Gun ownership is a net benefit to society

By Bruce Mills
The Hamilton Spectator
(Oct 19, 2006)

The Firearms Act is an onerous and draconian law which was built on a foundation of lies and which serves only to harass and criminalize law- abiding gun owners. It was foisted upon a largely uninformed populace, based on false promises of crime control and public safety.

The whole purpose of the Firearms Act was to create a "culture of safety" and to "reduce crime," neither of which it has accomplished.

There are several things that could have been done with the more than $1 billion and 10 years of effort that have been wasted on implementing this boondoggle.

First would be focusing the justice system on the real problem -- criminals.

Next would be allowing responsible law-abiding citizens to exercise their right to carry arms on their person for their own defence.

Last would be mandatory, age-appropriate firearms safety and shooting training in our schools.

All so-called gun control laws do is serve to harass and criminalize the law-abiding gun owner.

What we should be doing is focusing on a concerted program of effective criminal control, not useless and placebo gun control. This would include implementing a Firearms Prohibition Registry of the 176,000 Canadians who have a court-ordered firearms prohibition and the more than 37,000 who have had restraining orders imposed by the courts.

These people have been shown, by their actions and through due process, to be too dangerous to be allowed to own guns.

And yet they are not required to advise the police when they move, nor are they forced to submit to periodic inspections of their abode to ensure compliance unlike the two million law-abiding gun owners of Canada.

If public safety was really the goal, then it only makes sense to provide mandatory, age-appropriate safe firearms handling and shooting training in our schools.

A study in Scotland showed that playing with toy guns was actually beneficial for young boys, acting as a release for aggressive feelings while in a safe and structured environment.

A U.S. Department of Justice study of 4,000 at-risk delinquent kids showed children who receive real guns legitimately from their parents engage in no future gun crimes at all and are less likely to engage in any type of criminal activity than those kids who received no gun at all.

Firearms safety is a life skill that everyone can benefit from and transfer to other forms of safety training.

Responsible citizens must be allowed to exercise their right to self-defence and must be permitted access to the most effective means to secure that right. Guns are used in Canada between 60,000 and 80,000 times a year for defence of self or property from both two- and four-legged predators. For every life lost to guns, 40 are saved.

In the 37 U.S. states that have passed "shall issue" concealed carry laws (which essentially require authorities to issue permits for carrying a concealed weapon unless there is good reason not to), confrontational crimes drop on average by 24 per cent. Even those who disagree with such laws accrue the benefit. There are no shootouts and no "blood running in the streets" as the anti-gun extremists always screech will happen whenever one of these laws is up for passage.

This is the effect of the real gun culture. The gun culture of the legitimate, law-abiding, gun-owning citizen is a culture of safety, respect and responsibility. The real gun culture teaches respect for firearms, the user, and others. It teaches safety and responsibility in the use of firearms. It fosters independence, self-reliance, self-esteem and confidence in the individual. It helps to reduce crime and protect others in society.

Gun ownership is a right, not a crime. Gun ownership is a net benefit to society.

Bruce Mills lives in Dundas and writes regularly on gun control issues.

http://www.hamiltonspectator.com

__________________
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer

Yes the Canadian firearms act is an abysmal failure and should be counted as lessons learned here in the USA.

Gun registration proponents here also make claims that this step will also make us safer, that it is only common sense. The way I see it is as the first step to confiscation. Just another way to spend huge amounts of money on a huge entity that will never produce enough results to remotely justify it's existence.
Just as in Canada, UK, and Australia.

I fully agree with the thrust of this article. The Liberal Party of Canada and the anti-firearms lobby have worked themselves into a corner with their fear mongering, propaganda and false science. They cannot abandon their position without a total loss of credibility. Hawkers like Mayor David Miller of Toronto continue to pimp their position on the premise that when science fails a politician resorts to exaggeration and propaganda to promote their agenda.

Worse than the fiscal waste is the continuing gang activity that increases in numbers each year. That is Mayor Miller's legacy to the people of Toronto. He has demonstrated both a lack of will and an ability to suppress the gangs or to correct the social conditions that spawn the gangs.

Lastly, sportsmen/women contribute about 10 billion dollars to our economy each year. Urban politicians pandering for the urban vote are quite willing to persecute an identifiable minority in their quest for votes. If we were Blacks, Jews or Muslims we would be protected. But it seems in Canada law abiding actions are aced by the vote card. Shame on those crass urban politicians that engage in this travesty of justice.

Lastly, as sportsmen we are a keystone in the conservation movement in Canada. We put our time and money where Liberals substitute empty rhetoric. Politicians that advocate the disarming of law abiding civilians have more in common with totalitarianism than they do with free democratic practices!

The Firearms Act was the first step towards disarming law abiding Canadians. The Liberal Party of Canada brought it in in 1995 with the promise that universal registration would not lead to confiscation. Canadians have had handgun registration since 1934 with the effect of restricting it to sport shooters and collectors, several hundred thousand in total. The Act immediately prohibited about half of the handguns legally registered plus many semi-automatic firearms on the sole criteria of their 'military' appearance. The Liberal Party is now pledged to banning all handguns and semi-automatic rifles. I will never vote Liberal again as they have proved to be liars and politically corrupt.

The evidence is clear but facts have no place in their unreasonable attack on a legal visible minority. If we were Black, Jewish or Muslim we would be protected by law. Increasingly the anti-firearms politicians are making the same statements as totalitarian governments made before them in justifying the confiscation of private firearms. Our political parties, with the exception of the Conservative Party, no longer represent the rights and needs of all Canadians. Be forewarned.

Gun control is a net benefit to society. Gun ownership may be a net benefit to the owner, but not society.

Gun control works when it actually reduces the number of guns within society. If all it does is move them around, if the guns are still around and are just "illegal" then the law and enforcement become moot.

But in Canada we have managed to reduce guns. This invariably results in less gun-crime. And invariably, reduces crime overall, because other weapons cannot kill as fast and viciously as a semi or automatic gun.

The gang "problem" Toronto has is multiple times SMALLER than in many comparable US cities. Any wiki or statscan search can confirm this.

Gun control in the states will not work unless its federal. It is too easy to smuggle across state borders from one state that sells to another than bans. Heck, most guns in Canada are smuggled across the federal border. I would suspect that if guns in the US are no longer manufactured and sold for consumers, you would see a long-term slow decline in gun violence on both sides of the border.

The Canadian firearms legislation was failure of government, not policy. The Martin (?) government stuffed it up completely. That doesn't mean it was a bad idea, just that it was very badly carried out.

Whatever you've heard about guns and Australia is probably rubbish but I'm happy to discuss it with you in a non-inflammable manner

Bringing up Miller is a low blow. He's an idiot.

The key problem is finding a reputable source that does not push a political agenda that logically ends with the confiscation of all legally owned firearms.
Another problem is that many so-called experts are only experts in forwarding their own political agenda. That is the problem with the Coalition for Gun Control in Canada. Their much quoted spokesperson, Wendy Cukier, has no doctorate in Criminology, History or Law. So much for academic credentials related to the topic. I do not call a plumber when the lights go out but that is what you are doing when you ask for a statement from the Coalition. From a researcher's point of view, I find a lot of cherry picking in the data offered by the anti-gun people. They offer emotional appeals, fear mongering, bad science and propaganda in lieu of sound science and a balanced analysis of the available data.

History, science and culture do not support their position. They offer wishes instead of reality in the form of action with measurable results. Gun registration has not solved one verifiable crime in Canada since the inception of the Firearms Act in 1996. Increased public safety is still an unfulfilled promise. All this failure and a cost marching toward two billion dollars! Registration will not work because:
- criminals will not register their firearms;
- millions of firearms remain unaccounted for;
- mistakes in registration are rife;
- with each statement of the Liberal Party of Canada it is more apparent that Canadians have been lied to about the purpose and usefulness of the Long Gun Registry. It has more to do with the social engineering of our society to one with fewer personal rights than it does in providing greater public safety;
- need I go on?
Yes, I am Canadian and proud of the firearms culture that I was born into. What really scares me as an historian is to see urban Canadians applauding the loss of individual rights in the name of a mythical safer society. Promises and propaganda will not suppress the rising number of urban gangs nor will it correct the social problems that are a breeding ground for gangs and crime. The Liberals and their political allies are making statements about public safety that were heard first in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The historically aware know how that turned out.
I guess the basic question is who do you trust more, the people or a disreputable Liberal government?

Of the 5,194 homicides in 9 years: 2.27% of the guns were registered.

Statistics Canada tables also show only 2.1% of murderers had a valid firearms licence.

http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/breit.../2006/dec7.htm

The gun control has done nothing to target criminals. It hasn't reduced illegal guns. The statistics above show you that law-abiding citizens and their guns are far from the problem.

Also, thanks to our general population not being allowed to carry a handgun, many crimes that could have been prevented weren't.

Remember that guy being decapitated on the Greyhound bus by a knife wielding maniac. If a law-abiding citizen was armed with a handgun, they could have shot the assualter before he killed the innocent man. Remember the Dawson College massacre, if someone was armed they would have killed the murderer before he had a chance to injure dozens more people. Thousands of rapes each year could be prevented if women were armed. Taking self-defense out of the hands of people is why crime rates haven't been going down faster.

__________________
"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." — John Stuart Mill