How many more citizens have to get shot or killed before we take away their guns in Canada?

Peace.

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In a lengthy letter to Justin Trudeau outlining a long-term approach to tackling crime, Singh says more policing is not a solution to gun violence in cities because some measures, such as street checks and carding, have amplified distrust between police and racialized communities, Indigenous peoples and those struggling with mental illness.

Instead, he says allowing cities to ban handguns would help municipal authorities deal with the fact that many gun crimes are committed with legal guns.

How will they enforce this ban, if not more policing?

By the time someone commits a crime with a handgun, it matters little whether or not they acquired it legally -- obviously they're not really deterred by laws.  Why is someone who's willing to murder another going to suddenly stop and make different life choices because their gun is now "banned"?

I'm not sure how that could be any more obvious.  Criminals do illegal things, even though they're already illegal.  That's literally the definition of criminals.  Why not cast a very wide net and simply "ban" criminals!!?  I wonder how effective that would be???

It is really unfortunate that none of the major political parties are serious about banning the guns.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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In a lengthy letter to Justin Trudeau outlining a long-term approach to tackling crime, Singh says more policing is not a solution to gun violence in cities because some measures, such as street checks and carding, have amplified distrust between police and racialized communities, Indigenous peoples and those struggling with mental illness.

Instead, he says allowing cities to ban handguns would help municipal authorities deal with the fact that many gun crimes are committed with legal guns.

How will they enforce this ban, if not more policing?

By the time someone commits a crime with a handgun, it matters little whether or not they acquired it legally -- obviously they're not really deterred by laws.  Why is someone who's willing to murder another going to suddenly stop and make different life choices because their gun is now "banned"?

I'm not sure how that could be any more obvious.  Criminals do illegal things, even though they're already illegal.  That's literally the definition of criminals.  Why not cast a very wide net and simply "ban" criminals!!?  I wonder how effective that would be???

Same analysis

Mr. Magoo wrote:

By the time someone commits a crime with a handgun, it matters little whether or not they acquired it legally -- obviously they're not really deterred by laws.  Why is someone who's willing to murder another going to suddenly stop and make different life choices because their gun is now "banned"?

I'm not sure how that could be any more obvious.  Criminals do illegal things, even though they're already illegal.  That's literally the definition of criminals.  Why not cast a very wide net and simply "ban" criminals!!?  I wonder how effective that would be???

Having spent a lot of time dealing with heapings of bullshit on all sides of the gun debate, in the US and Canada, the "But criminals don't obey laws!" argument is the most tiresome one out there.

Hear me out. It's not just a tautology; it heavily implies that there are two distinct, non-overlapping classes of people: the "law-abiding", who obey every law under all circumstances, and the "criminals", who obey [i]no[/i] laws under any circumstances, and who laws therefore have no effect on whatsoever. So, the implication goes, why even pass them? (There's another implication about the demographic composition of these two groups, but perhaps that's best for another thread.)

This is another argument that holds together until one thinks about it for more than ten seconds. There's no point in cops and politicians talking about laws as a "deterrent" if there are only law-abiders and lawbreakers, and never the twain shall meet. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of people obey some laws and break others, and the decisions about which to obey and which to break aren't so much commitments to overriding moral philosophy as spur-of-the-moment judgements/misjudgements about likelihood of prosecution and individual desire.

The NRA, unsurprisingly, loves this particular abuse of logic. They're speaking up on behalf of "law-abiding gun owners", and therefore when one of them gets drunk and shoots his wife for burning dinner, he's no longer law-abiding, he's a criminal, set upon that course from the beginning, and no laws could ever have stopped him. After all, we wouldn't want to pigeonhole people as potential future criminals, would we?

It's clearly not impossible for the criminally inclined to get their hands on guns in Canada, and probably only marginally more difficult than in the US. So what accounts for the dramatically lower rates of gun crime north of the border? Perhaps one of those factors is that some people who have decided it's worth the risk to break one law (say, the one against selling drugs) have also decided it isn't worth the risk to illegally carry a gun while doing so. Perhaps another is that the average domestic abuser is less likely to have a gun in the house. Both of them, clearly, criminals, just like the neighbour who drives drunk, the Bay Street tax evader, and the premier of Ontario (allegedly). But if they're less likely to carry a gun, they're less likely to shoot someone. Even though they're criminals.

All that said, I think the issue of municipal handgun bans is useless grandstanding (the Montréal motion cited mass shootings committed with rifles). But the reason I think it's useless grandstanding is that I think the laws are tough enough already, not that I think there's no point in passing any laws whatsoever.

cco wrote:

All that said, I think the issue of municipal handgun bans is useless grandstanding (the Montréal motion cited mass shootings committed with rifles). But the reason I think it's useless grandstanding is that I think the laws are tough enough already, not that I think there's no point in passing any laws whatsoever.

I thought your post was an excellent debunking of the "criminals" vs. "law-abiding citizens" scam. But I don't understand this last paragraph - must be missing something. Montréal asked the federal government to ban handguns and assault rifles. Combined with severe penalties, that would be an extremely positive move toward reducing accidents and incidents of all kinds. The NDP asked the federal government to allow cities to ban handguns. That's a farce, in my opinion, and a cop-out (no pun intended).

So, what do you think of Montréal's proposal?

PS: For years in these pages, I've been promoting a ban on all firearms in appropriately delineated municipal areas, so I would go much further than Montréal's proposal - those who want to hunt can store their arms in some rural depository and pick them up and leave them there.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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Combined with severe penalties, that would be an extremely positive move toward reducing accidents and incidents of all kinds.

What kind of penalties are you picturing?

Nothing new - just the current Criminal Code penalties for possession of a prohibited weapon would do, I think.

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Unauthorized possession of firearm

• 91 (1) Subject to subsection (4), every person commits an offence who possesses a prohibited firearm, a restricted firearm or a non-restricted firearm without being the holder of

  • (a) a licence under which the person may possess it; and

  • (b) in the case of a prohibited firearm or a restricted firearm, a registration certificate for it.

• Unauthorized possession of prohibited weapon or restricted weapon

  (2) Subject to subsection (4), every person commits an offence who possesses a prohibited weapon, a restricted weapon, a prohibited device, other than a replica firearm, or any prohibited ammunition, without being the holder of a licence under which the person may possess it.

• Punishment

  (3) Every person who commits an offence under subsection (1) or (2)

  • (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years; or

  • (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

What do you think?

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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What do you think?

That if that's the status quo, it doesn't seem to be deterring.  But in that respect, what do you think?  If that's a sufficient deterrent then what's our problem?

I think there's some confusion here. It would become unlawful to possess a handgun, period. Right now, it's lawful. 

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It really shouldn't matter how easy it is to get an illegal gun, if current penalties for owning one or using one are too much risk to make it worthwhile.

I don't understand that statement. If the risk of 5 years in prison doesn't work as a deterrent, then it will be up to Parliament to increase the severity. If being found in possession of a handgun or assault rifle could incur life imprisonment, I'm willing to bet that will make some assholes think twice. And if that doesn't work, then we should just stop pretending we care about gun violence. But I don't think that's the case.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

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If being found in possession of a handgun or assault rifle could incur life imprisonment, I'm willing to bet that will make some assholes think twice.

OK, but now I'm the confused one.  Is that what you think the penalty SHOULD be?  I certainly have to think that if the current penalties for owning an illegal gun are supposed to deter people from owning an illegal gun, they're not really working. 

And banning handguns and "assault rifles" doesn't really change anything for someone already in possession of an illegal handgun or assault rifle.  Those are, by definition, already "banned".  Should we dial up the penalty from what it currently is?

You are indeed confused. Possession of handguns and assault rifles IS NOT ILLEGAL right now. Montréal is proposing that Parliament BAN possession of ALL handguns and assault rifles. I'm saying I think that's a great idea. If Parliament does that, there are already penalties in place in the Criminal Code for prohibited weapons. I have no opinion right now whether we need to increase those penalties. First step is to BAN those firearms, entirely, period.

Now, if you're saying that "criminals" will always find and use such weapons regardless of their being banned... I'm suggesting that we should BAN them first, make sure the police forces ENFORCE the new law, and then SEE WHAT HAPPENS. That's exactly what Montréal city council is proposing, and I'm behind them, even though I'd like to see broader bans myself.

Hopefully the use of capital letters and boldface will help dispel some confusion.

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You are indeed confused. Possession of handguns and assault rifles IS NOT ILLEGAL right now.

For all but a few, it certainly is.  But yes, for those few, who've filled out the forms and paid the fees, it's legal.

As far as the penalties for breaking the law go, perhaps they would be enough to convince some collector to hand over their gun.  I'm still not sure they're going to convince someone who needs their gun for "business" to drop it in the amnesty bin.  Not if they're not certain that their "competitors" in the "rival businesses" did first.

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Now, if you're saying that "criminals" will always find and use such weapons regardless of their being banned... I'm suggesting that we should BAN them first, make sure the police forces ENFORCE the new law, and then SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

For starters, we did this once, but with booze.

But OK.  I guess I thought we were trying to get guns off the streets, not out of some box in someone's basement.

My cynical prediction is that gun crime will not dry up if we do this.  Magically, somehow, despite the ban, they'll create guns for themselves out of sheer will or something.  But if you're lucky, the dragnet might round up some obstinate sport shooters, and maybe we could "creatively extract" some names from them or whatever.

Sometimes it really seems like the left thinks that legal gun owners, who've committed no crime, are just sad and sick individuals who need a gun to "compensate" for their manhood, or else sadistically just want to kill things from a distance.

But the people actually pulling the triggers on the streets, the ones actually responsible for the bulk of actual gun crimes, are just understandably trying to get by as best they can given the limited opportunities available.

In other words, we should be more angry at the person who WANTS a gun but harms nobody, for the moral crime of wanting a gun.

Well, it's kind of hard for me to want to throw much support behind something I don't really think is going to fix the actual problem.

It's like if the government decided that too many people were driving 150kph on the highway -- flagrantly ignoring the posted speed limit of 100kph.

So they decide to drop the speed limit to 80kph, and proceed to round up every speed demon driving 83.

It looks proactive.  They'll have plenty of impounded cars for photo-ops.  And admittedly, it's a lot easier to catch the guy going 83 than the guy going 150.

But it doesn't really affect those 150kph drivers, because if they're not going to obey a 100kph speed limit, they're not going to obey an 80kph speed limit either.

And that's what I think a government plan to get the locked and unloaded handguns in the locked safes out of citizens hands (instead of getting the loaded and ready handgun out of some asshole's waistband) would be like.  It's nothing more than picking the low-hanging fruit so politicians can say "look how much fruit I picked".

Mr. Magoo wrote:

And admittedly, it's a lot easier to catch the guy going 83 than the guy going 150.

But it doesn't really affect those 150kph drivers, because if they're not going to obey a 100kph speed limit, they're not going to obey an 80kph speed limit either.

I don't recall which province you live in, but in Québec these days, you get a package in the mail with a photo of your car, and a record of the speed you were driving when photographed. It's a lot easier to catch the "guy" going 150. And instead of dropping the speed limit to 80, how about amending the criminal code to criminalize driving more than 30 kph (say) over the posted limit - you know, the way we criminalized impaired driving? I'm not actually proposing that, because I'm not convinced it's necessary. Because guess what:

So, if we banned handguns, with criminal penalties for any possession whatsoever, tell me why you're so convinced that it wouldn't make a difference? More importantly, why we shouldn't try it? 

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So, if we banned handguns, with criminal penalties for any possession whatsoever, tell me why you're so convinced that it wouldn't make a difference? More importantly, why we shouldn't try it?

I seem to recall the Cons introducing a bill that would ensure mandatory penalties for possession of an illegal handgun, but that was ruled unconstitutional.  I'm not sure if it was the word "mandatory", or whether it was because the Cons initiated it, but I seem to recall folk, perhaps including yourself, being happy that this was struck down.

What, specifically, would you like to do differently this time?  As far as I can tell, all you're really proposing is that the gun locked in someone's basement in a gun safe be added to the list of illegal handguns.  That's just taking a law that's already not working the way we expect, and expanding its scope (hence my speeding analogy -- taking an ineffective law and hoping that by making it apply to more people it will somehow become effective).

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Better stay away from memorials for gun-murder victims or you might get gun-murdered yourself

Four guys walk up to one guy in broad daylight, shoot him multiple times and run off?

Somehow I doubt the average person has that much to worry about unless they've somehow offended those four guys.  I won't be the least bit surprised if this turns out to be a retribution for some perceived slight or gang grievance.

I also wonder whether they used a registered gun, bought legally, and whether the shooter had all the right permits and paperwork.  Or, conversely, whether the weapon even still had a serial number.

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Toronto and Montreal city councils have called for it, Toronto's mayor has demanded it, the federal government is examining it, but the head of Toronto's police union says a handgun ban won't stop shootings.

This is why some hard data would be nice.

If most of Canada's handgun violence has been committed by individuals exploiting our (lax?) laws in order to buy a handgun to shoot some other guy with then I suppose we need to consider banning all handguns.

And if most of Canada's handgun violence has been committed by individuals who did not acquire their handgun legally under those (lax?) laws then I honestly don't think it's unreasonable to ask how making it illegal for them to get their hands on "some heat" when it's already illegal for them is supposed to make them reconsider their life choices.  How much more obvious could it possibly be that they don't really care?

It's literally as stupid and naive as saying that if clergy keep sexually assaulting young people then we need a SPECIAL law that prohibits priests raping altar boys, as though the current laws against anyone sexually assaulting anyone else are somehow inadequate.

I agree with the government that keeping track of who's bought a gun -- any gun -- is common sense. 

And I also agree with the opposition that this isn't going to do anything to stop the actual people actually pulling the trigger in the real world.  Like they just bought that Glock at Canadian Tire and gave their real name for the warranty.