Gun Legislation In Canada Essay, Research Paper
h2>Control and Controversy Dan Barham 100032310 Soci 2723 11/30/1998? Firearms laws in Canada have
become increasing restrictive over the past century. Permits were first
required for carrying handguns outside of one’s house in 1892. Carry permits
for handguns grew restrictive until 1934 when handguns were registered. Since
that time, handgun registration became increasingly centralised. Bill C-150 was
introduced into the Canadian Criminal code in 1969. Bill C-150 stated that,
?All automatic firearms, handguns, and firearms less than 66cm (26in) in length
were classified as restricted firearms and required registration? Increased
criminal penalties were introduced for possession and carrying of both registered
and unregistered firearms. In 1976 the government enacted Bill C-83. Bill C-83
required that prospective firearm purchasers first obtain a police permit and
supply police with two character references.?
In 1977, Parliament passed C?51 which, among other things, prohibited a
number of firearms and introduced the Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC).
Now in order to purchase, Canadians had to submit to police scrutiny before
they could purchase any firearm. In 1991, Parliament passed C?17, an omnibus
firearm law. The government justified this legislation by the brutal murder of
14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique by Marc Lepine. Among other things, C-17
prohibited a number of semiautomatic firearms and restricted a number of other
firearms. It prohibited "high capacity" magazines, pawned
bureaucratic rules for safe handling and safe storage, introduced "reverse
onus" provisions for firearms applicants and a centralised training
program for prospective firearms owners. Concomitant to C?17, the Minister of
Justice tightened up many procedures for dealing with firearms owners,
including a lengthy new application form for the FAC. Despite the 1992 introduction of C?17, the new Liberal Justice
Minister vowed to introduce still more restrictive firearms laws after the 1993
federal elections. In November 1994, he introduced an outline of his planned
legislation, and in February 1995, over the objections of many Liberal MP’s, he
introduced C?68. Rushing this law through the House Justice Committee, the Justice
Minister vowed he would not accept any amendments to his law. Thus, he rejected
input from the Reform Party, the Bloc QuÉbÉcois and even his own party. Despite
the largest protest ever mounted in the history of Canada, the House of Commons
passed the law on June 13, 1995. It was passed through the Senate on November
22, 1995, and was proclaimed on December 5, 1995 in time for the sixth
anniversary of the Montreal murders. Bill C-68 requires
that all firearms must be registered in a central database starting on Dec 1
and being passed in by 2003. All gun owners must have a license to possess a
firearm by 2001.The registry
will require the county?s estimated three million gun owners to register
approximately seven million firearms. It was initially slated to get underway
next week, but the government announced Monday 16th of November that
the implementation of the database would be delayed two months because some
police forces are not ready yet. The Government stated that the cost to
register every rifle and shotgun in Canada would be $85 million – spread over 5
years to do the whole job, of creating the database, and enacting all of the
legislation, and to go through the registration process. It is now three years
later since the inception of C-68, the government has spent close to? $200 million and not a single firearm in the
country has been registered in the database yet. Much of the opposition to the
implementation of Bill C-68, say that enough is enough. The government is
wasting time and millions of dollars on legislation that has no guarentee of
affecting crime in Canada. ?Criminals are NOT affected by gun control systems.? They do not apply for a permit to buy a gun,
do not buy guns in stores, do not register guns, and, above all, NEVER go to
the police station to apply for a permit to take a handgun down to the bank for
the purpose of robbing the bank.?????? Dave Tomlinson, member of NFAWhen it comes to the debate over whether or not
firearms should even be permitted one of the major factors has been values.
Values guide actions and beliefs. They influence perceptions of the world and
allow us to make distinctions between "good" and "evil."
Values are culturally transmitted, often by parents, increasingly by the media.
In an important sense values are not open to discussion, they are articles of
faith. Evidence contrary to an individual’s values is generally ignored or
rejected. People may change their minds about many things based on comparative
evidence, but values tend to remain in place. When someone changes his or her
values it is a dramatic personal event, sometimes termed a
"conversion." Values play an important, though often denied, role in
gun control debates. Someone with anti-gun values is likely to support anything
called g
anything-called gun control. As a matter of intellectual consistency, values
lead people to patterns of belief and assumptions about the workings of the
world that they come to believe reflect the natural order of things, and are
"common sense." Two questions have been asked to determine
basic values. First: "Do you agree or disagree that Canadian citizens
should have the right to own a firearm?" This question does not refer to
the American Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, but just whether a
Canadian should or should not have the right to own a firearm. Second: "Do
you generally favour or oppose hunting?" Undoubtedly there are other basic
values, which come into the issue, but the time or funds were lacking to ask
about respect for life; security; self-preservation; self-reliance; or
independence. The two questions, "right" and "hunt," do,
however, provide a powerful index of the underlying assumptions of the
respondents. Support and opposition to gun control, smoke
screens and partial analogies aside, depends to a great extent on views of the
place of firearms in Canadian society. Some citizens have little or no
tolerance for guns and arguments about recreational use or wildlife management
are meaningless to them. Those who lawfully own firearms find the views of the
first group incomprehensible. However, the gun control debate is not carried on
at the level of values to determine whether Canadians do or do not have the
right to own firearms. It has often been conducted at the level of assumed
outcomes, debating instead whether laws and regulations can affect violence
against women, or death rates from homicide, suicide and accidents. Thus, it is
never resolved. For the first party, statistics are irrelevant,
as guns are bad in themselves. Arguments from firearm owners and their allies,
who say that rates of misuse are not high and that regulations are ineffective,
strike the first party as a self-serving cop out. Firearm owners have been
reluctant participants in a debate that they feel they did not start. They
state that they were willing to follow the reasonable laws of C-51 and C-17 but
felt betrayed when these actions did not end the debate and there was
continuing movement towards further legislation. Canada’s Aboriginals have been the wild cards
in the debate. High rates of violence in some communities and an apparent
willingness by a few of them to use firearms in disputes with government are
confounded with treaty rights. Generally though the aboriginal firearms-use has
constituted an unvoiced sub-text in the debate. At the level of values, the basic question is
whether or not Canadians have the right to own firearms. The position of
Canadian gun owners is that they are not campaigning for "the right to
keep and bear arms," but for a restoration of the right to own and use
firearms within a framework of reasonable laws. Those who believe in gun
control and are supporting that side of the debate seem to be taking the more
absolute position that firearms are not necessary in a law abiding society and
no one should carry them at all. Values are an important factor in the gun
control debate. Those who have anti-firearms values can be expected to support
any measures, which restrict firearms use. Those who have pro-firearms values
can be expected to oppose these measures. Logic and reason are of little use
when it comes to values. Emotion and a sense of right and wrong are the
foundations of value disputes. Just as partisans in the abortion debate are
seldom converted by the arguments of the opposition, those who have pro and
anti firearm values are probably not open to argument, and are unlikely to be
swayed by the arguments of the other side. Two basic value conflicts in the gun control
debate are over the right to own firearms and opinions on hunting. When these
two positions are combined into a single measure the outlines of the value
conflict become clear. On one side we have Canadian urbanites, and non-gun
owners. On the other side are those are rural residents, and gun owners. While
one may find a non-gun owning Montreal resident who supports the right to own a
firearm and favours hunting, or a rural prairie resident who thinks no one
should have the right to own a gun or hunt, they are often exceptions to the
general rule. Much of the gun control debate reflects these values, and while
people may talk of the techniques or effectiveness of gun control, they are
often simply voicing their value positions. ?Where do we go from here,? seems to be the
important question that we deal with now. Is Bill C-68 a valuable piece of
legislation, or should it be turfed and forgotten just like a long list of
other government programs gone wrong. Or is Bill C-68 a piece of legislation
that even though it has cost us more then we originally believed a piece of
legislation that will bring us one step closer to a crime free society? One
thing is for sure however, the gun control debate in this country is far from
over.