RE: Gun Crime: Legislatio
Good point, Triple. Hadn't thought of it in that light, but I do agree with you.
Good point, Triple. Hadn't thought of it in that light, but I do agree with you.
Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
- Thread starter Jersay
- Start date
FiveParadox said:
Hmmm, a document created by Liberals involving a concrete reference to the right to bear arms? Give us some credit here...guns are a lot older than the Charter, and so is the Liberal hate of self reliance. Let’s just put that idea to rest….no Liberal government is going to enshrine your right to bear arms….it isn’t in their nature.
FiveParadox said:
Semi-auto weapons are legal and at large.
Think of it this way...someday the Canadian socialists are going to go to far, and there is going to be very little to do about it, that is what banning assault rifles is all about.
If a government is sacred of you owning weapons, be scared of that government (and it's supporters).
Hand guns are DEFENCIVE weapons; they are great for keeping attackers at bay.
We could have educated people who know how to use a hand gun properly and effectively, or we could ban them....why is it on particular social issues Liberals feel education and promotion is the way to go, but on this (and other) issues banning is the only solution?
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
Quite simply, this is not a right Canadian see as important. I do not think the average Canadian goes around feeling oppressed because they can't bear arms.
Triple_R said:
Quite simply, this is not a right Canadian see as important. I do not think the average Canadian goes around feeling oppressed because they can't bear arms.
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
If it is not in your Constitution it is not a "right" nor can it be defined as a human right. So I kind of lost you there mate.
Jay said:
If it is not in your Constitution it is not a "right" nor can it be defined as a human right. So I kind of lost you there mate.
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
Seems to me that the loss of any right is important. It's more than just the narrow view of gun control, imho. When a government starts stripping the people of rights for no good reason, I get nervous.
This thread is arguing that one issue, but to me it's much bigger than that. It's about taking something away, legislating controls that are debatable.
DasFX said:
Seems to me that the loss of any right is important. It's more than just the narrow view of gun control, imho. When a government starts stripping the people of rights for no good reason, I get nervous.
This thread is arguing that one issue, but to me it's much bigger than that. It's about taking something away, legislating controls that are debatable.
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
No, but then again, they have also banned guns across the board, haven't they?
Jay said:
No, but then again, they have also banned guns across the board, haven't they?
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
Cosmo, I would appreciate it if you expand on this. To state the government is taking something away implies you had that right to begin with. Is that the case? I don't know. I'd love to learn
Cosmo said:
Cosmo, I would appreciate it if you expand on this. To state the government is taking something away implies you had that right to begin with. Is that the case? I don't know. I'd love to learn
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
The point being our rights are through a common law system....If you look at the BNA act of 1867 you will see it contains no bill of rights.....we use an elaborate system of English Common Law. It makes our lawyers work harder for their money.
I think not said:
The point being our rights are through a common law system....If you look at the BNA act of 1867 you will see it contains no bill of rights.....we use an elaborate system of English Common Law. It makes our lawyers work harder for their money.
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
But it isn't a right like it is in the US. Even if it was, why is it worth fighting for? It is of no consequence to me.
Jay said:
But it isn't a right like it is in the US. Even if it was, why is it worth fighting for? It is of no consequence to me.
There is a different way of looking at rights than how the USA does it. What was the US going to do, use British common law as their only “bill of rights”? We do have the Magna Carta....
It is too long a story to try to get someone interested in the right to bear arms...but when the issue does come up, just remember that others feel strongly that the government is infringing upon long established rights when they propose gun bans.
It is too long a story to try to get someone interested in the right to bear arms...but when the issue does come up, just remember that others feel strongly that the government is infringing upon long established rights when they propose gun bans.
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
And that's fine as I should of phrased it differently, so where is this law that gives you the "right to bear arms" ?
Jay said:
And that's fine as I should of phrased it differently, so where is this law that gives you the "right to bear arms" ?
Re: RE: Gun Crime: Legislation and Bans work
Well, logic (mine at least ) dictates that something cannot be banned if it doesn't exist or have some sort of recognized presence. Therefore, the rights must be there.
Add to that, if you scroll up in the thread there is a discussion on present hand gun laws. They are stringent, but they are there.
I think not said:Cosmo, I would appreciate it if you expand on this. To state the government is taking something away implies you had that right to begin with. Is that the case? I don't know. I'd love to learn
Well, logic (mine at least
) dictates that something cannot be banned if it doesn't exist or have some sort of recognized presence. Therefore, the rights must be there.Add to that, if you scroll up in the thread there is a discussion on present hand gun laws. They are stringent, but they are there.
Reading this thread there seem to be three main issues:
1) Why was gun registry implemented? What was the purpose?
2) Was gun registry / gun control effective? Did it achieve it's purpose?
3) Is gun registry / gun control an infrigement upon Canadian rights?
What was the purpose of the Gun Registry
Accoriding to the Coalition for Gun Control (a source we can assume is in favour of gun control) the rational for the law is as follows (summarized)
From these rationles I think we can draw out that the general purpose of the gun registry was to make it more difficult for a criminal element to get guns and hence effectively reduce the use of guns in crime and violent crime. Secondary goals would be reducing gun use in domestic violence and allowing police to more easily trace guns.
Achieveing these goals through gun control makes the following assumptions:
1) That raising the difficulty in gun trafficking through registering guns will reduce the amount of illegal gun trafficking and hence reduce gun crime.
2) That the majority of gun crimes are committed with registered guns.
3) That domestic violence can somehow be tackled through gun registry.
Is Gun Control / Gun Registry Effective?
For Gun Control / Gun Registry to be effective it would have to significantly impact at least a few of the goals above.
But that is looking like a very difficult case to prove, but also equally to quantitatively disprove.
On one side we can make assertions that gun control will reduce gun crime. On the other side we can point out that the costs are overwhelming and the number simply don't add up.
The questions is where is the burden of proof? Do we need to prove that the program works? Or, prove that without it the situation would be worse?
I belive that the burden of proof (considering the cost) should lie with proving that the program works. But I don't think that anyone can conclusively prove that.
Gun Control seems to be very costly for very few rewards, none of which can be quantititavely linked to a reduction in gun crime. In fact, the what little quantitiative evidence there is seems to prove the opposite.
When the Liberal government claimed that:
Statistics Canada countered in bold and underlined:
Then went on in their next report:
The department of Justice has a slightly different opinion from Statistics Canada when looking at the 1977 legisltation:
At least we can agree, that the various government departments can't agree amongst themselves.
Canadian Gun Control futher assumes that gun trafficking is largely a problem that can be contained and solved within Canada. This will be largely undermined if any significant amout of guns that are being trafficked are sourced from outside Canadian boarders.
To be fair the same article also states that it is very difficult to track guns used in violent crime, and even more difficult to quantitaitively prove the link to the US as a pipline for gun smuggling.
There are numerous international articles that state that the largest source for guns used in violent crime are private citizen's stockpiles.
However the fact remains that despite the over $1 billion spent on gun registry we essentially have failed at sourcing the methods of gun trafficking and have not produced reliable quantitative evidence that shows that registering guns is directly related to a reduction in gun crime.
This is further supported by the fact that US violent crime statistics, while much higher per-capita, show an over all rate of decrease violent crime in the US that far outpaces Canada's which seems to have plateaued (see Gary Mauser again).
The quote from the department of justice is the closest I got on any comparative data for spousal gun-death rate. We do know from Stats Canada that over the last 10 years 15% of all gun deaths were homocides and in 1996 49% of solved homocides involved family members, 18% of those involved a spouse.
So perhaps gun control has been effective in reducing gun use in domestic violence (interestingly the long gun is the most commonly used gun in domestic violence, not the hand gun).
Is Gun Ownership a Canadian Right?
A lot of people have posted on this already, but the general point to be made is that Canada has universal rights that are enshrined in the Charter of Rights, and would be incredibly difficult to remove, alter or ammend. Canadians also have tacit or common law rights, rights that are set our by public use prescident. By virture of long standing practice of public engaging in a particular activity, that has been viewed as lawful it is a tacit right. That being said tacit rights are obviously much easier to pass legislation that can contravene them or almost obliterate them.
That of course doesn't mean that it should happen.
For me the largest point here seems to be that we have various methods of reducing crime that have proven results such as: increased policing, including community policing, infrastructure, community programs, education programs etc... that the $1 billion spent on the gun registry (which seems unable to prove it's effectiveness ) could have gone into.
1) Why was gun registry implemented? What was the purpose?
2) Was gun registry / gun control effective? Did it achieve it's purpose?
3) Is gun registry / gun control an infrigement upon Canadian rights?
What was the purpose of the Gun Registry
Accoriding to the Coalition for Gun Control (a source we can assume is in favour of gun control) the rational for the law is as follows (summarized)
From these rationles I think we can draw out that the general purpose of the gun registry was to make it more difficult for a criminal element to get guns and hence effectively reduce the use of guns in crime and violent crime. Secondary goals would be reducing gun use in domestic violence and allowing police to more easily trace guns.
Achieveing these goals through gun control makes the following assumptions:
1) That raising the difficulty in gun trafficking through registering guns will reduce the amount of illegal gun trafficking and hence reduce gun crime.
2) That the majority of gun crimes are committed with registered guns.
3) That domestic violence can somehow be tackled through gun registry.
Is Gun Control / Gun Registry Effective?
For Gun Control / Gun Registry to be effective it would have to significantly impact at least a few of the goals above.
But that is looking like a very difficult case to prove, but also equally to quantitatively disprove.
On one side we can make assertions that gun control will reduce gun crime. On the other side we can point out that the costs are overwhelming and the number simply don't add up.
The questions is where is the burden of proof? Do we need to prove that the program works? Or, prove that without it the situation would be worse?
I belive that the burden of proof (considering the cost) should lie with proving that the program works. But I don't think that anyone can conclusively prove that.
Gun Control seems to be very costly for very few rewards, none of which can be quantititavely linked to a reduction in gun crime. In fact, the what little quantitiative evidence there is seems to prove the opposite.
When the Liberal government claimed that:
Statistics Canada countered in bold and underlined:
Then went on in their next report:
The department of Justice has a slightly different opinion from Statistics Canada when looking at the 1977 legisltation:
At least we can agree, that the various government departments can't agree amongst themselves.
Canadian Gun Control futher assumes that gun trafficking is largely a problem that can be contained and solved within Canada. This will be largely undermined if any significant amout of guns that are being trafficked are sourced from outside Canadian boarders.
To be fair the same article also states that it is very difficult to track guns used in violent crime, and even more difficult to quantitaitively prove the link to the US as a pipline for gun smuggling.
There are numerous international articles that state that the largest source for guns used in violent crime are private citizen's stockpiles.
However the fact remains that despite the over $1 billion spent on gun registry we essentially have failed at sourcing the methods of gun trafficking and have not produced reliable quantitative evidence that shows that registering guns is directly related to a reduction in gun crime.
This is further supported by the fact that US violent crime statistics, while much higher per-capita, show an over all rate of decrease violent crime in the US that far outpaces Canada's which seems to have plateaued (see Gary Mauser again).
The quote from the department of justice is the closest I got on any comparative data for spousal gun-death rate. We do know from Stats Canada that over the last 10 years 15% of all gun deaths were homocides and in 1996 49% of solved homocides involved family members, 18% of those involved a spouse.
So perhaps gun control has been effective in reducing gun use in domestic violence (interestingly the long gun is the most commonly used gun in domestic violence, not the hand gun).
Is Gun Ownership a Canadian Right?
A lot of people have posted on this already, but the general point to be made is that Canada has universal rights that are enshrined in the Charter of Rights, and would be incredibly difficult to remove, alter or ammend. Canadians also have tacit or common law rights, rights that are set our by public use prescident. By virture of long standing practice of public engaging in a particular activity, that has been viewed as lawful it is a tacit right. That being said tacit rights are obviously much easier to pass legislation that can contravene them or almost obliterate them.
That of course doesn't mean that it should happen.
For me the largest point here seems to be that we have various methods of reducing crime that have proven results such as: increased policing, including community policing, infrastructure, community programs, education programs etc... that the $1 billion spent on the gun registry (which seems unable to prove it's effectiveness ) could have gone into.
"Canadian citizens, though their use is to be restricted, have a right to own guns and not to be obliged to make any announcement to any one, including government, of whether they do or whether they don't"
That is what is generally referred to as freedom. Those in opposition to it are in opposition to freedom.
That is what is generally referred to as freedom. Those in opposition to it are in opposition to freedom.
Colpy has made many comments about the Firearms Act I wasn't aware of, including the most frightening of proving your innocense as opposed to being presumed innocent until proven guilty 8O
