No one likes to see anyone get killed. The recent shooting of a Yonge St. bystander is no exception. The gun used in the crime happened to be registered to the person who did the slaying. This is something that happens rarely as the problem behind gun crime are the criminals and gang members who use illegal guns. The problem is not caused by those of us who legally use registered guns.
Criminals are not deterred by a gun registries. They don’t care.
They won’t care about a call for a handgun ban by Ontario’s Premier and Toronto’s Mayor. In a Toronto Star article, McGuinty says,
“We have a shared responsibility, both Mayor Miller, myself and Prime Minister Harper and Canadians generally, to ask ourselves what more we might do to reduce the incidence of gun violence on our streets,” McGuinty said yesterday at Union Station.
I would like to remind Mr. McGuinty that the gun violence on the street is caused by gangs and criminals, not by the very small percentage of registered handgun owners. A gun ban would only target a small percentage of guns in Canada.
All the law abiding citizens have already registered them.
A gun registry was already supposed to reduce gun crime and protect citizens. Remember, we wasted close to 2 billion dollars on that. It did not help on Young Street.Think of the amount of police officers that money could have hired. A previous post I wrote suggests that would have been 19, 607 more officers.
Criminals would feel that.
I am positive the next step would be for a ban on all firearms. Again, the criminals would care less and that would leave 2 factions with guns. The Government and criminals.
That’s a bad mix. Especially, when you would have to wait for a 911 directed officer to come to your rural home and counter the gun toting criminal holding you up in your room.
I will end this post with another reference to a handgun ban video I did. I know I have used it before…but it fits so well.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
I am so happy to see there are Canadians out there who get how ridiculous the gun laws are.
I’m practically a Canadian. I live on the border with BC and spend as much time, in that natural miracle of a land, as I possibly can. But, as soon as the RCMP on duty spies my Montana license plate they go a little kookoo. The first question they ask is “Did you leave your guns at home?” Not in a friendly way either.
In Montana most of us carry guns most of the time. We have a lot of respect for one another because of it. Oh, sure, every now and again someone gets liquored up on a Saturday night and a deadly argument ensues. But, that’s just the law of averages and has nothing to do with guns.
The bad guys are always looking for “victims”, people who can’t look out for themselves. There aren’t a lot of “victims” in Montana!
Excellent, I couldn’t agree more.
These comments underline our problems with politicians that put their agenda ahead of solving the gun crime problems. We must continue to confront politicians and media that disseminate propaganda, fear mongering and display a basic ignorance of the root issues. Educating urban Canadians about the realities of gun crime and our historic firearms heritage will benefit all Canadians and force the politicians to focus on proven methods of crime control instead of wasting our tax dollars on gun bans that have proven to be a failure in every country they were tried in.
Good post Even the RCMP (police for non Canadians) admits that the Canadian gun control laws and the gun registry do NOT keep guns out of the hand of criminals. Of course politicians, everywhere not only in Canada, despite that fact happily engage in fear mongering to try and gain brownie points in the election or simply to promote more restricting laws that will rob honest people of rights and freedom.
It is so simple really, all politicians have to do look at countries that have total firearm bans, like Germany, England and Australia to name a few, to see that these countries have a violent crime rate that goes through the roof. Switzerland has a real gun culture and it is by law permitted to use firearms for self-defense. Switzerland has one of the worlds lowest violent crime rates. Why? Because a would be assailant literally is at risk of loosing his worthless life.
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Once you un-arm the law-abiding citizens, you give the criminals exactly what they are looking for; a defenseless, gun-less victim.
Great post and video!
I’m in total agreement with you on this. I like the video too.
I’ve always maintained the problem with laws that ban guns is that criminals don’t obey laws. As you so rightly pointed out, if you ban guns, the only people who will be left defenceless are the people who are law abiding citizens. You also can’t make the argument that protecting law abiding citizens is what the police is for. That’s a lovely theory, but we know it doesn’t always work in practice. A lot of police departments are understaffed and underfunded. There simply aren’t enough police to go around.