It’s also worth noting that safety courses and such would hardly make a dent in gun-related homicides. They presumably reduce gun ACCIDENTS, but they aren’t going to reduce gun murders.
I didn’t realize those things already existed. But if they already have a list of ammunition buyers with a license, they almost have a gun registry already. Shouldn’t cost a billion to ask purchasers to add info about the guns.
I agree the answer for increased safety probably lies elsewhere. Not sure about the epidemiology of it. The rarity of these events is a little bit reassuring. Not sure why we’d need to get by US legal standards. I don’t think Canadians are even allowed well regulated militia. Not a thing here.
If anyone wants a quick primer on firearm ownership in Canada: Explain like I’m Five Episode 7: guns in Canada.
Exactly. The focus of the PAL isn’t on gun training and gun safety; it’s on whether the person is safe to have guns.
But doing it with each purchase of a gun will never build up a comprehensive gun registry. Guns last a long time. The PAL covers both possession and acquisition, as mentioned. The PAL doesn’t say anything about how many guns I have. If I purchase ammunition, that doesn’t tell you how many guns I have. And if I bought a multi-year supply of ammunition before your proposed new requirement comes into force, my guns and ammo may never be included on that new registry.
That was one of the reasons the registry was such a massive undertaking. It’s estimated that there are 7.1 million firearms in private hands in Canada. To create a comprehensive registry, the government had to come up with a way to register all of them on a short time-line. As RickJay commented, while the need for vehicle registration is often used as a comparator, vehicles have been licensed for over a century. The task is just to licence each vehicle as it’s bought by an individual. You don’t have to start a new registry for every vehicle in Canada, which is what the gun registry required.
Epidemiology is one of the tools that some use to measure gun control effectiveness, just like other public health issues. If you treat gun homicides like a medical event, and then ask if gun control measures have affected gun homicide rates, epidemiology principles and stats analysis may be one way to gauge the effectiveness of those measures, just like epidemiologist are currently measuring how effective social distancing and other government measures are against COVID. That’s the theory, at any rate.
Personally, I’m not convinced that there is a close fit, because the social factors about gun ownership and usage have a lot more variation than disease transmission by a virus. However, it is an attempt to bring some scientific rigour to measuring the effectiveness of gun control measures, rather than just rely on gut instincts. To my mind, the more empirical information the government has to guide its policy choices, the better, even if that empirical information comes with qualifications.
The reason I mentioned the US situation is to highlight that our gun control laws are much different, and much stricter, than the US situation. I’ve noticed a tendency in personal conversations about gun control with other Canadians that they have so absorbed the US situation into their mindsets that they assume the situation is similar here. It isn’t, and in my opinion, any discussion on whether we need more measures in Canada should start with a summary of what we already have, and ask, as I asked Dr Drake upthread: what specific new measures do you want, to make our gun laws stricter than what they already are?
Just to provide further background on what the conditions for a PAL, qwhich applies to both firearms and ammunition, heres’ the staatutory provisions from the Friearms Act (the passage I quoted earlier is from the Firearms Regulations; the two need to be read together):
There is also a requirement for completion of a gun safety course (see s. 7), but as mentioned above, the real focus of the PAL system is assessing whether it would be unsafe for an applicant to have access to firearms or ammunition.
I obviously hit Reply instead of Preview in the previous post. :eek:
Thank you for reviewing some of the factors which make gun safety in Canada more tightly controlled than some other countries. Much I didn’t know. I agree the perceptions are we are not doing enough, and other countries could also be taking further steps.
Car information has been collected for many years. No system is perfect and there are laws that make defacing car identification information illegal to dissuade criminal use. One of the obvious obstacles to a gun registry is law abiding people don’t want to do it, nor pay fees, nor deal with the bureaucracy. It also may not help, but some professionals think it does.
On the face of it, these obstacles exist with many other things. If, when you buy ammunition, you are under legal obligation to list all the guns you own (since you likely own at least one gun if buying ammo), this would allow for a registry to be cheaply compiled. It would not be perfect. But it wouldn’t be anyway. Criminals likely would not declare guns and some would object to the law and disobey it. Again, a gun registry may be of little use to enforcement - I don’t know. But it still seems to me one way to do it. Wouldn’t cost a billion. The real obstacle is that no politician wants to alienate rural districts (that may already lean conservative) for a small or piddling benefit. In that sense, the situation in Canada and the US may both shaped by a degree of political fear.
Is there a practical benefit to a gun registry?
The last gun registry we had cost 2 billion dollars, millions of Canadians refused to comply, and in the end the police admitted it didn’t help them solve a single case.
You can’t stop crazy people. This guy posed as a Mountie, had a fake police car, and went on his rampage for 12 hours, tricking people into letting him get close to them. A person like that could have killed as many people with a bleemin’ sword.
We have had mass murders carried out recently with vehicles. Europe is experiencing a wave of knifings since they banned guns, and home invasions, assaults and rape have gone way up.
And as others said, the vast majority of gun crimes in Canada are carried out with guns illegally smuggled into the country.
So you want to restrict the rights of millions of law-abiding people for what would essentially be a feel-good measure that would have zero effect on crime statistics. In the process, you would increase western alienation and further radicalize the very people you think are dangerous.
This is simply irrational. So we’ll probably do it. The irrationality of ‘assault rifle’ bans never stopped the gun grabbers before. I guess it’s better to feel good than to do good.
You can’t stop crazy people. But it is often possible to help them. You can give people a sense of dignity and community. And eschew attitudes that mock or blame or isolate. That radicalize. This guy had previous anger issues, had been cautioned with respect to ownership before. Was indeed known. It is quite rare to suddenly snap - it’s a gradual thing. You can’t prevent everything. But there are lessons to be learned here. Somewhere.
If gun control leads to fewer shootings and more stabbings, the number of victims will be a lot less. European problems, if true, might be related to many other factors apart from gun control - including autocratic government, migration, intolerance, xenophobia and opportunity.
If Canada has already struck a good balance between safety and responsible rights, and they probably have… but two questions…
- Why did the Police Chief Association claim (if I recall correctly) the registry was helpful?
- What is the “highest powered” gun legally available which might be used for hunting - and is it excessive or not?
(In fairness, my bias is for more restrictions and less hunting, although I have learned from this thread the balance is more reasonable than I thought.)
A lot of articles claim that to achieve more control, there need to be more restrictions on handguns. This is said to be more controversial than “military” or “assault” weapons.
- What percentage of violent incidents, including gangs, involve handguns?
just curious - where in the country are these articles being published?
Part of me would rather see registry money spent stopping weapons coming in. That means automated, large scale xraying type systems at every entry point, every car, every bag, etc. It could be used for many other good purposes too, stopping heaps of contraband and illegal activity. Yeah, sure, expensive, but if they finance a second gun registry? The cost of the two, would surely make a good start.
These are recent articles in the Globe and the Star. I might have read 2 or 3 articles essentially saying this. They are often opinion pieces by various groups advocating gun control or people related to victims of gun crime who have become advocates. The articles stated their opinions but not the underlying evidence, if any, or what the actual laws are. For that reason, since articles often omit important background, I appreciate your contribution in saying what the laws are and what procedures are in place. It has changed my mind to some degree. Thank you.
Sure, attitudes like that help. I don’t see much evidence of that happening. But that’s a better place to start than simply trying to ban the tool used. There is simply zero evidence that adding a gun registry or banning ‘assault weapons’ will do anything at all for the crime rate. It hasn’t in the past. And in the U.S., gun ownership was liberalized after the Heller decision, striking down gun laws all over the country. Years afterwards, the crime rate has fallen, and in some places dramatically. In the meantime, the crime rate in Europe, which has all but banned guns, is climbing rapidly. And one of the biggest mass murders in France was carried out by a guy driving a semi truck through a crowd.
It’s always tempting to take a symbolic step that’s easy (banning the gun a person used) than to take steps that are much harder but actually effective (controlling illegal gun smuggling, doing something about inner city gangs, working on programs to help the mentally ill). Politicians will gladly choose the former when they can get away with it.
And that’s where the bang for the buck really is. But these are ‘wicked’ problems politicians don’t want to deal with, so they’d rather just ban something and call it mission accomplished, while doing nothing about the actual underlying causes.
For example, one obvious area of improvement that even gun owners support is increased penalties for using guns in the commission of a crime. In the U.S., gun charges are often the first thing plea-bargained away in criminal cases.
For example, if you rob a store or a person you get charged for the robbery, with whatever punishment that brings. But if you use a gun to do it, it’s a ten year sentence added on. That sort of thing. Laws like that will have no effect on law-abiding gun owners, but might actually deter people from using guns in crime. Instead, we do the opposite: Often the gun use in a crime is ignored or bargained away, while we seek increasingly strict controls on people who aren’t committing crimes.
As I recall, there was a split between the Police Chief association (which is a political organization), and actual police chiefs. And I also recall that a number of them came out against Trudeau’s floating of gun bans last year, saying they would do no good and deflect attention from the real problems leading to the rise of crime in Ontario.
‘High Power’ really doesn’t have anything to do with gun crime. The most common ‘Assault weapon’, the AR-15, shoots a .223 bullet, which isn’t nearly as powerful as many standard hunting rounds like the .308.
Canadians can own some really powerful weapons, including the .338 Lapua which Canadian snipers use, and the .50 caliber, which is about as powerful a cartridge as you will normally find in a portable gun. But none of these super-powerful cartridges have ever been used in a crime in Canada. I’m guessing because the guns that fire them are super expensive, very heavy, and require significant training to use effectively.
The problem is not with people buying ‘powerful’ guns. An ‘Assault weapn’ (a political term, not a real type of gun) is so designated based on superficial characteristics, not in its killing ability. The U.S. law designated an ‘assault weapon’ as a weapon with a flash suppressor, a pistol grip, a detachable magazine, and semi-automatic fire. Only the last two have any impact at all on how it shoots, and those characteristics are shared by many sporting arms not considered ‘assault weapons’.
The most common hunting rounds, the .308 Winchester, 30-06, 30-30, are all more powerful than the bullet fired from an AR-15. An SKS or AK-47 fires a round equivalent to common hunting bullets.
And shotguns can be most powerful of all, and also more devastating close-in. If the shooters who have shot up schools with AR-15s and such had used shotguns instead, the devastation would have been worse.
Yes, we are already quite restricted. When you buy a handgun, the process is something like this: First you have to take a training course and pay a few hundred bucks for the basic firearms safety course. THEN you have to take a second course on handgun safety and the legal requirements around ownership. Then you have to apply for the license to buy a gun, which costs money and time. Then, once you put a deposit on the gun you want, you have to take the paperwork to a local RCMP station, and they will do a thorough background check on you. Once that’s complete, you then have to go back to the RCMP, and they will give you a permit to buy the gun and deliver it directly from the gun store to the RCMP. They will then hold it for a while while they do whatever - test fire it and record the ballistics, record serial numbers, etc.
Once you’ve gone through that (a process that all told can take months), you then have to show that you are a member of a licensed gun range. That’s not easy - in Edmonton all our gun ranges currently have waiting lists, as the number of them is controlled by the city. But once you have such a membership, you can go back and get your gun from the RCMP - but your permit will only allow you to take the gun on a direct course from your home to your gun range. Get caught with your handgun in a place you shouldn’t be, and you’re in trouble even though you legally own it and it’s locked in a case in your car.
Speaking of that - you also have to buy a trigger lock, and a locked box for ammunition, and a lockable gun case. The gun must be stored at all times in a locked case with a trigger lock, and the ammo has to be stored separately in its own locked case.
All this can add up to thousands of dollars and massive hassle - which criminals simply don’t want to deal with. Also, they don’t want their crime guns registered to them or have known ballistics profiles. So legal handguns are almost never used in crimes.
One other thing - assault weapons and handguns are typically quite expensive. You can buy a decent, large calibre hunting rifle for under $500. A military-style rifle in the same or lesser caliber can run $1500-$4000, and will be no more lethal. A few cheapies like the SKS can be had, but they are still not cheaper than a standard hunting rifle. Yet another reason why criminals don’t use them.
BTW, the features that make military rifles look as they do has nothing to do with how lethal they are. Mostly they have to do with things like weight, use in mud and dirt, ability to attach tactical gear to rails on the gun, ability to field-strip it for cleaning, etc. Large magazines DO contribute to how many rounds you can shoot, but those are already restricted in Canada.
I wanted to second the thanks: this has been very educational.
It runs about two thirds of all gun homicides in Canada. The fact that this is true, but handguns are so incredibly difficult to legally own and are outnumbered by long guns by a huge margin, rather clearly demonstrates how vastly likelier they are to be used in a criminal offense.
Of course, from a statistics point of view, one could look at this two ways; one is that we need to restrict them more. The other is that since they’re pretty much illegal NOW, and yet they’re killing most people killed by guns, it doesn’t make a lot of difference anyway. Virtually all handguns used in crimes are illegally owned as it is, and have been for a long time, so is there really much left to do?
It is interesting to note that the ratio in the USA is pretty much the same, despite them having a much higher proportion of owned handguns to long guns (and way, way, way more legally owned handguns.)
I’ll get back to you on (1) but I suspect police chiefs will approve any power they can get and disapprove of its removal.
As to (2), what do you mean by power? Power in terms of guns usually mean the kinetic force delivered by the bullet. You can purchase rifles with tremendous power; a Marlin 1895, which you can buy at most respectable sporting goods stores, can kill any animal smaller than a hippopotamus. You could own .50 calibre and .338 calibre rifles if you wanted, which are exceptionally powerful - a .50 calibre could absolutely kill an elephant - and have tremendous range in the hands of a skilled marksman. (The sheer range of a rifle is astounding to anyone who hasn’t used one before. I know I was truly amazed when I joined the Army and we were asked to hit targets 200 metres away, and found out that’s a BASIC skill.)
But psycho killers usually use semiautomatic weapons - or much more rarely, fully automatic weapons - like handguns or smaller semiautomatic rifles. The AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, the one that’s been used in many infamous mass shootings, has far less power than a big hunting rifle in the sense of the sheer power of each bullet, but it’s a much more dangerous weapon in the hands of a madman because it can fire quickly, fire dozens of rounds without reloading, and is light and easy to use.
The characteristics of weapons used by mass murderers isn’t power. It’s the ability to fire many bullets very quickly. There are exceptions, but it’s true of the great majority of mass shootings.
I appreciate your detailed and informative answers. It has somewhat changed my perspective, since I was under the impression that our laws were laxer than countries like New Zealand or Britain. From what is posted here, they seem fairly strict, which I think is appropriate. I prefer effective legal measures to political bandaids.
But if to buy a gun, it goes to the police, does that mean a registry of current guns ALREADY exists? The problem (in the eyes of “gun grabbers”) is they don’t include older guns and (in the eyes of responsible users) that registries do little to discourage misuse?
(As an aside, in almost two decades of emergency medicine I have seen maybe two dozen stabbings and perhaps 5 gun shot wounds, mainly accidental. Canadian trainers go to big American cities for trauma experience).
Sorry, I presume you meant when you buy a handgun it goes to the police for pickup. Does this apply to (hunting) long guns too?
Knowing something about statistics, I don’t think it would be extremely helpful in preventing these rare events. Unless denturists work with neurotoxic chemicals, or something.
By power, I meant number of rounds with considerable force and not a physics definition like the cross-product of force and acceleration. It wasn’t the best phrase to use.
For handguns and other restricted weapons, yes. Every legally purchased handgun has an extensive paper trail that is much more than a simple registry. The police know every legal owner of a handgun, the serial numbers of the guns they own, where they are supposed to be stored, the potential routes they can be transported, and have criminal and psychiatric background information on the owners.
For unrestricted long guns, you need a background check, a training course and a license to buy them. But once you have that you can walk into Canadian Tire and buy a rifle and the government doesn’t have to know about it. They know who all the permit holders are, but not which specific rifles they own.