Handgun ban wouldn’t have stopped Danforth shooter
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Summary
The idea of a nationwide ban on handguns in Canada is gaining ground in the wake of the recent shooting of an 18-year-old on Danforth Ave. in Toronto. Andrew Lutton explains why a gun ban in Canada would be a bad idea, and why common sense is the best solution.
Transcript
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It started with a motion, a symbolic motion passed by Toronto City Council
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calling on the federal and provincial governments to ban the sale of handguns
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and handgun ammunition. Now the idea of a nationwide handgun ban in Canada
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is gaining steam. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodill when asked last week
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wouldn't say whether it was on the docket for the government but did say
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that they would entertain all proposals that come forward.
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More recently Justin Trudeau speaking at the memorial service for 18-year-old
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Rhys Fallon, one of the people gunned down on Danforth Ave a week and a bit ago,
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said that he would not rule out anything, certainly would not rule out a handgun ban.
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He did say that he would look to other jurisdictions to see how they manage
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to combat firearm related crime. Now this gets me a little bit nervous because we
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know that Justin Trudeau's government has an anti-gun agenda. We've seen this
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through their legislative track record, we've also seen it through their public
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statements and their opposition to very common sense firearms measures
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that were put forward by the previous Conservative government.
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And any time they talk about looking to other countries we should be very
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concerned that they're going to cite Australia.
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Australia is a country that pro-gun control advocates, that anti-gun people
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love to hold up as an example because former Prime Minister John Howard,
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who was actually Conservative, initiated a nationwide gun ban in Australia.
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Gun control advocates love to say that this was effective, but if you look at the actual
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numbers it wasn't. In fact there was a report in Australia's The Age that said as much.
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They looked at year-over-year crime, gun-related offences and gun-related violent crime,
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and found that after the gun ban Australians were armed more than they ever had been when guns were
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legal and available in Australia. So it's nothing to do with Australia being an isolated example because
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it's on an island. It just simply didn't work. Illegal firearms flooded across into the country more than
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legal firearms ever had. And we know that the people that managed to get their hands on firearms
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illegally offer a lot more of a problematic ownership than those who get their guns legally.
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If Justin Trudeau wants to take a look at gun ownership around the world, look at nations like Israel,
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where people use firearms very regularly for self-defense without violent crime being an issue.
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Or Switzerland, where there are rifles in pretty much every household and gun crime that is violent
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is virtually non-existent. These are the case studies that we should be actually looking at here,
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but instead they're going to look at cases where they can pick and choose stats that suggest that guns
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are the problem and not the violent criminals and gangs and crime syndicates that get their hands on
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illegal guns. Case in point, this week the world is going crazy over the fact that plans for 3D firearms,
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3D printed firearms, are now available. There's no way to gun control your way out of gun ownership.
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It's going to happen. What a government needs to do is set up an infrastructure and a framework
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that doesn't penalize the legal gun owners. That's where the solution in Canada lies.
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We're doing a lot of the work now, but common sense is the answer, not what the Liberals are passing off.
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For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lutton.