scumble on 7/6/2016 at 20:40

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catbarf probably got the gist of what I was saying. I'm all for lowering the chances of violent crime, what's not so clear to me is how effective the actual laws in place are and how effective the enforcement or monitoring is. The mass shootings that prompt more gun control are perpetrated by people who aren't exactly career criminals.

There's some cognitive dissonance between reducing risks from firearm possession by people with licenses, and factors that influence the ability of criminals to get guns. Criminal access to guns is not the same thing as access for people who do the paperwork legally.

I'll admit to being a bit confused by the certainty of people on either side of the debate. It has always felt emotional and political rather than rational.

catbarf on 8/6/2016 at 02:00

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Canada abolished their national registry in 2012 after finding that it had failed to justify its cost as either an academic resource or a law enforcement tool. Would you describe that as Canada repressing gun violence research? To be honest, I've never before seen anyone argue that a registry is a useful tool for research or describe a ban on registries as a ban on academic research. That's just not the purpose of a registry and not how they're set up.

Volitions Advocate on 8/6/2016 at 05:21

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The Liberal Chrétien government promised that taxpayers would be on the hook for $2 Million to set up and maintain the registry. The remaining $117 would be taken care of with registration and license fees. By the time the Conservative Harper Government repealed that portion of the act, the cost had reached over $2 billion in less than 20 years. Despite the cost overruns, there were backlogs, crashed government websites, government call centres that couldn't pick up the phone fast enough, and paperwork delays up to a year for processing registration certificates and license applications (and renewals). As in.. I buy a gun from somebody, and they can't even give it to me until the transfer of ownership is completed and my registration certificate comes in the mail, which may or may not happen within 2 weeks to 8 months or so. And that's with massive non-compliance. Right now in Canada there are around 2 million firearms owners according to the RCMP's records, because of licensing. And with whatever data is left over from the long-gun registry (which was ordered destroyed by parliament, and ignored by the police) and the handgun registry, they estimate about 7 or 8 million firearms in Canada, including those in retail stores and owned by the police (excluding the military).

But Gun ownership is the heritage of a country founded on hunting and trapping, and over the decades, many people have not complied with each new set of rules as they have been introduced. The real numbers aren't known, but the estimates range up to 4 - 4.5 million gun owners in Canada, and as high as 18 million firearms total. I believe the estimates are closer than the official numbers even if they might be high in some cases.

There are about 33 million people in Canada. (all of one and a half times the population of Mexico City) The truth is, in a country where firearm ownership involves mandatory licensing. Registration's only purpose is confiscation, because it doesn't help much of anything else at all.

If the USA wanted to implement something like that, with 10 times the population and 30 times the firearms. Good Fucking Luck. Just look at Connecticut as a model for how bad non-compliance will be.

Volitions Advocate on 8/6/2016 at 15:19

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Well, Canada likes to think it's impervious to gun problems for the most part, and the gun control lobby gets pretty puffed up about it, but both sides of the debate up here are a bit in denial.

Compared to the US, Canada has very little gun crime. But compared to lots of other places it's quite high, especially parts of Europe. Even parts where gun ownership is probably higher and more accepting of the culture like the Czech Republic. Canada isn't a perfect bastion of gun sensibility.

I guess my argument is that "gun sensibility" doesn't mean bans, prohibition, and suspicion of all people who enjoy them. The biggest political enemy of extremists is the moderate, I wouldn't call my self a "Captial-M Moderate," but I feel pretty moderate in my politics. I wish the firearms lobby and the gun control lobby were both much less extreme than they are. Which is why I'm part of the CCFR, who are not the NRA in any shape or form. Plenty of gun nuts who are not very comfortable with them. In Canada, guys like me ARE the gun lobby, and it's far less sinister or illuminati-esque than people want to believe, even if that probably isn't true for the NRA.

catbarf on 8/6/2016 at 21:36

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I think the overwhelming majority of gun owners agree with the fundamental idea of focusing on keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them, but it's the implementation of that idea that is often disputed. Case in point, I can't get behind depriving someone of a Constitutional right when they haven't committed or even been accused of any crime, may be on the list entirely erroneously, and have little recourse through an opaque bureaucratic system to get off said list. Just look at all the people who are wrongly put on the No-Fly list, and the (http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_24911422/u-s-government-loses-challenge-no-fly-lists) hoops they have to jump through to get off of it. I get the idea behind preventing people on watch lists from buying guns, it's intuitive and seems logical on the face of it, but from a civil liberties standpoint it's a really bad precedent to set. If the FBI sees that someone on a watch list is buying guns and explosives and fails to act on it, that's really their failure.