The New Canadian Firearms Legislation
I have something of a guilty little secret. One of my favourite YouTube Channels is something called Forgotten Weapons.
I mostly enjoy it because the fellow who runs the channel, Ian McCollum, is so good at what he does. He’s a gun collector and a sport shooter, but he also has a history degree and brings a nuanced appreciation of the economics, politics, history, and, engineering that went into all guns he describes. He will explain the intricacies of gun laws at times, but studiously avoids talking about any of the controversial elements of firearm’s politics.
I thought I’d mention the above before I get into the legislation that the Trudeau government has recently put before Parliament. I won’t go into the details but instead will list just the key points and then try to describe the context. I thought I’d do this, because I’ve noticed some commentators on social media ‘banging the drum’ suggesting that this is a major step in Trudeau’s ultimate goal of changing Canada into a Communist police state. Think of this op-ed as an attempt to prepare readers for potential arguments with their ‘gun-nut’ relatives over the Christmas tortierre.
Here’s the not quite accurate, but close enough for our purposes, synopsis of what’s happening:
a freeze on the importation and sale of hand guns
making it easier to seize the guns of ‘at-risk’ individuals and revoke the licenses of individuals who have a history of or a perceived potential of violence
effectively, all post-WW1 military-style rifles (ie: semi-auto with a detachable magazine) will be banned
air pistols that are designed to look like a real handgun will be banned
weapons that will be designated illegal will be retroactively designated—which means nothing anyone already owns will be grandfathered
For a tiny percentage of people, this is going to be an absolute earth-quake. But I’d like to point out that it’s a lot less for both the general public and most firearms owners.
Let’s go through both the reasons for these changes and the results for ordinary people.
The freeze on hand gun sales:
The important thing to understand is that it’s already supposed to be hard to get a handgun. But somehow people are still getting them. How? To my mind, it has to be through three different means (we’ll forget about home-made guns because the vast majority of people lack the necessary skills):
illegal purchases from legitimate businesses
illegal importation
stealing from legal owners
A freeze on handgun sales will help with all three of these sources. That’s because the best way to be selling guns illegally is by hiding them in a legal business. And if fewer people legally own guns (as collectors or shooters), there are fewer around to get stolen from lawful owners.
Making it easier to seize guns from at-risk individuals:
This really should be a ‘no-brainer’. (Disclosure: my father killed himself with a shotgun while depressed about an illness.)
Getting rid of assault and battle rifles:
The very best hunting weapons were invented just before the First World War. These are the bolt action rifles: the German Mauser, the British SMLE, the Canadian Ross, and, the American Springfield. These were so accurate and had such long range that they were still being used by snipers until quite recently. The Canadian Rangers were offered more modern military assault rifles, but the people in these units stuck with the antique British SMLEs until it became too difficult to keep them working. Then they were replaced by a modern bolt action gun from Finland: the T3X Tikka Arctic.
I’ve already seen nonsense coming from the ‘gun nut’ community arguing that any hunting rifle with a magazine that holds more than 5 rounds will be banned. Nope,not true. It’s only semi auto + can fit a detachable box magazine that can hold more than 5 rounds + centre fire cartridge = banned. That means any manually operated gun (ie: bolt, lever, and, pump) that holds more than five rounds in a tube magazine is fine. Any .22 is also OK. What this means is hunters will have no problem at all if they have a traditional hunting rifle.
What is being banned are what are called ‘assault rifles’ and ‘battle rifles’.
All the ordinary citizen really needs to know is that these are military rifles, designed not for hunting but rather for killing other people who are similarly armed. Since deer and moose don’t shoot back, the large magazines, and, ability to fire and reload really fast aren’t necessary. But if a lunatic has to stop and reload after five shots—and, reloading requires feeding the bullets in one at a time—it gives people a lot more time to run.
Air pistols that look like real guns will be illegal:
You are a police officer and you get called by a fellow outside a convenience store who says a kid in the store is robbing the clerk using a hand gun. Your heart is racing, but you do everything right. You wait for the guy to leave and confront him when there aren’t any civilians around. He panics, though, and pulls a revolver out of his jacket pocket and your training kicks in. You fire your service automatic twice into his body mass and he drops to sidewalk, dying. When you kick pistol out of his hand you realize it was just a pellet gun that was designed to look just like a real one. Now you are going to have to go through the rest of your life with nightmares and anxiety—all because some slimeball sold this kid a look-a-like gun.
The new regulations will apply to currently-owned weapons too:
When people contemplate the mess South of the border they often say ‘it’s too late—there are so many guns in people’s hands already that even if we banned all gun sales it wouldn’t make any difference’. That’s why it’s important that the new legislation be retroactive. It is true that there is no registry that will tell the police where all the guns are. But the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of gun owners aren’t dangerous. They can hold onto their guns all their lives without hurting anyone. Eventually, those guns will get inherited by someone who doesn’t want the damn things around, and they will just call the police who will pick them up and destroy them. But if the police find prohibited weapons in some place that they are searching for some other reason, they’ll be able to remove them without any debate. I doubt if it will take too long for this to result in a situation where someone kills a few people instead of a dozen. As far as I’m concerned—that’s a win.
I think it’s important to understand just what sorts of people own guns.
There are people who need guns for part of their jobs: armed guards, police, and, military. Let’s just totally ignore them.
Other folks use them for hunting, to get rid of pests on a farm, or, to protect themselves while trekking in the wilderness. The old-fashioned hunting rifles that will continue to be legal will be just fine for them.
Other folks like to do shooting sports. I can see the appeal, but I don’t see how it’s a good idea to allow people to use modern military weapons in this sport. There won’t be any problem with some types of competitions—one the ones that use the sorts of guns allowed under the new legislation. That will still allow target shooting and biatholon. And folks can still compete practice pistol sports by using air pistols (as long as they look like air pistols). I do martial arts and have recently started to do historical fencing—but these sports are all done with fake weapons now because as one of my teachers told me ‘if you start killing your sparring partners pretty soon you won’t have anyone to compete against’. We already have a lot of people who play with airsoft and paint-ball weapons—what’s the problem?
Some folks like to collect weapons because they are ‘cool’. I suppose I agree, which is why I watch the Forgotten Weapons channel. Some weapons will no longer be legally collectible. But there are still lots of them that will still be fine: all black powder guns and just about everything that isn’t an assault (eg: an AR-15) or battle (eg: SKS) rifle.
It’s illegal for people to collect all sorts of things—bombs, machine guns, poison gas, child pornography, etc. But people still get to collect all sorts of other strange things. I lived with a guy once who collected straight razors. I met another fellow who collected rubber bullets that he found at protests. People who want to collect guns will still have lots of options.
I raise the issue of hunters, sport shooters, and, collectors because a fourth group of gun lovers always try to rope them into their opposition to regulation. These people are the ‘gun fetishists’.
fe· tish ˈfe-tish also ˈfē- variants or less commonly fetich 1 a : an object (such as a small stone carving of an animal) believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner broadly : a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence b : an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion.
(Merriam-Webster, on-line dictionary)
These are the real gun-nuts. For them the fact that people can own weapons is the one, pure symbolic truth behind real ‘freedom’. It is the alpha and omega of their worldview. It is the holy eucharist of their faith. It is how they define themselves, and how they measure other people and their society-as-a-whole. If you might doubt this, consider the following two images.
This isn’t to say all gun nuts are at the point where they engrave biblical versus onto their guns or take them to church. But I do think that there is a continuim and these are just the outliers of a curve that a small—but extremely loud—number of gun owners find themselves inhabiting.
Fetish behaviour is very common. We all know people who make sports or cars or religion or something else into a fetish. But these fetishes don’t result in mass killings. And people rarely commit suicide or murder their spouses with sports memorabilia. (Don’t forget, however, that there is still the odd case of soccer riots, people killed in street racing, and, religious extremism—so no type of fetish is without its dangers.)
But I think it’s really important to understand that it’s pretty much only the fetish types who will be unable to pursue their obsessions after the proposed Liberal firearms legislation becomes law of the land. So if you enjoy hunting, competitive shooting, or, collect old guns—don’t worry. You will still be able to do your thing. Just don’t let the gun fetish types scare you into thinking that this legislation is going to ruin your life.
Yes, there will still be some things that change. But the world is a lot more crowded than it used to be. And there are a lot of crazies out there who want to do very bad things. We have to adapt. When I was young you could buy dynamite in the hardware store without a permit. You could also purchase a powder that created cyanide gas when exposed to the air. (Dad used to kill rats—a tablespoon down a hole and then block it.) I’m really glad that these things are no longer available. I think it’s time we stopped selling assault and battle rifles too.