Canada's Prime Minister mandates examination of a full ban on handguns and assault weapons

In that you would be wrong. There are three million owners of rifles in Canada. Versus three hundred thousand handgun owners. In short, there aren’t enough legal handgun owners up here to put up much of a fuss over an outright ban, and a lot of non-gun owning Canadians who either support an outright ban, or who are neutral towards it.

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If this proposal ever does emerge from “do a study” and becomes an actual bill, I suspect it will carve out some kind of limited exemption for target shooters - say, allowing target pistols to be kept under lock and key on the premises of licensed shooting ranges.

All the evidence and all the studies prove that you can’t trust people to keep their guns stored safely and securely in their homes. An outright ban is going to be aimed at least as much at cutting down on suicide, accidental death, and murder of family members in the home as it is at making it harder for criminals to obtain guns.

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(s)We don’t yet know that for sure(/s) - since it won’t be permissible to purchase pot here in Ontario until mid October.

eta: forgot the sarcasm tags.

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Ok… my point still stands.

Well there are legitimate hunting uses for handgun hunting, but I don’t know all the hunting laws in Canada, so it may not be legal.

You’ve clearly never been in bear country. Many guides, hikers, hunters, and others use .44 mag or .454 casull or similar. Though maybe they aren’t allowed to be carried in the brush in Canada, they absolutely could be a useful tool if they were.

It looks like your asterisk right there meant you were going to add a note, but I don’t see it.

Anyway, this is Canada we are talking about. It is much harder to acquire a firearm legally, especially handguns. Legal owners have to go through a fairly rigorous process (at least compared the US) and additional steps for a hand guns, including registration. Their licensing process includes a background check (which evidently updates daily to keep the license), and reference checks (i.e. friend and family interviews.)

And finally, even if one can’t use them for hunting, they are still used legally and lawfully for recreational shooting and competition shooting such as some of the people in the video below) - which would be impeded by a ban. Hunting isn’t the only legitimate use of a firearm. Now one may still not care/think it’s ok, but their statement is still full of it.

Well, there is the fact that it’s been legal in Washington and other US states for years now, with no cataclysmic results yet; I think Canada should weather the change just fine.

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Either way it’ll be worth it.

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Sorry, I didn’t mean they would or wouldn’t put up a fuss. I am saying it is BS as it is “impeding their use” despite statements that is won’t. Obviously SOME people are using these items legally and will be impeded.

You’re talking about the Liberals - “do a study” is what they do best.

I think that would be workable, with some effort. Restricted are already essentially range only, you just keep them at home. There are issues around transporting to gunsmiths or to other approved ranges for events that would need to be worked out, though.

It may not have been clear in my original post, but the memorandum involves doing multiple things to combat crime in Canada. The minister is the minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction, after all, so those posters who are suggesting that the act of banning firearms would happen without considering the flow of illegal guns across the border are clearly not RTFA-ing here.

A policy of a total ban on these weapons, plus stricter, harsher penalties for trafficking in these weapons (made easier by their total illegality) would certainly have an effect, and I’m hoping this new ministry will be able to take a holistic approach to the problem (this is, in fact, why the ministry was created in the first place).

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It’s been my experience that both sides will “do a study” if they want to slow or shut down something they don’t like.

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Doesn’t matter: people only read the headlines.

But here is the letter text in case people missed it.

I find the first bullet point on “irregular migration” to be interesting language. Never heard that term before.

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Speak for yourself only, please.

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Yeah, ran out of time.

Look, dude, we get it: guns scan be a blast to play with, and you don’t want them restricted heavily because they’re fun. Literally every gun thread boils down to people arguing the safety aspect (hotheads, toddlers, suicide), versus the hobbyist skeet shooters. And nothing gets accomplished. Nothing changes.

Which is why Canada has had a national conversation, and we’ve come to a conclusion: fuck handguns. Handguns in Canada are rarely used defensively but are really easy to blow someone’s goddamn face off with. Cracked and other sites have done interviews with suicide survivors and it turns out that even when one survives a self inflicted headshot it is a much larger quality of life downgrade vs other methods. From a cost saving view, banning handguns would greatly save the provincial health services.

Yes, guns are fun. So is meth.

I don’t and shouldn’t have to lay put the case every time for why handguns are bad.

Wrt anti bear: BC, Canada’s wildlife capital, requires hikers to wear a bear bell and yo carry bear spray. Handguns aint gonna stop a bear (ESP with Canadians being habitual drunks) but spray is a hella dissuader.

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Not sure that is the conclusion, yet. Currently the government is “looking into it”.

You can’t legally hunt with a handgun in Canada, but you can get a permit to carry one for defense against wild animals.

The numbers aren’t available online, but here’s an article from 2014 which covers it:

Its a very small number compared to the overall annual number of licences for hunting.

The tldr is that being in the wilderness a lot has to be required by your profession. Camping doesn’t qualify.

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A horrific crime was committed in Canada using a handgun, and suddenly, Ottawa is considering a full ban on handguns. I can’t believe I’m saying this (especially when I look down south), but I don’t think this is a good thing. Canada already has strict gun laws. The country has many problems: an opioid epidemic, a strained mental health system, first nations who are still suffering after generations of trauma. Guns are lower down on this list.

Yes, they can, but they can only do so much at once, but they only have so much political capital. The more people talk about this, the less people talk about things that really matter like the completely idiotic move that the government just bought a full pipeline project that has just been blocked by the supreme court.

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Thank heavens it was banned. Can’t hardly get any of that bad ol’ meth nowadays. Oops

Oh, well, if a political party promises something, that should be good enough for all of us.

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I’ve certainly heard the claim that that sort of weapon in a small calibre is useful for vermin control- which is why the UK’s ban on all semi-automatic rifles has an exception for rimfire.

Of course, licences for any rifle in the UK are (in US-speak) may-issue, so you will only be allowed to own an AR-15 or similar in .22LR if you can convince your local police force you have a legitimate use for it.

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