# The missing voice in the gun control debates **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 26, 2013, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422 "2013-01-26T08:06:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/81 "2013-01-30T22:03:48Z")
> [@Condescending\_Robot](#): > > What Canada doesn’t have is a huge prevelance of Southern “honor culture” idiots who can’t handle getting angry without getting violent, **a militarized police force that creates huge financial incentives for armed gangs to dominate the drug trade,** or as many neglectful parents creating broken people who grow up to murder their spouses. What?! No, the War on Drugs as such creates financial incentives for the illegal drug trade to exist. But it is not the “militarized” police force (and it is it really any less militarized than Canada’s anyway?) that gives the dealers an incentive to be armed. They generally do not use their guns to shoot the police, but rival dealers. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/82 "2013-01-30T22:54:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, yes. That, in addition to poverty/crime, is what accounts for the high levels of inner-city violence – a Southern-derived macho-honor culture where slights and insults demand violent redress. That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. How do you specifically put this on Southern culture? ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/83 "2013-01-31T00:04:03Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > Civil society also includes (per your wiki cite) such institutions as sports clubs, professional institutions, and (interestingly) citizen’s militias. It is often quite acceptable (sometimes expected) to show up to these kinds of gatherings armed. Especially if the Sports Club is a skeet/trap club. Or a rifle or pistol marksmanship club. Or are these not “civil” enough for the tender sensibilities of the gun-control crowd? :rolleyes: > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But if the Canadians, with their gun-control regime, don’t actually need guns for home defense very often, that should tell you something. I object to this parsing of legitimate gun usage. Home defense guns, sporting use guns, military application guns; the 2nd is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms. For any legitimate, lawful purpose. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What it should tell you is that a gun-control regime is better home defense than having a gun in the house. “Only outlaws” will **not** have very many guns, if they can be busted just for having them in a manner proscribed by law. Outlaws know very well that they live always on society’s edge and must always be very careful not to fall over it. One you’re assuming a causation that is not in evidence. Secondly, you assume the tough gun control laws have deterred criminals in Canada. Criminologists have consistently shown that tough laws alone aren’t enough; arrest rates, prosecution rates, and incarceration rates factor into that equation, and when it comes to gun prosecutions, we’re abysmal. So lets start busting some of these violent, gun-wielding criminals and _throwing the fucking book at them._ Give’ em twenty years in the electric chair for all I care. And then after we do that for 10-20 years, let’s again take a look at our gun violence rates and see what’s what. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > And so perpetuates the ridiculous argument that you only need guns as protection from other people with guns. Nonsense. Most criminals are young and male, which are as a group more physically powerful than pretty much any other. Without weapons, in defense scenarios people are at the mercy of their own physical prowess. Or numbers. I’m sure the idea that some home invaders only have knives instead of guns is some great comfort to some woman living alone. Or an older person. Or someone who just isn’t fucking macho man randy savage. Or a person who’s outnumbered. If I may paraphrase: “Gun Control: the right of a 95 pound woman to fight off a 195 pound rapist.” > [@Odesio](#): > > That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. How do you specifically put this on Southern culture? I agree that it may have its roots in 18th and 19th century Southern culture. But I think that it has morphed into something more akin to the glorified Mafia-culture of the 1930’s - 1960’s. Nothing more to it than my own anally-extrapolated “feeling” on the issue, based on the prevalence of Italian Mafia-themed pictures (Michael Corleone, Tony Soprano and the Soprano Crew, etc) available in local Malls with a substantially black customer demographic. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/84 "2013-01-31T01:03:32Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > And so perpetuates the ridiculous argument that you only need guns as protection from other people with guns. Nonsense. Most criminals are young and male, which are as a group more physically powerful than pretty much any other. Without weapons, in defense scenarios people are at the mercy of their own physical prowess. Or numbers. I’m sure the idea that some home invaders only have knives instead of guns is some great comfort to some woman living alone. Or an older person. Or someone who just isn’t fucking macho man randy savage. Or a person who’s outnumbered. :rolleyes: Take it over [here.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=680701) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/85 "2013-01-31T01:17:41Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. How do you specifically put this on Southern culture? I’m getting that from [_Vietnam: The Necessary War,_](http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Necessary-Reinterpretation-Americas-Disastrous/dp/0684870274/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359594840&sr=1-1&keywords=vietnam%3A+the+necessary+war) by Michael Lind: > [@](#): > > The real reason for the persistence of sectionalism in U.S. foreign policy can be found in the ethnoregional theory of American politics, which has been developed by the historians David Hackett Fischer, Daniel Elazar, D.W. Meinig, Kevin Phillips, and others. The ethnoregional theory holds that in the United States powerful ethnic and regional subcultures are more important and enduring than political parties and ideologies. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” differ in their meaning from generation to generation; regional subcultures such as those of New England and the Tidewater South change much more slowly. > > The greatest insight of ethnoregional theorists is that immigrants in the United States do not assimilate to a uniform American national culture; rather, they assimilate to one of a small number of preexisting regional cultures. The historian Wilbur Zelinsky has defined a thesis he calls the Doctrine of Effective First Settlement that holds: “Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been.” . . . > > Historians differ on the question of how many of these enduring regional cultures there are in the United States. Most agree on three: a Yankee culture that spread westward overland from New England; a Quaker culture operating in Pennsylvania; and a Cavalier culture originating in the coastal South. Most, but not all, identify a fourth regional culture, that of the Scots-Irish Highland South from Appalachia to the Ozarks and Texas. In his magisterial _Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America_ (1989), David Hackett Fischer argues persuasively that these four “hearth cultures” originated in different regions of early modern Britain and were transplanted to North America by four waves of immigrants. In the first wave (1629-40), Puritans from the eastern counties of England settled New England. The second wave (1642-75) brought anti-Puritan, royalist Cavaliers from the south of England to Virginia. Quakers from the North Midlands of England colonized Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley after emigrating during the third wave (1675-1715). The fourth and final major Anglo-American migration, which lasted from 1717 to 1775, transplanted so-called Scots-Irish from northern England, lowland Scotland, and the north of Ireland (Ulster). > > In addition to having distinctive folkways and dialects of English, these four groups of British-American immigrants had their own unique variants of a common individualistic and liberal British political culture. Fischer describes the New England Puritan ideal as “ordered freedom,” the Quaker ideal as “reciprocal freedom,” the Scots-Irish ideal as “natural freedom,” and the coastal southern ideal as “hegemonic freedom” (deference to traditional elites). Another historian, Daniel J. Elazar, calls the New England tradition the “moralistic” culture, the midatlantic region the “individualistic” culture, and the coastal southern tradition the “traditional” culture. . . . > > The ethnoregional theory provides the answer to the mystery of American sectional differences with respect to war. Regional disagreements about war are part of a larger pattern of regional disagreement about the legitimacy of all forms of violence. “Historians of Southern mores are agreed that violence as an aspect of Southern life clearly distinguished the region from the rest of the country,” writes historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Of the southerner, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the energy which his [northern] neighbor devotes to gain turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat.” Southern states lead the nation not only in military academies but in homicide rates and death penalty laws and in low penalties for domestic violence. Northern states have the lowest homicide rates and the greatest number of statutes requiring a citizen to retreat before attacking an assailant or intruder in his home. > > These regional differences reflect the difference in moral systems between the post-Calvinist Puritanism of Greater New England, which shuns violence as a means for resolving disputes, and the cultures of honor of the Scots-Irish Highland South and the Anglo-American Tidewater South. The two southern cultures are quite different, but compared to Greater New Englanders, both Highland and Tidewater southerners look with greater approval on violent retaliation for insults. But southerners are not indiscriminately violent. The difference between northern and southern homicide rates is accounted for almost entirely by violent responses of southerners to personal offenses: arguments, insults to women, lovers’ quarrels, and disputes within the family. The researchers Richard E. Nisbet and Dov Cohen discovered that, at the same university, white southern students were more likely to respond aggressively than white northern students to the same set of insults and provocations. **The same researchers have pointed out the similarities between the culture of honor of white southerners and that of inner-city black Americans, most of whom are descendants of southern migrants.** ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/86 "2013-01-31T02:24:47Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’m getting that from That’s pretty thin. Was the Southern culture of honor also the cause of high levels of violence in Latino or Asian gangs? Or maybe it’s got more to do with things like poverty than it does Southern culture? ---
**Author:** ![stui\_magpie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stui_magpie/32/11010_2.png) [@stui\_magpie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stui_magpie)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/87 "2013-01-31T02:27:06Z")
I just want to throw in a couple of points. 1. I personally find the comparison to step ladders ridiculous. If you want to do a meaningful comparison, find the number of instances where a step ladder was used to either commit suicide or was used as a weapon to commit murder. 2. The argument about most killings being suicides or conducted by black youths is misleading. The reason for the debate is about people committing mass shootings. The majority of mass shootings are conducted by white males who got the weapons legally. I don’t know how accurate this source is, it’s what Google spat out. [A Guide to Mass Shootings in America – Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map) 3. The Self Defense argument is one that genuinely highlights some of the cultural and legal differences between the USA and other parts of the world. In the USA I understand Self Defense is considered a “Right” and the use of deadly force is explicitly allowed. In Australia by comparison, you are entitled to defend yourself provided you do not use more force than is considered reasonable. If you kill someone and claim self defense, you will still be up on a likely charge of manslaughter and the onus will be on you to prove the force wasn’t over the top. In the USA, it seems to me that apart from the legal and cultural bits, it’s actually a self propagating situation. Because guns are so easy to get, there is a real and genuine probability that a house burglar or street thug will be armed with a firearm. Therefore in a country where killing someone in self defense is allowed, it makes sense to be armed. Shit, if I moved to live in the USA I’d probably be buying guns for the house before groceries. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/88 "2013-01-31T03:18:57Z")
> [@stui\_magpie](#): > > In the USA I understand Self Defense is considered a “Right” and the use of deadly force is explicitly allowed. As with many laws, when talking about what is legal in the United States you might get fifty different answers. Generally speaking, deadly force is permitted when a reasonable person fears for life and limb. In some states it’s legal to use deadly force to protect property as well. > [@](#): > > In Australia by comparison, you are entitled to defend yourself provided you do not use more force than is considered reasonable. If you kill someone and claim self defense, you will still be up on a likely charge of manslaughter and the onus will be on you to prove the force wasn’t over the top. In the United States the police will investigate and the district attorney will decide whether or not charges should be pressed. A few years ago one of my neighbors shot and killed someone who broke into his house (I’m in Arkansas). He wasn’t arrested and no charges were filed. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/89 "2013-01-31T04:08:08Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Guns are an equalizer - a little old lady who can use a gun has a fighting chance against an attacker. If you make guns vanish, you haven’t eliminated the threat to the little old lady, you’ve just made sure that the power is entirely in her attacker’s hands. I’m done with gun debates on the interwebs, but I am genuinely curious how many old ladies keep a firearm specifically for home defense? I’ve never known one but I’m not going to assume my experience is the whole story. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/90 "2013-01-31T04:52:13Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > I’m done with gun debates on the interwebs, but I am genuinely curious how many old ladies keep a firearm specifically for home defense? I’ve never known one but I’m not going to assume my experience is the whole story. [64-year-old woman shoots home invasion robber](http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/article/279199/483/64-year-old-woman-shoots-home-invasion-robber) [66-Year-Old Woman Shoots and Kills Home Intruder](http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/10/22/very-afraid-66-year-old-woman-shoots-and-kills-home-intruder/) [63-year-old woman shoots would-be robber in her home](http://www2.alabamas13.com/news/2012/oct/29/woman-shoots-would-be-robber-her-home-ar-4850016/) [Woman, 77, shoots at would-be burglar](http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/woman-77-shoots-would-be-burglar/nTN58/) [90-year-old woman shoots at home intruder](http://www.woai.com/news/local/story/90-year-old-woman-shoots-at-home-intruder/eln4pLU2Ek2GqXQZzh5dtw.cspx) [‘I knew he was going to kill me,’ says 66-year-old woman who shot intruder in Flint](http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2012/06/66-year-old_woman_who_shot_int.html) [66 Year Old Woman Shoots Intruder](http://gunvideos.blogspot.com/2011/12/66-year-old-woman-shoots-intruder.html) [84-year-old Richmond woman shoots intruder](http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=7995072) Just a small selection for you. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/91 "2013-01-31T05:06:18Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > Just a small selection for you. I thought it was clear I was asking for statistics on how common it was. edit: Unless your answer to my request is “8” in which case, thank you that was informative. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/92 "2013-01-31T05:17:10Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > I thought it was clear I was asking for statistics on how common it was. > > edit: Unless your answer to my request is “8” in which case, thank you that was informative. You’ve never known one. Now you know 8. That’s an infinite improvement. ---
**Author:** ![AlohaBear32](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@AlohaBear32](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlohaBear32)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/93 "2013-01-31T05:27:35Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > I was never pro gun until I heard people like our mod Dexter chime in. I am pro Obama, a liberal, and a gun owner. > > And I am now, also, ‘pro’ gun. > > Ignorance is not bliss. Though many on the anti-gun side are quite happy with it. This pretty much describes me as well. I don’t even own a gun (yet, though I do have a nice collection of Samurai Swords and medieval weaponry) but due to all this talk, I’m registering for a firearm class and getting a permit this year. I’m still on the fence about joining the NRA as I don’t appreciate their Anti-Obama rhetoric and laying the blame on video games among other things they say/do. To me, the missing voice IS Responsible gun owners, regular family persons from all walks of life, genders, races and all who are registered firearm owners. It does seem that all you hear/see on the news is either gun owners that are extremist/racist/anti-Obama/Ted Nugent (yes all in the same camp) or anti-gun people who consider Red Ryder BB Guns as “Assault Rifles” as well (you’ll shoot yer eye out!) :rolleyes: Why is the voice of the everyday firearm owner not heard? Besides these forums of course… ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/94 "2013-01-31T06:45:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > :rolleyes: Take it over [here.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=680701) You introduce a poor argument, this argument is refuted, and you tell someone to take the refutation to another thread. Not only is this a pretty weak dodge, I don’t know if you know how this whole argument thing works. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/95 "2013-01-31T13:47:00Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > And so on. I’m not advocating ignorance, I’m simply stating the simple fact that I can’t learn everything. I try to spend my learning-time on things that will be either interesting to me (guns are not) or important to me (guns are not, except in a negative way.) Wow. If I saw these posts from a guest user with a recent join date I’d seriously suggest that this board probably isn’t the best place for you since we’re dedicated to fighting ignorance. Your posts in this thread and celebrating ignorance. They are filled with it and you seem almost proud of it. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/96 "2013-01-31T13:51:58Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > I didn’t realize you were being pedantic about “civil society” - That’s **BrainGlutton’s** shtick. He has some very, uh, _interesting_ definitions of words and phrases that he’s picked up or read somewhere and assumes that everyone else has the same definitions and assumptions as him. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2013, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/97 "2013-01-31T19:57:19Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > You introduce a poor argument, this argument is refuted, and you tell someone to take the refutation to another thread. Because your preposterous non-argument (about guns being needed for defense against unarmed but physically superior attackers) (1) is substantially the same as the OP in the other thread and (2) has been utterly, thoroughly debunked there, as you will see. It’s a time-saver. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2013, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/98 "2013-02-02T02:22:56Z")
[quote=“Lumpy, post:41, topic:648422”] The reason pro-gun Second Amendment-absolutists (which I lean towards) furiously object to gun control as usually proposed is for any of the following reasons or often a combination of them:[li]The idea that the government should have a monopoly on “serious” firearms, leaving the populace with at most some minimally effective second-rate weapons.[/li][/quote] > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > They are quite effective against home invaders, etc. They are not effective against the police or the Army – nor should they be. The Second Amendment does not and should not exist to facilitate insurrection. > [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > False dichotomy. You can believe that it is deleterious to liberty for there to exist a subjection of the people to a statist monopoly of force without believing that armed insurrection is a good thing. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . . No, I don’t see any crack between the two. Where is it? **BrainGlutton** , you apparently believe that the entire idea of a population being able to revolt against its government is an absurdity- that the whole point of government is to enforce rules upon people, and that anything else would be armed anarchy. I think the original idea of the Second Amendment was that if everyone was armed, no _armed minority_- either the government itself or any unrepresentative faction- could bully the rest of the country. That if some faction did openly rebel against the government’s authority, and the ordinary process of law could not be carried out, the government could call the populace to arms to defeat the rebellion- and they would either side with the government or not. In other words, that guns would be democracy in its rawest form. That’s pretty much what happened during the Civil War; grumbling about the draft aside, the fact was that enough people in the north were at least acquiescent to serving in the Union army to defeat the Confederacy. If the whole “government of the people” thing has any meaning, it surely is supposed to mean that the continued existence of the government should not be based on the helplessness of the populace. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2013, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/99 "2013-02-02T05:10:07Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Then why don’t we try modeling American gun control on other countries’ gun-control systems that work? E.g., Canada’s. Most sensible American gun owners of the sort the OP is talking about would be entirely comfortable with that. I really doubt that the Canadian system would be acceptable to gun owners in the US, but I’m willing to be corrected. Here’s a general outline of how our system works: 1. Firearms regulation is almost entirely federal, as a branch of the criminal law power; provinces have only limited jurisdiction. 2. Anyone wishing to buy or possess a firearm must obtain a federal firearms licence. To do so, they have to apply to the regional firearms office and fill out a detailed form. On the instructions of the regional firearms officer, the police can conduct background checks, including with the spouses and neighbours. 3. The terms for a licence are not “shall issue”. An applicant must come within the conditions for the possession of a firearm set out in the Act and regulations. 4. An applicant must take a firearms safety course. 5. Long-guns do not need to be registered, but when not in use, they must be stored safely. Safe storage means, in practice, a gun safe or a trigger lock, unloaded. 6. Handguns are restricted weapons. Anyone wanting a handgun must apply for a handgun permit, which involves additional background checks; again, not a “will issue” test; applicant must show that they are not a danger if they have a handgun. 7. All handguns must be registered with the federal government. 8. Handguns may only be possessed at one’s home, or at the gun range, or in direct transit between those two places; possession of a handgun outside of these conditions is a federal criminal offence. When not in use, handguns must be safely stored, unloaded. 9. Handguns can only rarely be acquired for personal self-defence; a special permit is required, from the federal firearms office. The exact number of those permits granted by the firearms office is not known, but is estimated to be below 200 for all of Canada. 10. Concealed carry of a handgun or a long-gun is a federal criminal offence. 11. Possession of loaded firearms in a motor vehicle is a federal criminal offence. 12. It is a federal criminal offence to take a firearms to a public meeting (i.e. - all those Tea Partiers who take guns to political meetings in 2010 would be committing a federal criminal offence in Canada). 13. Magazine size is limited; the details vary with the type of firearm and magazine, but magazines ofen are limited to no more than 10 or 12 cartridges. (Note: it’s been a while since I did any work in the area of firearms law, so I don’t have the cites at my fingertips, and I may have some points of detail wrong, but I think I’ve got the general outline correct.) ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2013, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422/100 "2013-02-02T05:27:06Z")
Oh, and of course one other major difference: firearms ownership does not have any constitutional protection. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-voice-in-the-gun-control-debates/648422.md?page=6)