• ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    That guy I responded to (I blocked him now) said the measures of Bill C-21 are too lenient and the OIC ban (which has been expanded many times over) in 2020 is is also too weak. He didn’t say OIC or C-21, because I don’t think he knows what they are. Most people who claim we need more gun control have no fucking idea what the laws are. Like I said before in other posts. I remember talking to people in the mid-90s as a kid (before I immigrated to Canada and became naturalized) and their assumption was ALWAYS measuring the US the only country where private firearms ownership is a thing, and that the sole cause of violence is firearm ownership. In 1996 I had someone tell me that Toronto fully banned firearms and only has 30 murders, and was the murder capital of Canada, while New York City had 2000 (in the late 80s and early 90s, NYC really was that violent. Now NYC is one of the safest cities in the country despite a massive amount of loosening of firearms laws throughout most of the US).

    The assumption was that Canada was a gun control haven with zero handguns, only bolt-action rifles (and stored centrally), and extremely tight controls on everything, with major cities banning firearms within limits. They were saying this in the 90s. Nothing could have been farther than the truth.

    Truth of the matter is, the PAL system didn’t come online until 2000 or so, meaning before then there was no license required to own any long-gun and ammunition was uncontrolled as well.

    Even with their obsessions of ‘assault weapons’ or ‘assault style weapons’ or ‘military style weapons’ their shit was never true. That term was invented in the 80s when the first ever civilian rifles and shotguns with polymer parts and adjustable stocks and such started becoming a thing. Their definition is stupid. A threaded barrel? They put in muzzle breaks and flash hiders so you don’t blind yourself. Suppressors have been illegal in Canada since 1969. Even in the US were regulations regarding suppressors have been loosened up considerably, you almost never see them in happen in crime. You know the Brian Thompson shooting in 2024? NYC’s police chief said that in the decades of his police service in the city this was the FIRST time he actually saw a confirmed case of a silence being used in a firearms related murder.

    it is really fucking expensive, and despite their own claims of ‘we need to monitor things coming in from the US’ they really aren’t proposing anything other than the one time they raised the maximum penalty for arms trafficking from 10 years to 14 years. this is stupid and highly ineffective. Why? I am going to use Saudi Arabia as an example. Saudi Arabia has the highest rate of executions on Earth, and most of their death penalties are given to drug smugglers and traffickers. Despite the sheer rate of executions, they haven’t deterred any dealer from trying. You think just making the penalty a few years more (and there’s no guarantee they will be given the maximum) is going to deter them from smuggling firearms? Especially no additional detection equipment and a massive diversion onto local guns and local gun owners.

    I could go on forever about how they look at other country’s gun laws wrong, too. For example the UK does not allow semi-auto centerfire rifles, but they do get those models and make them manually operated. There is no mention of ‘assault weapon’ in their laws either. I saw a video of a British target shooter with a manually operated AR-15 with a 100 round drum firing at a range. This is legal. Also the bans do not effect rimfire rifles. when the OIC gave the list of 15,000 rifle models, they did not care if they were rimfire or centralfire. They just banned them. Those rifles are legal in the UK. not easy to get, but they’re not treated as anything special.

    Basically they would have a harsher regime than Japan at this point and still say it is not good enough.