Scholars fight arms flow, violent culture

[applegrove]

Toronto has its work cut out, halting the gun run from the U.S., which owns one-third of the world's 700 million guns
Dec. 31, 2005. 07:41 AM
OLIVIA WARD
STAFF REPORTER


"Canada needs tough gun control laws, says a Toronto expert, but lawmakers are up against a global arms "epidemic" that has circulated millions of weapons around the world, destabilizing countries and undermining cities.

And, says Wendy Cukier, professor of criminal justice at Ryerson University, the latest Toronto police figures — obtained through a Freedom of Information request — show that 52 per cent of handguns seized as "potential crime weapons" in 2004 came from the United States.

"The majority of those guns come from over the border," she says. "And the ones that are reported as legally registered in Canada may also be manufactured in the U.S."

....SNIP"

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[jody]

1. Canada should ban handguns. D.C. did and look at its low crime rate.

:sarcasm:

[applegrove]

3. If some gang banger can get in a car and drive 20 mintues outside of

Washington during church on Sunday - they can rob a home of all its guns and the guns are no longer banned in Washington - are they?

Canada is big. If one province bans guns and another does not - it is pretty easy to track down the people crossing the country on the one highway to guy handguns in another province. Plus the people who sell handguns will have to report who they sell them too. Plus 1/3 of the world's guns are not in Canada. They are in the USA. So robing homes does not always pan out... in fact odds are overwhelmingly there will be no guns.

So it could work. In a way that banning guns in DC cannot work while the whole rest of the country is crazy about gun ownership.

Plus we get to throw the creeps in jail for long times.

Great policy. It will have an effect. And our cities will not devolve into the mess many of yours have.

So our kids will thrive. Health care helps too. And people - no matter what neighbourhood - will grow up to be safe & productive adults.

[jody]

4. Why is the crime rate in D.C. higher than the states from which illegal

guns supposedly come?

If easy access to guns is a contributing factor to crime, then one would expect those states with easy access to guns would have a higher crime rate than D.C. :shrug:

[applegrove]

5. Drugs and poverty and people living on top of each other.

Why is the crime rate always higher in cities? There is more money there - ergo - more crime. More victims to sell drugs too. More desperation.

In rural areas - the people all know each other.

[jody]

7. That means guns are not a major factor. Why prevent law abiding

citizens who have an inalienable right to defend them self from using an effective tool for the job - a gun?

[applegrove]

8. No - guns are one of the major issues. Fear rules the heap of issues.

Guns make some asshole bolder and more powerfull. More powerfull than the police often.

You don't fix issues by ignoring them or burrying them. Or pretending it doesn't matter. It matters a great deal what cities are like. And frankly - because the pistol culture is just emerging in Canada - we don't need guns to defend ourselves. We have the police.

Nobody is talking about taking guns away from rural hunters.

[jody]

10. The issue is not hunting, it is self defense. In the U.S., self defense

is a personal responsibility as SCOTUS has ruled in several cases.

The right to keep and bear arms is about defending self and property, not hunting or sport shooting.

[applegrove]

13. And you need those guns too. Unless you were to regulate guns

more effectively. You will be living like cowboys. One third of the world's guns. One third. You have 5% of the population of the world. And One third of the guns. Who is making money off the world you live in and the lack of proper regulations?

[jody]

14. Happy New Year!

:party:

[applegrove]

15. To you too. But mostly to the people lost in gun infested communities,

and kids, not yet grown up there - who have to make decisions about how to survive in the richest nation in the land, as kids.

They'll need it.

[benEzra]

16. As a proud resident of a "gun infested community" with almost no crime,

I don't see any daily survival worries around here.

FWIW, guns are more tightly controlled in the U.S. and Canada than they have ever been. Ten years ago, guns were more easily available in our respective nations than they are now. Meaning, if your crime rate is on the increase, something other than gun availability has changed. If I were a Canadian, I'd be trying to figure out what sociological factor(s) have changed, so I could attempt to address them. You were apparently doing something right ten and twenty years ago that you are no longer doing anymore; the question is, what?

[michreject]

6. I'm confused

by this statement

Plus the people who sell handguns will have to report who they sell them too.


Since this thread is about illegal guns and criminals, Why would a potential crook buy a gun from a person who is going to tell the police who they sold the gun to? Wouldn't they get it from the black market that smuggled the guns?

So you would have a seller making a illegal sell and then going to the police telling on them self.

I don't think that they would be a recorded transaction, thus the police would not know who had the guns.

[applegrove]

9. I was talking about how the gun ban in Washington DC didn't work because

there was no regulation on guns outside city limits. That will not happen in Canada. And you do have gun dealers in the USA who are responsible for selling all the illegal guns - some say 5% of gun dealers some say 1%. That 5% will not be allowed to sell guns in Canada - if they have a bad record. Nobody is allowed to serve you pizza from their shop if they have a history of being not responsible foodwise. Why are those gun dealers in the USA still open?

[michreject]

11. The 5% of bad sellers here

are not condoned by the Government.

As one bad gun shop is put out of business and the owner jailed, another one pops up to take its place. As in all illegal activities, there's a lot of money to be made and all crook don't think that they will get caught.

[applegrove]

12. They are not penalized in any way. That is the point. A pizza shop is.

[PDJane]

2. If I had my way.......

Those folks who manufacture handguns would have to view, close up and personal, the carnage that the damn things do every day.

Handguns are strictly a weapon for killing people, and they are of no earthly use outside of law enforcement and the military........and maybe not even then.

Of the carnage around the world, the percentage attributable to handguns is atrocious; it's more than IEDs and high power munitions.

Time to ban the manufacture........IMHO.