Be Thankful We’re Not a Parliamentary Democracy

See this article from Canada, detailing why their gun rights community faces an uphill battle:

Then there’s the fact that Canada’s got a parliamentary form of government. In the U.S. the NRA can focus its attention on individual legislators, winning them over one by one.

In Canada, representatives have to vote with their party, or else they get kicked out of the party and can’t run in the next election. For Bernardo, that means instead of exerting all his power on one legislator at a time, he has to convince a whole party that his policies make sense.

Our systems has many flaws, but it’s easier for the determined to make a difference, even if they are determined minority. That’s not true in other systems, where political parties tend to dominate the political environment. We tend to think that’s the case here, but it’s not compared to other systems.

It’s also interesting the role campaign finance laws play, but I note Canada’s also apply to how much candidates can spend on elections. I would note that NRA’s model could work even under these limits, since NRA’s political power is more derived from electoral muscle than it’s ability to donate money to favored candidates, and communicate through independent expenditures.

2 thoughts on “Be Thankful We’re Not a Parliamentary Democracy”

  1. In the US, people think of parliaments as the equivalents of Congress. In reality, they are more like a standing Electoral College.

  2. Sounds like an opportunity. Instead of having to change the mind of one legislator at a time, all he has to do is to convince the party leadership that his policies make sense. The commie libs have been strategically using government pressure points against us for years. We can do the same to them. Sounds like the Canadian system, with its concentration of power, could be swiftly toppled from the top, instead of more slowly from the bottom.

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