Arguments in favour of legalized handguns in Canada?

Great Debates
1

There are no constitutional protections for gun ownership in Canada. The mayor of Toronto (and others) are calling for a handgun ban across the country.

I have never really thought much about this: I have never used a gun or learned to appreciate their merits, and frankly the thought of my neighbours carrying guns scares the daylights out of me. But I generally try to see both sides of an issue before taking a position, so I want to know the reasons for the opposite position.

I understand the long gun registry was very bad public policy (i.e. the idea was poorly implemented; I don’t know enough to comment on the principle) and I have nothing against hunters or sport shooters (people who shoot clay pigeons, and folks like that).

But, according to my very limited experience, handguns are not designed for sport but for killing people, and there are no good reasons for private citizens to have that capability.

So, the question: assuming no constitutional protection for guns of any sort (i.e. the situation in Canada), what are the arguments in favour of allowing private ownership of handguns?

2

I see no real need for handguns. I do live on a farm, I have neighbours and family that run big farms and ranches. Most have a gun, usually a rifle of some sort in their vehicle or on their horse for the usual farm related reasons.

I do have one or two cousins that prefer to ride on horses with pistols as opposed to rifles, so I guess in that circumstance you could argue for allowing handguns. Unless you are in a rural setting though, I see absolutely no reason for a Canadian citizen to own a handgun.

3

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]

Unless you are in a rural setting though, I see absolutely no reason for a Canadian citizen to own a handgun.
[/QUOTE]

Because they might like to target shoot isn’t a reason? This is what makes gun control talks so much fun. People on both sides of the equation are accustomed to making hyperbolic exclamations similar to the above. Really, you can’t see any reason for a Canadian citizen to own a gun unless they live in a rural area? Or is it really just that you don’t think they should own one?

Marc

4

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
So, the question: assuming no constitutional protection for guns of any sort (i.e. the situation in Canada), what are the arguments in favour of allowing private ownership of handguns?
[/QUOTE]

If I can throw an argument out there:

Because law-abiding citizens do own them, and absent a convincing case that such a ban would accomplish anything, there’s no reason to take away people’s property. The flat reality is that most crimes committed with handguns are committed by people who owned the guns illegally anyway.

I would agree that the government has a valid purpose in regulating the ownership of weapons, but if you wish to infringe upon people’s liberty - which such a ban would do, irrespective of whether or not there is a Constitutional guarantee written anywhere - the government should have to show that there is a pressing public interest in doing so. In fact, I’ve NEVER seen it shown. A handgun ban would, in all likelihood, accomplish absolutely squat. I would guess that it will end up being about as effective as the ban on drugs, which is to say that it will actually COST society money and lives, albeit probably not to the same scale.

The old saw “A Canadian has no reason to own a handgun” argument is pointless and intellectually lazy. A Canadian citizen has no particular reason to own an iPod except that they like iPods. There is no reason why I should own a plastic model of HMS Hood except that I enjoy assembling plastic models. A gun enthusiast may simply enjoy owning fine guns and shooting them at target ranges; how is that any more or less a reason than your reason for whatever hobby you enjoy? If you want to crimizalize something, it is up to you to provide a convincing case, based on solid evidence, that this will accomplish a net societal good.

5

[QUOTE=MGibson]
Because they might like to target shoot isn’t a reason? This is what makes gun control talks so much fun. People on both sides of the equation are accustomed to making hyperbolic exclamations similar to the above. Really, you can’t see any reason for a Canadian citizen to own a gun unless they live in a rural area? Or is it really just that you don’t think they should own one?

Marc
[/QUOTE]

Let me clarify, I spent 30 years living in the Greater Toronto Area. I just moved back to rural Alberta 2 years ago. I do understand the love of handguns to the true gun lover.

Here is where the problem lies tho. The criminal element loves hand guns too. They don’t register them, obviously. There is no real way to control handguns in Canada. I don’t want us to become another USA. Unfortunately when I read the papers on Monday morning, I almost always read about another gun related incident. I don’t have the stats in front of me, but I guess I could find them if necessary.

I really am not a gun hater. Hell I have a fire arms license myself! I got it last year, because here on the farm I have goats and chickens and turkeys. And coyotes and foxes and all sorts of other critters that sometimes may need to be put down. That’s the reality.

6

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
But, according to my very limited experience, handguns are not designed for sport but for killing people, and there are no good reasons for private citizens to have that capability.
[/QUOTE]
Handguns are used for sport though–many years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Linda Thom, who won a gold medal for Canada in the 1984 Olympics, for 25m pistol. She came and spoke to our gun club, which was in Toronto. Of course, our club had a number of handgun shooters, who would never think of pointing a firearm at anything other than a paper target. In fact, I would guess that in Canada, most legitimate handgun owners use them for nothing else but sport. The rest of the legitimate handgun owners/users are law enforcement types of some sort.

Note that the above does not include owners of illegal handguns, who are, it would seem to me, to be the real problem. Such people won’t pay attention to a ban anyway–heck, I’m sure they don’t pay attention to current gun control laws; what makes anybody think that they’d throw away their guns just because of a ban?

If the mayor of Toronto wants to attack the real problem, he might try working with Canada Customs. I would imagine that most illegal handguns are purchased somehow in the US and come up here without anyone knowing. When I was in New York City back in the late 70s, a guy on the street offered to sell me a beautiful Saturday Night Special. (I declined.) As long as guns are freely available in the US, and we share a fairly free-flowing border with that nation where the constitution guarantees access to guns, we’re going to have gun problems in Canada regardless of how many gun laws are put into place up here.

7

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
But, according to my very limited experience, handguns are not designed for sport but for killing people, and there are no good reasons for private citizens to have that capability.
[/QUOTE]

Handguns are designed to fire bullets, not for anything else. Yes, these bullets can be used to kill someone. They can also be used to kill nuisance animals. They can also be used to hunt animals. They can also be used to target practice. Their use is dependent on the person using the handgun.

Your view that there are “no good reasons” for people to own handguns is contradicted by the millions of people who own them. It is also unfortunate that this is how so many people decide on the proper policy – “I can see no good reason to allow someone to do that, so let’s ban it.” My desire to do certain things should not be dependent on whether or not you can find a “good reason” for me to do it. I should be able to do what I want unless it harms someone else. Hell, looking out my window I can see no good reason why my neighbor should own their stupid dog. But guess what – it’s not up to me to determine what is good for them. They made the decision to buy it, they find some pleasure out of it, and I don’t get a vote. As much as I dislike that dog, I have no right to take it away from them (or try to use the government to take it away from them).

Owning a handgun hurts no one. Killing someone with a handgun does hurt someone else, and unless it is done in self-defense it should be illegal.

8

[QUOTE=RickJay]
If you want to crimizalize something, it is up to you to provide a convincing case, based on solid evidence, that this will accomplish a net societal good.
[/QUOTE]

And that’s only if you subscribe to the notion that societal needs should override individual rights, which many Americans (and I hope many Canadians) do not. After all, it’s not too hard to present a convincing case of, for example, the many, many ills caused by the free availability of alcohol in society. Once you put the individual at the mercy of the State, you’ve opened the door to unending abuses.

Honestly, handguns are already regulated out the wazoo in Canada. If Canadians are happy with that, fine, but I don’t think an outright ban is going to do anybody any good; all it will do is unfairly repress the many Canadians who are interested in sport shooting.

But hey, any Canadians thus disenfranchised will always be welcome here in the Land of the Free¹. If you want to lose all your best Canadians, it might be a policy to consider. :smiley:

¹ Void where prohibited. Some restrictions and light waterboarding may apply. See dealer for details.

9

[QUOTE=FarmerChick]
I see no real need for handguns. I do live on a farm, I have neighbours and family that run big farms and ranches. Most have a gun, usually a rifle of some sort in their vehicle or on their horse for the usual farm related reasons.

I do have one or two cousins that prefer to ride on horses with pistols as opposed to rifles, so I guess in that circumstance you could argue for allowing handguns. Unless you are in a rural setting though, I see absolutely no reason for a Canadian citizen to own a handgun.
[/QUOTE]

I’d just like to say that the concept of banning something because someone sees ‘no real need for it’ is completely repugnant in a free society.

I’ll be the judge of whether I need something, thank you. And before you take that line of thinking any further, you might want to take an inventory of the things in your life and determine how many of them you ‘really need’, and how you’d feel if someone decided to take them from you by force because you didn’t need them.

10

Hold on - is sport shooting done with handguns? So my original assumption, that

is incorrect?

Interesting. That certainly does change the debate a little.

11

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
Hold on - is sport shooting done with handguns?
[/QUOTE]
You must be too young to remember the 1984 Olympics. As I mentioned above, Linda Thom won a gold medal for us in pistol. It was front-page news across the country, first item on the TV and radio news, etc. Certainly at that time, and because of Ms. Thom’s achievement, everybody in Canada knew that handguns could be used for sport shooting

12

I don’t think there will ever be an outright ban in Canada. I’m currently at work and can’t do the research but what I’d like to see is a 10 year prison sentence for anyone who is in possession of an unregistered handgun. The likelihood of the borders being tightened is slim so I think this is the next best thing.

And now that I’ve thought about it, I’m not thrilled with my idea. I don’t think it would actually do anything.

13

Handguns are not very good at killing people. There’s a saying amongst the people with whom I hang - “A handgun is useful for fighting your way back to your rifle”. They are underpowered and comparatively inaccurate. You want to kill someone? Get a hunting rifle.

Handgun competitions are quite enjoyable, Cowboy Action shooting is almost as much fun to watch as it is to shoot, many bunnies have fallen to my .22 pistol, plenty of people hunt larger game with revolvers, and target practice is also fun.

There, now legalize them so law abiding citizens are not punished for the actions of criminals.

14

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
Hold on - is sport shooting done with handguns? So my original assumption, that
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
is incorrect?
[/QUOTE]

Whether it is or not doesn’t matter…your argument is flawed at the core. You are attempting to make a value judgment that is subjective to yourself, but then to force that judgement on everyone else. YOU may think that hand guns have no value (unless it’s a sport?)…so therefore hand guns have no value.

Do you see the flaw? Perhaps I feel that alchohol has no value. It certainly causes a non-zero amount of harm to individuals and society as a whole each year (more so than fire arms in fact). Doesn’t this mean that alchohol should be outlawed? Isn’t MY judgement of value really the only valid one? Tobacco is the same. Hell…toothpicks cause harm and I personally find no value in owning or using them.

-XT

15

I would think that anyone willing to jump through all the required hoops to own a handgun legally in Canada is exceedingly unlikely to be the sort to use one criminally. Hence, there’s really no point in further restricting legally-owned handguns. A ban wouldn’t gain society anything whatsoever, would take away the property of law-abiding citizens, and is therefore a bad idea.

For full disclosure, I grew up on a farm, shot various longarms somewhat regularly, personally never saw any point in having a handgun.

16

[QUOTE=Stealth Potato]
And that’s only if you subscribe to the notion that societal needs should override individual rights, which many Americans (and I hope many Canadians) do not.
[/QUOTE]

Obviously, the number of Americans and Canadians who literally believe that is vanishingly small. 99% of all intelligent (and semi-intelligent, I suppose) people will concede that the individual must surrender SOME freedom to allow for the state to function. Even folks with a libertarian streak will concede the basics; you aren’t free to libel someone, or foment violence, and such things.

If it sounded like I was justifying taking awya rights based on a societal good, I’m not. I am much closer to libertarian than socialist, and to my mind the price paid by intrusions upon people’s freedom is very high, and so the justification needs to be very clear-cut and needs to substatially outweigh the cost in freedom and trouble.

To use an example, I believe seat belt laws are a reasonable intrusion upon people’s liberty:

  1. The societal benefit of seat belt laws has been enormous. It is fact that the laws have increased the use of seat belts, and it is fact that the corresponding costs saved are astronomical.

  2. While such laws do constitute an infringement upon liberty, it’s an extremely minor one. Nobody loses any property by obeying the law, the inconvenience is trivial, and there’s not really any reasonably likely slippery slope into the loss of additional freedoms. Even the penalties for non-compliance are pretty small.

  3. The law is appropriately and reasonably limited in scope; specifically, it is to the use of motor vehicles on highways belonging to the people (or Her Majesty, in Canada, if you want to get technical) and so the legislature legitimately has a say as to how those roadways can be used. If you want to build a track on your own property and bomb around it at 140 miles an hour wearing no seat belt, there is no law against it.

To my mind, these three tests (a clear social value, a correspondingly lower cost in liberrties curtailed, and reasonable application) don’t work with the handgun ban:

  1. There has never been any reliable study produced that a handgun ban in Ontario, or Canada as a whole, would produce a measurable benefit. Handguns are very tightly controlled. The vast majority of guns used in crimes are already illegal and would not be affected by a ban at all. It is simply not clear a handgun ban would have a genuine positive effect.

  2. The infringement upon people’s liberty would be much more substantial than the unproven likelihood of a crime reduction. The only people who would pay a price, initially, would be the very people who are NOT committing crimes with guns; they would lose their property or be branded criminals, despite the fact that they are not the problem the government is out to solve.

  3. It would almost certainly lend credence to calls for a ban on all firearms.

As a disclaimer; I have a lot of experience with firearms, having been a soldier, but own no firearms and have no interest in owning one. I don’t have any self-interest in opposing a handgun ban, but I do anyway because it’s bad policy.

17

[QUOTE=cowgirl]
But, according to my very limited experience, handguns are not designed for sport but for killing people, and there are no good reasons for private citizens to have that capability.
[/QUOTE]
As others have said, there are plenty of “sporting activies” involving handguns, including target and competitive shooting, hunting, and general plinking. But this alone doesn’t justify public access to handguns or any firearms; there might be good public safety reasons why, despite any sporting aspect, firearms should be considered a public hazard. However, I take issue with your latter statement, that “there are no good reasons for private citizens to have that capability [killing].” While it is true that we would strongly desire people not to kill one another, the fact is that the criminal element engages in violent and life-threatening conduct regardless of what anyone else strongly desires of them, and to that end it may be beneficial for the private citizen to possess the capability to respond to such a threat with lethal force, especially when legal authority is not available or willing to provide such protection.

Criminals predominately favor handguns despite their limitations because they are portable and easily handled in a tight situation. Of course, this is the same reason that police and private citizens so licensed or otherwise permitted to carry also prefer handguns. Personally, if I knew I were going to be in some kind of conflict which justified using a firearm, I’d bring a shotgun or rifle, but I’d scarcely want to carry such a thing around all the time for the generally remote probability of having to put it to use. (Actually, if I knew that such a conflict were imminent, I’d seek refuge someplace far away and preferable with a well-stocked bar, but we don’t always get to choose our conflicts.)

As for crime, if you normalize overall violent crime statistics inclusive of all weapons, you’ll find that crime in the United States is not overly disproportionate to that in nations in which firearm possession by the citizenry is restricted or prohibited. Criminals simply use other weapons. And within the United States, it is a general truth that the areas that are most restrictive with regard to the possession of firearms are also those in which crime rates are highest. This is not to suggest, as certain libertarians would have us believe, that “an armed society is a polite society,” (certainly there are many nations in Africa which can attest to the negation of that statement); however, it cannot be said that the presence of firearms alone encourages the commission of crime.

Personally, I grew up around firearms and learned to respect them as potentially hazardous tools from an early age. If handled appropriately, firearms (including handguns) are less hazardous than many shop tools and certainly than automobiles; on the other hand, if handled inappropriately (which is done far too often, and many of the most egregious violators in my experience as a former enthusiast and shooting instructor) are among so-called professionals in law enforcement and military (with apologies to those in the indentified categories who do take firearm handling seriously). If I felt I had need to carry a handgun for defense owing to an ever-present threat I would, although my preference (and my present state of existence) would be to evacuate myself from the threat and not bother with the responsibility of regularly carrying and securing a handgun.

With regard to the specific question posed by the o.p., I find that most calls by politicians and pundits to enact prohibitions against firearms in the interest of reducing crime (as if criminals by definition are particularly concerned about yet another law) are the result of a desire to be seen “doing something” rather than really tackling the very complex and troublesome socioeconomic issues that engender violent crime to begin with. This makes for a definitive and easily stated campaign plank, but fails to address root problems, which is the thing that most pisses me off about gun control; it is almost always pure showboating over real substance, with no emphasis on the practicality of reducing crime or criminal access to firearms in pursuit of crime.

Stranger

18

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
As for crime, if you normalize overall violent crime statistics inclusive of all weapons, you’ll find that crime in the United States is not overly disproportionate to that in nations in which firearm possession by the citizenry is restricted or prohibited. Criminals simply use other weapons.
[/quote]
Perhaps I’m not understand what you mean by “normalise” here; simply expressing it per capita it doesn’t seem to support your contention.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The rate of property crime in the US and Canada are roughly on par. However, historically, the violent crime rate in Canada has been lower than the US and this continues to be the case. For example, in 2000 the United States’ rate for robberies was 65% higher, its rate for aggravated assault was more than double and its murder rate was triple.

…

The homicide rate in Canada peaked in 1975 at 3.03 per 100,000 and has dropped since then … between 1998 to 2004 it was 1.82. The attempted homicide rate has fallen at a faster rate than the homicide rate.

By comparison, the homicide rate in the US reached 10.1 per 100,000 in 1974, peaked in 1980 at 10.7 and reached a lower peak in 1991 (10.5) … The average murder rate between 1970 and 1976 was 9.4, between 1977 and 1983 it was 9.6, between 1984 and 1990 it was 9, between 1991 and 1997 it was 9.2 and between 1998 and 2004 it was 6.3.

Approximately 70% of the total murders in the US are committed with firearms, vs. about 30% in Canada.
[/QUOTE]
So in 2004 the US had about 18,900 murders of which 13,230 were by firearm and so 5,670 by other means, whereas Canada had about 600 murders of which 200 were by firearm and 400 by other means.

Is this really so? And if so, couldn’t that be because areas with the highest crime rates try to lower them by restricting gun ownership? That is you have cause and effect reversed?

19

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Whether it is or not doesn’t matter…your argument is flawed at the core.
[/QUOTE]

I am not making an argument. I stated my uninformed opinion, disclosed that it was uninformed because I do not have enough information to take an informed position, and then asked to hear arguments supporting the other side (because I have never heard them before).

Please do not attribute motivations to me that I have not demonstrated. This sort of miscommunication is how fights begin, and I am not interested in a fight.

In fact since I started this thread I have changed my fledgling (and utterly irrelevant) opinion, due to

(a) RickJay’s argument
(b) Toronto community activists who point out that programs for at-risk youth in Toronto have been cut by the current mayor’s administration, which really makes this look like a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing
(c) my new understanding of handguns - that they are used for sport, and that criminals may be better served by weapons that wouldn’t be covered by a handgun ban

20

[QUOTE=Askance]
Is this really so? And if so, couldn’t that be because areas with the highest crime rates try to lower them by restricting gun ownership? That is you have cause and effect reversed?
[/QUOTE]

Consider an area such as Washington, D.C., which imposed a virtual ban on handguns in 1976 and has had some of the highest crime rates in the nation over the past 30 years. It would be hard to say that such a ban needs 30 years to work its magic. In fact, I don’t think there is any evidence that supports the idea that gun bans reduce crime. Gun ownership laws simply have no effect on those who are inclined to misuse guns for criminal purposes.