Because there are citizens who work there and will lose their jobs so that some people can engage in feel-good politics?
Symbolic laws which do nothing but harm law abiding citizens are the worst kind of legislation. They harm people for nothing, they use up political capital that could have been used to do something better, and they create divisions in society.
It’s also a horrible time to be spending any time and effort on this, in the middle of a pandemic. It’s also the worst time to spring this on people as they’ve got a lot of other stuff to worry about.
I know guys who have lost their jobs and are struggling to make rent, and now the government is going to make their gun collections worthless.
The reason there are so many Mini-14’s out there is because they are perfect utility rifles. They are lightweight, reliable, accurate, and shoot surplus ammunition that you can buy cheap. There’s a reason they are called ‘ranch rifle’. Now you can’t buy them anymore. If you need such a gun you won’t be able to buy the most popular kind - just a less suitable one that happens to be just as deadly but just looks a little different. And if you have one of these marvelous little rifles, you may have to sell it to the government at a loss so it can be destroyed.
What a crazy, stupid, counterproductive way to legislate.
Sam, I do care about the individuals affected. I don’t care about the gun makers, cigarettes makers, or Asbestos manufacturers that are making money on the backs of products that cause needless harm.
I was in university during the Ecole Polytechnique shootings. The fact that it took 31 years to ban these guns is ridiculous. This putz in Nova Scotia went on a killing spree in middle of Covid, so we should just forget it? I realize this is a bad time for gun owners, as all of us, but we have to do something.
But this will accomplish nothing, or close to it. The guy apparently had all the guns illegally anyway. If you want to prevent guys like that from having guns, this law won’t do that. What they need to do is intercept more guns from being smuggled into Canada.
That, however, is hard and costs more money and would inconvenience people at border crossings.
“We have to do something” perhaps, but wouldn’t you rather they do something that would help?
Who would say that? Automatic weapons exist for a reason. They didn’t come up with the idea for nothing; automatic fire is very useful indeed, or else they wouldn’t make weapons that do it.
Furthermore, since we’re not talking about wars, the reason automatic weapons are banned has little to do with their tactical application in war and everything to do with the danger they pose in a civilian setting. If you are trying to reduce criminal acts (and accidental deaths) it makes perfect sense to prohibit weapons like that. If Chris the Criminal sprays bullets at someone on the street he wants to kill and misses but instead kills some innocent bystander, from the perspective of the law that’s equally bad.
And I’m a gun nut now? I own no guns and have no plans to.
In 1983 Douglas Crabbe used a Mack Truck to kill 5 people and wound a while lot more.
And yet, 26 years later they still allow people to buy Mack Trucks. How crazy is that? They should be banned, and anyone who owns one should have to turn it over to the government. There are other truck models they can buy if they have to be a truck nut.
This is exactly the same argument you are using. Those girls would be just as dead if he had used any number of other guns just as capable of killing them. Banning the specific model used is just as stupid as banning Mack Trucks because one happened to be used in a killing.
Because I think it is doing something. Yes, we need to stop the smuggling of guns into Canada. Maybe we need a great big wall that we will make the US pay for.
Crime is still being committed with legally owner guns and guns that have been stolen from legal domestic gun owners. I live in Toronto where there is ZERO reason to own a gun. In my 50 years I do not know anyone that has used a gun in self defence. I did have a friend in university that went to his family cottage where they had guns and he blew his head off. If they had not legally owned that gun, he may have found another way or not.
The purpose of a gun is to put a bullet through something and stop it. The purpose of a truck is to move stuff. This is a false equivalence.
Yes, it is. And this legislation will not change that fact, because of all the functionally identical guns that aren’t on this list and remain legal. You don’t need a military style rifle to commit mass murder, any reasonably powerful gun that’s quick to fire and quick to reload will do.
I’m not a gun lover, to be clear. I’ll support a law that actually addresses the problem by removing all guns that are quick to fire and quick to reload. Ban detachable magazines for example, or all semiautomatic firearms. But this ain’t that.
All guns can do that. Banning a specific model because it happened to be the one used in a shooting is exactly like banning Mack Trucks because one was used to kill people.
Some guns are more effective at different kinds of things. Some guns are better for concealed carry; some for deer-hunting; some for boar hunting; etc. And some are better for shooting a bunch of people in an enclosed space, like a school or church. It’s entirely reasonable to take this into account for legislation.
Still not the case. I could bludgeon you to death with a Mac book, a flounder, or a baseball bat. That is not a reason to ban any of those things.
Would you feel better if they banned all long guns aside from shotguns or single shot rifles for farmers protecting livestock, registered hunters, or members fo First Nations?
Sure, except the guns in question do no such thing. The ‘features’ on an ‘assault weapon’ are cosmetic. They don’t make it more lethal for spree killers. On military weapons these features make the gun lighter to carry for extended periods, easier to field strip and clean, etc. These guns aren’t more accurate, more powerful, easier to conceal, etc. They’re just rifles with ‘tactical’ accessories.
The only thing that might make them more dangerous is an extended magazine. But those are already prohibited.
In almost all the spree killings I’ve seen - especially the ones in enclosed spaces like schools - the carnage would have been much worse if the shooter had simply carried a couple of standard pump shotguns. The one I used to have could hold 7 rounds and be ‘slam fired’, meaning you could empty the shotgun in about two seconds.
Guess what the military used for trench warfare in WWI? That exact same shotgun. Because when you are shooting in hallways or while rapidly going around corners and such, a shotgun makes a great anti-personnel weapon.
And yet, no one has even mentioned those guns during all the debates over gun control. Because they aren’t scary looking. If this legislation actually caused spree shooters to move away from scary looking rifles to shotguns, we will have driven them to use a more effective weapon for their purposes.
If gun controllers weren’t downright proud of their ignorance of the guns they want to ban, they might understand some of this.
I really hope gun owners continue with that argument because it will lead to the conclusion to ban all civilian firearm ownership.
You’re describing a phenomenon that is truly rare, and which wouldn’t have prevented the New Brunswick murders.
Of course that is utterly preposterous. There are a number of reasons to own a gun if you live in Toronto. Many people hunt who live in Toronto (I know two, actually.) They might not be hunting IN TORONTO, but it is, incredibly enough, possible to live in one place and engage in recreational activities elsewhere. Or they enjoy target shooting - my stepdaughter’s Dad is a skilled marksman, and my stepdaughter has enjoyed going to the range with him and learning to shoot. Hunting and target shooting may not be your things, and they’re not mine, but people do those things and those are “reasons.” The world isn’t entirely made up of people with your preferences.
So then the disagreement here is on which guns to focus on. That’s a reasonable disagreement. I don’t know which guns Canadian gun control advocates are focusing on, but as a gun owner and a veteran, here are the features I think should be focused on:
Magazine size, as you mention.
Barrel length. Carbine-length weapons combine ease of maneuverability with accuracy at medium distances - perfect for large enclosed spaces (schools, churches, etc.).
Semi auto action - much faster and easier to aim and hit multiple targets, especially moving targets.
Rifle caliber ammunition - rifle caliber ammunition is much more powerful, and thus much more likely to cause deadly wounds, then pistol calibers (aside from the extreme, like. 44 mag or. 50).
There might be an argument to dissuade copycats by banning that type of weapon. But it seems the Liberals see sense in tightening border security and letting municipalities ban handguns (thus passing the political buck).
I don’t think these measures might have stopped some recent events. But I do think it is worth trying something. Guns can be compared to many things, but they are more dangerous than most when misused.
Still, I’d rather the government focused on some other things at the moment.
So why are all those “cosmetic” features so important that guns which include them shouldn’t be banned? There are a lot of reasons why someone might need a rifle for hunting or varmint shooting, or even just target shooting. None of these uses require a scary-looking “assault rifle”. The reason people want a scary-looking “assault rifle” is so they can be scary-looking.
If you look at online postings from what I would call “gun nuts” as opposed to normal gun owners, how many of them are displaying their .22 varmint gun and how many are showing off their AR-15 tricked out with all the cool military accessories? If you look at any of the many 2nd Amendment demonstrations in the US, how many participants are carrying a 30-30 hunting rifle and how many have an AK47 look-alike? If you can’t go out of your way to look like a rough, tough Special Forces killer, maybe you’re less likely to think about acting like a rough, tough Special Forces killer.
It’s not that they’re important. It’s that they’re unimportant. The government is banning things for reasons that don’t make sense, while allowing to be legal equivalent tools, also for reasons that don’t make sense. The result, of course, will simply be the design and sale of weapons that are, again, exactly the same in function, but which just miss the cosmetic rules.
It’s as if your province decided they needed to change the way people register their cars, but only if they’re a shade of blue.
Trump would babble on about how he forced “security risk” Canada to build the wall at Canada’s expense to protect the USA from the flood of illegal immigration permitted by the democrats.
And then he’d whine about how unfair it is that Canada is refusing to pay the USA for the cost of Canada building Canada’s wall.