VEZINA: Gun control debate rages on
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I obtained loads of suggestions from my Might 2 column, “Debate on gun management fuelled by simplistic slogans” and a few attention-grabbing follow-up points arose from it.
Right here’s a sampling of the responses and my observations about them.
1. “Ask any police officer in Canada, they may say banning handguns will do nothing.”
That is virtually appropriate, however mistaken in some necessary methods.
The very first thing is that it’s a sweeping generalization.
There are tens of hundreds of law enforcement officials in Canada, in federal, provincial and municipal providers, so there’ll clearly be completely different viewpoints amongst law enforcement officials on the problem of banning handguns.
It’s seemingly true that almost all take the place {that a} handgun ban could be ineffective. However ascribing a uniform viewpoint to a complete group of individuals is inaccurate.
Simply because most members of a company, or the group itself, assumes a specific place on a difficulty doesn’t imply 100% of the members of that group agree with it.
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It isn’t an assertion that not a single life could be saved by banning handguns.
That’s one thing the police can’t probably know and it might be callous to the victims of gun crime and their households to make such an argument.
What many police who oppose handgun bans are saying is that the sources it might take to realize it may very well be higher and extra successfully used for different initiatives to struggle gun crime, similar to stepping up efforts in opposition to gun smuggling throughout the Canada-U.S. border.
Taking a step again from the problem of banning, or not banning, handguns, think about that crime prevention is a posh and tough problem.
In 2019, Canada had 552 homicides with a inhabitants of 38 million individuals. The U.S. had 17,709 homicides with a inhabitants of 329 million.
Meaning the U.S, with eight to 9 instances the inhabitants of Canada, had 32 instances extra homicides.
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Many individuals don’t just like the argument “at the least we aren’t the People on the subject of gun crime ,” however there are causes our numbers are decrease, together with our historic and cultural variations with the U.S., in addition to efforts by our police forces, and credit score ought to be given the place it’s due.
2. One other place I heard in response to my column was, “banning handguns will do nothing. If I need to get a handgun I can get a handgun.”
It was attention-grabbing that folks making this argument by no means mentioned “individuals who need to get a handgun will get one,” it was all the time “I can get a handgun if I would like one.”
This raises the query of whether or not their perception is that the correct to legally acquire a handgun ought to be protected, or is it that getting an unlawful handgun is very easy that banning them is not going to change this?
If their place is the latter, why would they need to permit that to proceed, on condition that the unlawful possession of a handgun is each unethical and more likely to trigger societal hurt?
Perhaps we wouldn’t have as a lot of an unlawful handgun drawback if extra individuals who say they know the best way to get them illegally however don’t do it, would report how they’d do it to the police.
— Vezina is the CEO of Ready Canada Corp. and teaches Catastrophe and Emergency Administration at York College. He could be reached at information@ready.ca
