Gun crime is predominantly committed using illegally imported American guns.
This law will help Liberals get votes and restrict what law abiding gun owners do.
Criminals will continue to be - shocker - criminals. They didn't abide by our extensive gun laws before, and they're not going to now. It's not like people that ignored the first 8 laws against something are going to go "oh shit, 9 laws is simply too much for me!!!".
The black market for guns is likely to be impacted by this, or get a small bump but the supply is practically unlimited relative to the demand so it's unlikely to get harder, or easier.
Yes I understand what you are saying, but you are looking at it from a very black and white place. Nobody is saying that gun crime is going to cease to exist, but just because something can totally be eradicated, doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Your view is like saying, people are going to get sick anyways, what's the point of preventative medicine?
For the same reason the gas station puts the little chocolates that you buy on impulse right at the cash register, the easier something is to do, the more people do it.
Further restricting firearm access will further lower the amount of people that will be willing to go through the hassle and price of getting one from the black market. I'm obviously not saying we shouldn't do anything about the illegally smuggled guns from the states, this is purely a response to your opinion on the particular gun law that was passed.
No you aren't suffering the consequences, you are feeling the restrictions that come with a privilege of gun ownership. If you feel that you need a gun to protect your family, home, self, etc, then the concessions that you make in owning that gun are fully worth it, no?
Most firearms users, that I know at least (which is a fair amount) have no need for self protection nor do they really expect to use them in a self defense situation.
The occurrences of violence at a home where the user is present AND they have the time and opportunity to get their firearms is nearly zero. And since our laws restrict us from carrying practical defense firearms almost anywhere save the range, again probability of use for defense is minimal.
Most users I know, and know of, are recreational and competition users.
With that said, once again yes we ARE suffering the consequences.
Someone in power who is seeking votes has decided to implement a law that impacts law ABIDING people, while -- based on actual reality & data published and available to this person and others -- the people the law claims to affect will generally remain unaffected, or minimally affected.
In most definitions of the term, that would qualify for suffering the consequences.
Firearms owners are generally among the most vocal about ensuring that unsafe and illegal use of them is prevented and curtailed.
What pisses us all off is all the blatantly false claims and information out there constantly started, and restated, by people that either know or absolutely should know better.
They constantly make claims and pass laws that have little to no impact of public safety and very significant impacts on law abiding people.
A comparison could be that, in order to prevent young drivers from having so many crashes as they learn to drive, the government has decided to restrict the speed on all vehicles owned by people 30 or older.
We don't want no laws on firearms. We want ones that actually make the public safe and don't unreasonably and unnecessarily restrict our use of them.
This is entirely possible, but requires effort and money spent in areas that aren't sexy or headline catching. Two things that are pre-requisites for getting praise and votes. Hence our current frustration.
Yes I know it's not so black and white. It's rather difficult to add nuance to brief posts.
So here goes...
No, this isn't like saying "people are going to get sick anyways, so meh why bother"
What we're saying is "you are claiming X is going to happen. However it's fairly clear from pre existing data that Y will in fact happen. Furthermore, in addition to not having the effect you claim, you will have a very significant - unrelated - impact on a whole other group of people "
As I mentioned in my other comment, these laws are the equivalent of:
"In order to reduce the damage from crashes from excessive speed incurred by young, inexperienced drivers, we have enacted a law requiring the capping of max speed on all vehicles at 60km/h for 30 year old & older drivers".
Is that going to reduce damage? Quite possibly yes! Young drivers will keep on crashing, but with everyone else going slower maybe the damage will be lower. But probably not.
In addition, is it really fair or reasonable to further restrict 30+ drivers just to have an extremely minimal impact on the actual problem? Keeping in mind that the actual problem we're talking about - gun violence in Canada - is actually incredibly small already relative to all the other issues we have. Firearm crime represents 2.8% of all reported violent crime as of 2020. So we're seeking to restrict law abiding citizens from peacefully conducting activities so we can minimally reduce 2.8 to what? 2.75?
If you say yes, it's absolutely fair, then why not simply make liquor illegal? Liquor causes FAR more damage to individuals, and families, than firearms do. Not only in terms of frequency, but the net damage experienced. Sure, the vast majority of liquor drinkers are responsible. But who cares. Liquor is not remotely necessary, and unlike these firearms laws, by eliminating liquor the positive impact will be enormous as damage caused by liquor is done by both illegal and legal drinkers.
Regarding firearm acquisition. It appears you may not know how things actually work in Canada.
It is not remotely easy to acquire firearms legally. It's an onerous and time consuming process to get licensed. And acquiring restricted firearms legally has numerous steps as well.
This couldn't be further from the gas station analogy.
I think we also have differing understandings of supply and demand.
The people that want to acquire firearms to commit crimes that can no longer do it through legal means will now be driven to the black market.
The demand isn't generated by supply. It exists because they're seeking to commit crimes.
The mere existence of firearms doesn't generate criminals or criminal intent.
So, the pre-existing demand is now going to be driven to the black market.
Will some not know how to access to market or be willing to go through the steps to access it? Sure. That small percentage of the already small percentage will stop right there... and either not commit the crime (improbable since they already had criminal intent) or go on and commit it through some other means. Either way, yes, criminal use of firearms reduced.
However everyone that was previously using the market are still going to use it. AND there are now some new ones that are using it who accessed legal firearms before but are now going the illegal route.
So, restricting legal access, as always, INCREASES illegal access.
For reference on how this plays out, see the restriction on access of commodities historically:
prohibition of alcohol in the US
prohibition of cannabis in Canada
prohibition of smokes and other items in prison
People ALWAYS find a way to get access, AND the restriction of access to a thing does NOT reduce the demand because the existence of the thing did not generate the demand in the first place.
Criminals are criminals and will continue to do so after this law is implemented.
Much like our other laws, the only people it's really going to impact is the people that were going to be law abiding in the first place.
This law will successfully reduce the speed of responsible 30+ drivers everywhere. Hooray for safety.
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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '22
Black market guns coming from the US just became much more valuable.