Canada introduces bill to freeze sales and imports of handguns

[b][c=BF0080]Chapeau, Premier Ministre Trudeau![/c][/b]

The Canadian government introduced a new bill today that proposes stricter laws controlling handguns just days after more than a dozen students and a teacher were gunned down in a Texas elementary school.

The proposed legislation would immediately stop the sale, transfer, and import of handguns across the country. It stops short of an outright ban on handguns but would reduce the number of them in legal circulation.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the bill a “national freeze” on handgun ownership during a news conference in Ottawa just after 5 pm local time.

“Other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives,” Trudeau said. “Canadians are united in wanting to do more to keep communities safe and prevent suicides and gender-based violence.”

“[b]This is about freedom. People should be free to go to school, the supermarket, their place of worship without fear,[/b]” Trudeau continued. “[b]Gun violence is a complex problem, but at the end of the day, the math is quite simple: [c=BF0080]the fewer guns in communities, the safer everyone will be[/c].[/b]”

Present at the announcement were survivors of several Canadian mass shootings, including Ecole Polytechnique, the Quebec Mosque shooting, the Danforth shooting, and the Portapique rampage.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino called the bill the most significant action on gun violence in a generation.

The bill also includes stiffer sentences for illegally owning a gun and gives more resources to law enforcement to intercept smuggled guns. In addition, it prevents people with a prior or current restraining order from getting a firearms licence. Courts could also suspend gun licences for people deemed to pose a danger to themselves or others.

The proposed legislation needs to be approved in a vote in the House of Commons before it becomes law.

(stolen from: https://dailyhive.com/calgary/canada-handgun-freeze-bill)

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ElwoodBlues · M

Are there "1 to 3 million" defensive gun uses per year in the US?

The "1 to 3 million" figure comes from one "random-digit-dialed telephone survey of 4,977 adults conducted from February through April of 1993" and reported by Kleck & Gertz in 1995. Kleck says the random sampling error of his survey is less than 1%, but if so, that would produce far smaller error bars than 1 to 3 million.

Others have tried to replicate Kleck's data; here's a survey of polling
[quote]https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/[/quote]
Needless to say, they produce much smaller numbers and likely have their own biases. But here's a useful quote:

[quote]We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective.[/quote]
What they're saying, in not so many words, is that guns are often used to intimidate. The guy who draws the gun may think he's preventing a crime. But putting another person in reasonable fear of bodily harm is the crime of assault (battery is when you make contact with the other person). So they're running these stories by judges, who say that many reported "defensive" gun uses are actually the offensive crime of assault, unknown to the gun user.

They also say "8. Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime; 9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law-abiding citizens." i.e. they say it's almost impossible to find a criminal with a gun wound who was shot by a law abiding citizen.

And finally,
[quote]Victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes, and women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault (in more than 300 cases). Victims using a gun were no less likely to be injured after taking protective action than victims using other forms of protective action. Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that self-defense gun use is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.[/quote]

I'm not saying this Harvard data is perfect, but it asks a lot of specific questions about defensive gun use; and the results do tend to completely undermine the Kleck 1993 polling result.

[sep][sep][sep][sep]

Here's the peer reviewed report from the two Harvard surveys:
[b]https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/6/4/263[/b]

Same author, an analysis of the National Crime Victimization Survey from 2007-2011 covering 14,000 incidents
[b]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743515001188[/b]
[quote]Results
Of over 14,000 incidents in which the victim was present, 127 (0.9%) involved a SDGU. SDGU was more common among males, in rural areas, away from home, against male offenders and against offenders with a gun. After any protective action, 4.2% of victims were injured; after SDGU, 4.1% of victims were injured. In property crimes, 55.9% of victims who took protective action lost property, 38.5 of SDGU victims lost property, and 34.9% of victims who used a weapon other than a gun lost property.
Conclusions
Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that SDGU is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.[/quote]
SDGU = self-defense gun use

pdqsailor1 · 61-69, M

@ElwoodBlues Not ONE such case will happen in Canada ... long guns must be transported unloaded in Canada with a trigger lock... in the case of handguns, unloaded, trigger locked and in a locked box.. In your house they must be locked in a safe, unloaded ammunition stored in another room - no self defensive use - or offensive use is permitted.. do so you get criminally charged.. We have virtually No citizens who are allowed to carry a loaded gun in Canada... Hand guns are range use ONLY ... Long guns are range use or for hunting if you have the course and the permit to allow it.. That is the total allowable extent of gun use in Canada. Oh and to move that handgun requires an Authorization to Transport Permit from the police...but they are pretty easy to work with in granting that permit - from your home to the range and back again - period...no stopping for dinner with the locked up empty gun in the car.. Welcome to Canada...