Oh, Canada
Gun owners in Toronto may soon be prohibited from keeping their firearms at home even if they are properly licensed and registered, Mayor David Miller said yesterday.
“There’s no reason to own a gun in Toronto — collector or not. If you are a collector and you have a permit, the guns need to be stored in a way that they can’t be stolen. And perhaps a centralized facility of some kind could accomplish that goal,” Mr. Miller told the National Post. “The law requires gun owners to have proper storage, but obviously not everyone adheres to that.”
The other culprit blamed in this case is, of course, lax US gun laws:
The Mayor has repeatedly blamed lax gun laws in the United States for some of Toronto’s violence, saying half of the firearms in the city originated in the United States.
Then where do the other half come from? More importantly, where are the crime guns coming from?
August 17th, 2005 at 10:13 am
“lax gun laws” ???
How is it that a Constitutionally guaranteed right is a “lax law”???
No biased reporting there.
August 17th, 2005 at 11:40 am
Putting all the guns in a central location…..so that they cannot be stolen….
Kinda like you put money in a bank so that the money will never be stolen.
I wonder if the Canadian goverment would pay for anything that was stolen (because it was their fault it was stolen.)
August 17th, 2005 at 11:53 am
More importantly, where are the crime guns coming from?
My understanding is that half of all gun crime in Canada is with weapons that originated in the United States.
August 17th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Manish, that comes from some dumb statement the mayor of Toronto made a couple of weeks ago. He also said there was a significant uptick in the number of illegal guns coming over the border (like 2x the usual amount the sunset of the AWB).
The problem is the actual numbers don’t support it – and the number of confiscated arms are actually down.
Look, the city is in the throws of some gang war or another. Its crooks killing crooks and has nothing to do with “lax american gun laws,” but probably a whole lot more to do with failed liberal social policies. The only people who should care are the mothers of these goblins who insist to their grave that their criminal kids weren’t in a gang.
August 17th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
yep, Canada sucks. I lived there for a looong time and I’m never going back. What a shithole. My wife is Canadian, which complicates matters a little (and my kids are dual citizens), we can visit, but we’ll never live there again. Blech.
August 17th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
There isn’t much we aren’t scapegoated for these days.
August 17th, 2005 at 2:04 pm
CT..the article states that fewer guns are being confiscated at the border, the stat that Miller was referring to was of the guns actually recovered in a crime, half of those are found to be of American origin (quick googling didn’t find the source, but I can look for it tonight if you wish).
And I’ll agree that Miller should STFU and stop blaming America, if conservative pundits in the US would STFU and stop blaming Canada’s immigration policies for terrorism.
failed liberal social policies
Care to elaborate? Considering that Canada has a way lower murder rate than the US, it would seem like they are doing something right.
The thing thats annoying about all of these debates are:
1)Americans thinking they know how to solve Canada’s gun problems
2)Canadians thinking they know how to solve America’s gun problems
There are much larger social differences than most people realize.
August 17th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
Murder rate is higher but the violent crime rate is higher. Americans have always been a murderous lot.
August 17th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
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August 17th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Murder rate is higher but the violent crime rate is higher
I assume you mean that the violent crime rate is lower. IIRC, you posted something about this at one point and we were discussing in the comments that the definition of “violent crime” was different which may have accounted for some of the difference.
August 17th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Manish – I agree completely with you about blaming Canada’s immigration policies for terrorism. And having lived in Vermont where I commuted to Canada often (and watched Canadian TV which I preferred over US broadcasts) I completely understand the cultural differences your alluding too. I don’t think I know how to solve all of Canada’s problems, but the gang problems they are experiencing in Toronto are pretty much similar to the the gang problems we suffer here in the States.
August 17th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
_Jon: This is in Canada. They don’t have our Constitution. I’m not sure if they have a constitution at all, but about the only right they seem to have anymore is not to be offended by politically-incorrect speech. (In other words, if you’re white and English speaking by birth, Christian, self-supporting, etc., they can insult you all they want, but you can be prosecuted for saying anything bad about the others.)
August 17th, 2005 at 3:49 pm
I am rather puzzled by the “half of all guns” statistic. Has Canada somehow retained a sufficient gun industry to supply the other half? Are they smuggled in from Siberia and Greenland? Are they legally imported and then diverted to criminals?
I’d expect their government to have killed their own gun industry and made it nearly as difficult to import them from overseas as is would be to smuggle them across an ocean, so virtually all their guns would have come from here, legally or otherwise…
Hey, we can beat their statistics. Most of the guns in America came from America. And most of them are legally owned by non-criminals – except in some heavily gun-controlled cities. You get one guess as to which parts of the US see the most gunfights.
August 17th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
countertop … to be clear I’m not necessarily agreeing with Miller. My original post was made to answer SU’s question and not meant to be argumentative to what he was saying. Miller’s problem is that instead of trying to do something he’s blaming the bogeyman as an excuse to do nothing. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with doing nothing, sometimes there is nothing the government can do to make the problem better. The US will have its own set of weapons policies for better or for worse and Miller has to act on the basis that he has no control over them. Obviously gun control in the US would do little to help out Toronto, other than getting rid of a perfectly good excuse. And yes, Torontonians need to keep things in perspective about gang violence.
I am rather puzzled by the “half of all guns” statistic.
I believe that it is half of all guns used in the commission of a crime where the weapon was recovered were acquired in the United States and illegally brought into Canada. Thus, foreign made arms sold in the US and then smuggled to the US count. Any arms made in the US and legally imported wouldn’t count.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:36 am
Mayor Miller has made reference to this “solution” before. Last time (a few months back) was during the last major spate of gang violence, and consisted of nothing more than a momentary sound byte and then no further mention, official or otherwise – I know, I checked often.
Mayor Miller is, and lets be kind, an idiot. He once again has felt obligated to say something and has stepped forward to offer a solution that isn’t practical, isn’t enforceable and runs against the rules set out by the federal firearms legislation.
Allow me to explain this last part. The firearms legislation defines three types of legally owned firearms 1. Unrestricted (most hunting rifles and shotguns); 2. Restricted (all handguns with a barrel length over 105mm, and certain “evil” rifles like the AR15); and 3. Prohibited (coverted auto and automatic firearms prohibited by orders in council and hanguns with a barrel length under 105mm, and possessed by those that held these firearms before these orders came into force).
For the last two (restricted and prohibited) the licenced owner of these firearms must store the firearms at their registered residence and transportation of these types of firearms must be authorized by a specific document (referred to as an Authorization to Transport which takes the form of a “long term” permit for range and gunsmith trips and a “short term” for sale or border crossing).
I’m no lawyer but I wonder at how successful Millers efforts (if sincere) will be, there is no infrastructure to store these firearms within the city, and the feds won’t allow us poor citizens to ship them off to relatives or friends outside the city. Stuck between the regs and a moron, poor us.
August 18th, 2005 at 6:24 am
Registration leads to confiscation
Some Canadian gun owners may soon be told to turn in their guns. Gun owners in Toronto may soon be prohibited from keeping their firearms at home even if they are properly licensed and registered, Mayor David Miller said yesterday….
January 2nd, 2006 at 12:46 am
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