At Home: Safer communities law sees family ejected from home

Under Nova Scotia’s Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act, police can shut down buildings known for gambling, prostitution, or as drug havens.

That legislation was put to use May 19 as a family was evicted from their home in Sydney Mines, NS, a residence police say was a drug den.

As the CBC reports, police attended the home to make sure everyone listed in court documents left the building. The property will remain boarded up for three months.

Although no one in the home had been charged with drug offences, the Act allows courts to shutter a property for up to 90 days if activities there ?pose an immediate threat to the neighbourhood.?

In this case, George Clarke, a resident of the home, denied any wrongdoing and told CBC that frequent visitors were simply there to obtain clean syringes. ?I try to protect my son’s friends by giving them clean needles,? he told reporters.

The residence is the second in Cape Breton to be closed under the legislation, and several neighbours told reporters they were glad to see the family removed.

In Foreign News: Congress to allow concealed weapons in national parks

Gun-rights advocates in the US are gearing up to declare victory, as Congress looks set to pass a provision allowing ?visitors to national parks and refuges to carry loaded and concealed weapons.?

President Obama is expected to sign the provision into law. The gun provision was piggybacked onto a popular measure making credit-card lending more consumer friendly, according to The New York Times. Rather than derail that measure, Obama is expected to allow the gun provision to pass along with it.

According to some in Congress, the provision ?is less about guns than it is states? rights.? Currently, even in states where residents have been authorized to carry firearms, their weapons must be unloaded and secured while on national lands, such as parks and refuges. Failure to do so, even while passing briefly through such areas, could result in charges for a firearms violation.

Though many in Congress are lukewarm on, or opposed to, gun rights, they realize the difficulties they’re up against. As Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, told reporters, ?Either you are going to bring down the whole Senate and never do anything or you or going to swallow hard and say, ?I will just vote my conscience on those amendments and speak out until people get a hold of their senses.??