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We need to almost completely ban guns in Canada (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 week ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/canadapolitics@lemmy.ca

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The recreation use from them is not worth the inevitable shootings. As the safety of the many come before the pleasure of the few. Not to mention the lead exposure on the environment from the bullet casings left on the ground and all the noise that's caused from all the firing disrupting the wildlife.

If you want to play with guns like toys go take a vacation down south.

The only people who should have access to guns are the military, special forces and hunters in remote areas without any food alternatives.

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[–] WizardGed@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

I see you are not being honest or have somehow lost the context for this whole comment chain. Statscan indicates that in a portion of cases, the firearm used was originally legally owned, that doesn't automatically mean the person committing the crime was the legal owner. It also does not make any claim about the origin of the gun used in these crimes, and cannot as that data is not collected. The report itself notes, "Information on the origin of the firearm was only known in a small proportion of cases" and also that "there was limited information on the characteristics of the firearms used in the commission of a crime." These are important distinctions as we do not know how many of these legally owned firearms were stolen and then used in a crime, the person who stole it would not be the legal owner.

Furthermore, the report details how firearms used in homicides are down from 15 years ago. "In the 10 years prior to 2023, the proportion of firearm-related homicides committed with a handgun varied from 53% to 64%. The rate of handgun-related homicide has been relatively stable since 2019 after increasing from 2013 to 2019. Meanwhile, the rate of homicides committed with a rifle or shotgun has remained relatively stable since 2013 after having generally declined since 1975." This demonstrates that gun violence is on a downward trend.

The data available from StatCan is also very limited. It is based on only 56% of police-reported incidents. Meaning that nearly half of the data is missing, and that which is available does not contain information about the origin of the gun in question.

My original point was about the significant role of illegally smuggled firearms in fueling gun violence in Canada, especially in the context of gang-related crime. While the StatCan report doesn't provide a complete picture, law enforcement agencies and research by organizations like the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, have consistently highlighted the prevalence of smuggled guns, particularly from the US, in serious violent crimes.