It may surprise you to know that Canada currently has more restrictive gun laws than any European country. It bans handguns, most modern rifles, and magazine size limits are very low, and treats down-converted rifles (from full-auto to semi-auto) as being full-auto. It additionally restricts the sale of pressure-bearing components for certain firearms and magazines, though you don't actually have to own the rifle it's a part of to buy it.
We have a licensing scheme that takes roughly 6 months to issue you a license, and special transport rules for handguns and short rifles. We don't have gangs from the East smuggling in machine guns; and most crime guns come from an intentionally-porous border.
However, guns are a cultural flashpoint in most of the New World in ways they just aren't in most European countries. Part of this is an export of US politics, where sub-polities who want to ban guns are in a constant and bitter culture war with those that do not; Canadians copy a lot of US politics along whatever fault lines they happen to be on (currently, it's largest cities vs. everyone else). It's also a filter bubble problem, where the polities and voters that don't see guns as an issue are several thousand kilometers away from those that do (100km is a daily commute for us, but it can be the other side of the country for you), so you're not going to be exposed to 'normal' people on the other side.
>what in your view was their purpose?
Revenge. The sitting government did not like the fact that people from several thousand kilometers away came and protested certain edicts pertaining to a novel cold virus; those people are most likely to own guns.
This was simply a "fuck you". There are no problems with the crime rate here; other than that which the sitting government has encouraged with their policies, but European countries all have that problem too and for the same reason. Which makes people want guns -> government doesn't like that -> government limits that ability, naturally.
The 'revenge' theory of politics has a number of benefits to those who claim it. It removes any need for evidence (you can claim no would admit out loud), it allows to bypass any debate about the core issues (because the revenge claim means its isn't even about the issues), and it allows you to vilify the other side (because only a villainous and evil party would use government policy for such an goal as revenge). Really a perfect mix of unprovable, issue/reason bypassing, and maximizing of emotional response.
qball|1 year ago
We have a licensing scheme that takes roughly 6 months to issue you a license, and special transport rules for handguns and short rifles. We don't have gangs from the East smuggling in machine guns; and most crime guns come from an intentionally-porous border.
However, guns are a cultural flashpoint in most of the New World in ways they just aren't in most European countries. Part of this is an export of US politics, where sub-polities who want to ban guns are in a constant and bitter culture war with those that do not; Canadians copy a lot of US politics along whatever fault lines they happen to be on (currently, it's largest cities vs. everyone else). It's also a filter bubble problem, where the polities and voters that don't see guns as an issue are several thousand kilometers away from those that do (100km is a daily commute for us, but it can be the other side of the country for you), so you're not going to be exposed to 'normal' people on the other side.
>what in your view was their purpose?
Revenge. The sitting government did not like the fact that people from several thousand kilometers away came and protested certain edicts pertaining to a novel cold virus; those people are most likely to own guns.
This was simply a "fuck you". There are no problems with the crime rate here; other than that which the sitting government has encouraged with their policies, but European countries all have that problem too and for the same reason. Which makes people want guns -> government doesn't like that -> government limits that ability, naturally.
Eddy_Viscosity2|1 year ago
crustycoder|1 year ago
It certainly would, as it's not true.