Liberals in Canada Looking at Complete Handgun Ban

[mike webb]

The wingnuts here in power announced they are having a series of community meetings to "gauge public support for a total handgun ban". I don't doubt they will ram it through and we will all be safe again. They fail to understand that gang members will not turn in their guns when it becomes law. Crimes committed here with legally registered handguns are extremely rare. The liberals quote numbers of deaths from firearms every year failing to mention that two thirds of them are suicides.

[Mark in Ottawa]

The Liberals are prone to trying to be seen to be doing "something" or even "anything" in response to any issue, particularly one relating to firearms. It does not matter if what they do is wrong and is known to be wrong as long as they can say that they responded strongly. In this case they are fully prepared to punish the innocent rather than the guilty and the anti-gun lobby is fully prepared to distort statistics so things are not looking good.

This is a Government whose first acts included reversing the various "tough on crime" acts of the previous Conservative Government.

This is also a Party that some years ago, after a particularly horrible shooting incident in which a Muslim immigrant killed 14 female students at a University in Quebec responded,not by dealing with the issue of Muslims and women, but rather by instituting an absolutely useless registry of long guns at a cost of almost $2 billion. This was a registry that was eventually scrapped by the Conservatives after the federal Auditor General revealed that it could not be shown to have saved even one life.

[clintonhater]

Any Canadian organization comparable to the NRA to resist such laws?

[Allen]

Any Canadian organization comparable to the NRA to resist such laws?

Anything in your constitution or bylaws that give Canadians the right to own firearms and to defend themselves?

[mike webb]

We don't have anything related in the constitution and there are a couple national bodies that speak for gun owners but we are a minority and largely relegated to rural Canada. The large cities are violently antigun as they are the ones with the gun crime problem. As it is mostly gang related any new laws are going to have little effect. Similar to the U.S. in that areas of the country where nearly every household has a gun in it, gun crime is very low. The liberals never seem to make the connection. Mark in Ottawa is correct about the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" that was the now defunct long gun registry. No doubt they are looking at something similar again. Politicians seem to have short memories. So do voters unfortunately.

[Allen]

Similar to the U.S. in that areas of the country where nearly every household has a gun in it, gun crime is very low. The liberals never seem to make the connection.

Oh they make the connection, that's why there's a new gun control bill on the table every day. We see the daily over reach by the liberals. What if there were no guns to oppose them if it came to door to door conflicts? They can not enforce police power over an armed/defended country. Our 2nd amendment is not about hunting, it is for defense against the government. It sure does piss them off.

[bdm]

All these politicians have armed escorts for protection and the push for laws to ban fire arms for everyone else.Total BS

[Vern Humphrey]

All these politicians have armed escorts for protection and the push for laws to ban fire arms for everyone else.Total BS

Well, you see, politicians are IMPAWTENT! -- not like us ordinary scum, whose lives aren't worth saving.

[Mark in Ottawa]

Clintonhater: There is a Canadian organization called the National Firearms Association that functions as a lobby group for our community. It is however, nowhere near as powerful as the NRA, although I have always felt that they do a pretty good job. Interestingly though, there is a group of Members of Parliament called the "outdoors caucus" that comes out to my local range here in Ottawa each year for a day of shooting, so Parliamentarians are not all anti-gun. One major difference between the USA and Canada is that we do not have anything similar to your 2nd Amendment. In Canada, firearms ownership is a privilege and not a right and the rules governing that privilege can be and often have been modified by Parliament.

[Vern Humphrey]

Well, parliamentary systems are generally like that -- there is no separation of powers in such a system. The Legislative, Executive and Judicial are all branches of Parliament. And in England, the Mother of Parliaments, there is no written Constitution.