetical scenario to stretch a law designed to take gang members and those who seek to commit violent gun crime off the streets into a law that could impact law-abiding firearms owners."
Justice Minister Peter MacKay, Ottawa

"With respect, I see no reason to second-guess Parliament based on hypotheticals that do not accord with experience or common sense."
"It is not for this court to frustrate the policy goals of our elected representatives based on questionable assumptions or loose conjecture. Gun crime is a matter of grave and growing public concern. Successive Parliaments have responded by enacting laws designed to denounce and deter such crime. The mandatory minimums in s.95(2) were part of a suite of legislative changes put forward as ‘a direct response to the scourge of handgun crime that plagues our country’ . . . "

"Given this inherent danger, it was open to Parliament to conclude that simple possession of a loaded or readily loaded restricted or prohibited firearm should attract a significant mandatory custodial sentence . . ."

"In my view, sending our elected representatives back to the drawing board on s. 95 would impede the goals of deterring and denouncing the unlawful possession of deadly weapons and keeping them out of the hands of those who would use them as instruments of intimidation, death and destruction."

Supreme Court Justices Michael Moldaver, Marshall Rothstein, Richard Wagner, dissenting

Tony Bock / Toronto Star 

Toronto police officers unpack firearms found at a raid on a condo in 2009.

But six other Justices of the Supreme Court, comprising a majority opinion ruled on April 14 to strike down mandatory minimum gun sentencing with their argument that it might impose an unfair legal burden on judges and end up victimizing innocent sport hunters or farmers who inadvertently failed to for example, store their ammunition separately from their firearms; as though innocence could be compromised by a stricter imposition of punishment for real gun crimes.

This being the seventh instance of the Supreme Court upending an initiative by the federal government to introduce new laws or amendments to existing laws, it is understandable that an elected lawmaker and member of the government cabinet would take umbrage at the Supreme Court whose job it is to interpret, and not make law, usurping the job of government authority in law-making.

The Tackling Violent Crime Act, introduced in 2008 in response to gun violence would increase the minimum sentence for specific gun-related crimes to three years from one for a first offence, and to five years from three for a second.

Two Toronto men were c aught in possession of illegal handguns which were equipped with overcapacity magazines. One, Hussein Nur, was arrested while carrying a loaded, concealed handgun able to fire "24 rounds in 3.5 seconds", according to police reports. He had stationed himself outside a community centre awaiting an opportunity to "get" an individual inside the centre in the violence-troubled Jane and Finch area, when he emerged.

This type o sentencing was upheld by the Supreme Court with the argument that a mandatory minimum was "uncontroversial" in cases such as these, and there are more than enough of them to go around. Five years imprisonment considered in such cases to be appropriate. And this is precisely what the law is meant to do; to target malfeasance such as this, to persuade thugs that if they intend to endanger society by their threatening use of firearms, imperilling the safety of others, they will pay an appropriate price.