A few thousand pro-gun demonstrators gathered Saturday outside the National Assembly to demand that the Quebec government withdraw from the federal buyback program. Their message: “Our guns are not for sale!”
The gun buyback schemes and most gun bans in Canada make no fucking sense whatsoever, and have not had a single tangible effect on crime. I support the basic licensing scheme that we have (save for the add-ons by Quebec, which are pointless and annoying. I had to go through them) as it seems to be quite effective, and when most shootings happen with legal guns (which are less than 1% of shootings in Canada) they tend to be a failure of the RCMP and local police. Like what happened in Tumbler Ridge recently when they returned the firearms to the person even though they did not have a valid PAL and were under serious scrutiny for violent outbursts and mental health. Even more egregious was the 2020 Nova Scotia that despite being forbidden from owning guns since at least 2002, they allowed him to take possession of a firearm from a deceased friend via their estate without them bothering to check if he had a valid permit or not. Also he was stockpiling on illegally smuggled guns from the US and when COVID came around he started acting VERY violently and people complained and some suspected he had firearms on him, but the RCMP didn’t act upon it still. It is just fucked.
And I am going to go on a tangent and say this: the budget for the long-gun registry (which was a huge thing under Harper) also went massively overboard, they said only a few millions when it hit the billion territory and it still did not produce any results, it was eventually cancelled by him but reinstated immediately under Trudeau and is still a massive money stink that hasn’t had any results. The gun back guy is also siphoning off money and producing nothing.
So I am going to say this… that money absolutely needs to go to mental health and general healthcare and other actually useful programs. I know that many people accuse pro-gun people like me of only bringing up mental health when a shooting is involved, and while I find this to be true in the United States, I am really thinking it needs to be made an actual point in Canada.
There are next to no programs that really are supposed to help pull people out of gangs and out of bullshit like incel ideology (even when it is starting to be acknowledged as a national security problem by CSIS). There was a massive surge in smash and grabs in Ontario recently and I recall Mark Carney promising harsher punishments for juvenile offenders and not much else. I find this extremely lacking. I am pretty damn sure the increase in juvenile offenders as of late is a direct consequence of A: defunding of many programs, B: A lack of other programs, and C: Worsening economic prospects. You have a bunch of young people who don’t see a future and what are they turning to for money? Smash and grabs on jewelry stores.
The same shit with incels. We do not a single proper program against that. The 1989 Poly shooter was a proto-incel. I am going to say that incels and people really, really hating women have been around since the dawn of humanity, but the modern incel movement is just that: modern. In the 80s when the shooter was ruminating in his own ideas and thoughts he did not have a community to support him, which is why it took him many years to finally work up shooting the university… and the fact that there weren’t that many other mass shootings with that motive (once again, mass shootings and rampage killers are also centuries old, but the modern mass shooter of the late 20th and early 21st century is something different from the past… they’re learning from one another in a way that just never happened before). We’ve had more mass killings in Canada by incels, like the 2018 Toronto van attack that killed 11 people, and yet despite that no one in government seems to care.
Nothing about addressing any of the underlying issues in society at all. Even now the gun bans being passed aren’t even about addressing gun violence or mass shooting, it is an outright war on shooting sports. I am someone who has been monitoring the bills and OICs very carefully. the latest bill that was passed in 2022 originally didn’t just want to ban even more guns, but it wanted to ban airsoft and paintball guns that have resemblance to real firearms and maybe even extend to those that don’t. Meaning they are actively looking to utterly destroy anything that involved shooting as a hobby.
The gun buyback schemes and most gun bans in Canada make no fucking sense whatsoever, and have not had a single tangible effect on crime. I support the basic licensing scheme that we have (save for the add-ons by Quebec, which are pointless and annoying. I had to go through them) as it seems to be quite effective, and when most shootings happen with legal guns (which are less than 1% of shootings in Canada) they tend to be a failure of the RCMP and local police. Like what happened in Tumbler Ridge recently when they returned the firearms to the person even though they did not have a valid PAL and were under serious scrutiny for violent outbursts and mental health. Even more egregious was the 2020 Nova Scotia that despite being forbidden from owning guns since at least 2002, they allowed him to take possession of a firearm from a deceased friend via their estate without them bothering to check if he had a valid permit or not. Also he was stockpiling on illegally smuggled guns from the US and when COVID came around he started acting VERY violently and people complained and some suspected he had firearms on him, but the RCMP didn’t act upon it still. It is just fucked.
And I am going to go on a tangent and say this: the budget for the long-gun registry (which was a huge thing under Harper) also went massively overboard, they said only a few millions when it hit the billion territory and it still did not produce any results, it was eventually cancelled by him but reinstated immediately under Trudeau and is still a massive money stink that hasn’t had any results. The gun back guy is also siphoning off money and producing nothing.
So I am going to say this… that money absolutely needs to go to mental health and general healthcare and other actually useful programs. I know that many people accuse pro-gun people like me of only bringing up mental health when a shooting is involved, and while I find this to be true in the United States, I am really thinking it needs to be made an actual point in Canada.
There are next to no programs that really are supposed to help pull people out of gangs and out of bullshit like incel ideology (even when it is starting to be acknowledged as a national security problem by CSIS). There was a massive surge in smash and grabs in Ontario recently and I recall Mark Carney promising harsher punishments for juvenile offenders and not much else. I find this extremely lacking. I am pretty damn sure the increase in juvenile offenders as of late is a direct consequence of A: defunding of many programs, B: A lack of other programs, and C: Worsening economic prospects. You have a bunch of young people who don’t see a future and what are they turning to for money? Smash and grabs on jewelry stores.
The same shit with incels. We do not a single proper program against that. The 1989 Poly shooter was a proto-incel. I am going to say that incels and people really, really hating women have been around since the dawn of humanity, but the modern incel movement is just that: modern. In the 80s when the shooter was ruminating in his own ideas and thoughts he did not have a community to support him, which is why it took him many years to finally work up shooting the university… and the fact that there weren’t that many other mass shootings with that motive (once again, mass shootings and rampage killers are also centuries old, but the modern mass shooter of the late 20th and early 21st century is something different from the past… they’re learning from one another in a way that just never happened before). We’ve had more mass killings in Canada by incels, like the 2018 Toronto van attack that killed 11 people, and yet despite that no one in government seems to care.
Nothing about addressing any of the underlying issues in society at all. Even now the gun bans being passed aren’t even about addressing gun violence or mass shooting, it is an outright war on shooting sports. I am someone who has been monitoring the bills and OICs very carefully. the latest bill that was passed in 2022 originally didn’t just want to ban even more guns, but it wanted to ban airsoft and paintball guns that have resemblance to real firearms and maybe even extend to those that don’t. Meaning they are actively looking to utterly destroy anything that involved shooting as a hobby.