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Gun politics in Canada are controversial, though less contentious than Gun Politics in the United States . Handgun s have been controlled in Canada by statute since Confederation in 1867 . The Criminal Code Of Canada enacted in 1892 , required individuals to have a permit to carry a pistol unless the owner had cause to fear assault or injury. It was an offence to sell a pistol to anyone under 16. Vendors who sold handguns had to keep records, including purchaser's name, the date of sale and a description of the gun. HISTORY OF GUN POLITICS IN CANADA Criminal Code Of Canada amendments between the 1890s and 1990s steadily increased the restrictions on firearms. These included the following:
There are groups who oppose this legislation, arguing that guns are necessary for collection, competition, Hunting and Farming use as well as recreational purposes including target shooting, and should not be restricted. Many Canadians support the position that responsible firearms owners are law-abiding, and that further controls of restriction of firearms in general adds little of social value, is extremely costly, and that it results in no real value being gained to the public interest. The pressure that led to the current law began with the École Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal on December 6 , 1989 . The legislation was written primarily to avoid situations such as the Oka Crisis rather than irrational behaviour. Notice that the firearm used in the École Polytechnique Massacre (A Ruger Mini-14 ) is still non-restricted, yet all firearms used by the natives at Oka are now prohibited. The present law requires all firearms to be registered. The cost of the registry has soared to well over 500 times its original two million dollar budget. This proved embarrassing for the Liberal Government and has led to increased calls for the registry's cancellation. The registry was originally intended to recover its costs through registration fees, however the Ministry later decided to waive the fees in an effort to increase compliance rates. This decision has contributed to the huge increase in the registry's cost. It has been estimated that as many as 5,000,000 gun-owning Canadians have not registered their firearms. As of June, 2003 only 6.4 million firearms had been registered, despite a 1974 estimate of 10 million guns in Canada. Currently all provinces and territories, with the exception of Quebec , oppose the registry and refuse to prosecute violators. Supporters of the firearms registry argue that it makes no sense to abandon the project midstream, while opponents claim that the massive error rate and the non-compliance of existing firearm owners indicates there is little hope of future success. In February, 2003 the government announced plans to strengthen the administration of the gun control program. Two days before the election in May, 2004 the government dropped all fees for transferring firearms. The gun control program continues to be supported at an estimated cost of $100 million per year. VIOLENT CRIME IN CANADA Canada did not have serious gun control until the 1970s . The rates of crime in Canada have been declining mostly since (e.g., the homicide rate has declined 40% from 1991-2004 ) while several other categories such as violent crime have been stable. It is clear that the rates of violent crime involving firearms are significantly lower than the U.S. In the year 2000 , for example, Statistics Canada reported that homicides in the U.S. were triple those in Canada: In 2000 , police in the United States reported 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 population--triple the Canadian rate of 1.8. The number of homicides has declined in both countries during the 1990s , particularly south of the border. Two decades ago, the American homicide rate was about four times that of Canada. In comparing violent crimes between the two countries, some incorrectly compare the `Selected Violent Crime' numbers from the Canadian and United States governments (in the US the FBI Uniform Crime Reports , in Canada the Statistics Canada Center for Justice Statstics ) directly. However, this is misleading. As explained by Statistics Canada [http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/85F0035XIE/85F0035XIE.pdf],
Recently, some US authors, such as {Link without Title} have made precisely this mistake in comparing these numbers directly without re-tabulating them in the context of discussing guns and violent crime in the two countries. Historians point out, however, that Canada's lower firearm related offences may not be related to Canada's ''current'' gun control laws, as Canada's murder rate was lower than that of the United States for many years, when gun control measures were less stringent. Likewise, the murder rate in the US is skewed badly by the murders in those urban areas where gun ownership is effectively banned, such as Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago, IL. COMPLEX POLITICAL SITUATION Matters of gun politics are further complicated by factors such as different police bodies and the role of provincial jurisdictions in gun law applications. Long before the present federal laws were enacted the two biggest and richest provinces, Ontario and Quebec (with more than half of the Canadian population between them) had very strict provincial firearm registration systems. Again unlike the other provinces, Ontario and Quebec have separate provincial police forces (much like the larger state police forces in the US) while all other provinces have the federally-controlled Royal Canadian Mounted Police doing all police work outside the big cities. Thus, groups who might have normally opposed (or favoured) gun control in other circumstances find themselves in the other camp because of their desire to uphold provincial rights (or the identity of Quebec society) against federal centralization or vice versa. Thus, some provincial groups who might have opposed gun control because of the nature of their normal philosophical stance, had they been located in the US, are often in a political situation where they are asking for even stricter controls than those called for by the federal government, with the provision of course that application of these controls be left in ''provincial'' hands. It has to be recognized, however, that gun politics is not the flagship issue for the political right in Canada that it is in the US. In Canada, it is more of a Rural versus Urban issue. SEE ALSO |
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