Here. - Canadian Mental Health Association, Nova Scotia Division: Fill & Download for Free

I sat on my hands a week to see the wide array of responses… here’s my take:This ain’t a short read and may not be what many would like to see… I have less feels as much as I have a pile of thoughts and confusion over the futility and inefficiency of changing already relatively successful common sense gun laws for political opportunism in order to give good feels to mostly urban and suburban potential voters that seem to be naive about the laws and system already doing well in their own land.It’s been in the works for a while. Some years ago the Liberals said they’d do some gun control and/or a ban if they win the next elections. They sort of won… as a minority government, this is only a mandate by the definition of it being an authoritative command. And the current favorite talking point is currently that “they ran on this issue”… along with a whole slew of other ones. (Are 6,018,728 Canadians really single-issue voters? I’m not, but what does it say when the liberal campaign got less votes than the Conservatives.)Meanwhile, none of the initiatives, like enhanced background checks, tweaks to the ATT, and record keeping to help police trace illegal guns that Trudeau campaigned on and were passed into law last year had been enacted. So shops and police have just been waiting on cabinet authority. Would they stopped the Nova Scotia tragedy? Likely not. But the experts say they would have at least been cheaper and more effective than a gun ban… but going for low hanging fruit of political opportunism has always been the nature of Canadian politics. (there’s a reason that Canada remains a resource-based economy)Then they said that they’d do through studies to see if it mattered to do bans. Keep in mind, last year Bill Blair stated:“As everyone can appreciate, this is a very complex discussion. We've looked at a number of ways we can maintain public safety but my job was also ... and it's an important caveat that the prime minister put on my mandate ... to conduct that examination in a way that was also respectful of those Canadians who do responsibly own those firearms."Yet what I’ve been able to dig up sounds like it was mostly some surveys and conversations with groups that were mostly already supportive of a ban. Blair’s study, which was supported by ban-supporters, apparently didn’t get the result they desired… not showing the support for a ban that they had hoped. Gun control advocates challenge Blair report on handgun, assault rifle bansFor the sake of creating common sense gun laws… whatever surveys come up with have always been rather immaterial when many nonpartisan experts, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and a long list of police, police chiefs, and constables in places with actual illegal gun issues argue that almost all guns used in crimes are already illegal… and a ban on something already prohibited makes little to no sense. From what I’ve read over and over in the last decades, the studies show a similar result that bans of this sort would have a negligible effect."There's no way in my world or any world I know that this would have an impact on somebody who's going to go out and buy an illegal gun and use it to kill another person or shoot another person,"- Mike McCormack, the president of the Toronto Police Association.Handgun ban would have 'no impact,' police union head warnsCanadian police chiefs won’t back handgun ban, say it wouldn’t stop flow of guns into the countryFederal government's gun strategy won't work without a border crackdown, experts sayhttps://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-us-border-illegal-firearms-1.5551432The Effectiveness of Policies and Programs That Attempt to Reduce Firearm Violence: A Meta-AnalysisGuns and Public HealthAn Evaluation of a Multiyear Gun Buy-Back Programme: Re-Examining the Impact on Violent CrimesCharacteristics of a gun exchange program, and an assessment of potential benefitsMissing the target: a comparison of buyback and fatality related gunsThe Effects of the 1996 National Firearms Agreement in Australia on Suicide, Violent Crime, and Mass ShootingsGun buybacks: What the research saysThe take away from what the experts, police, and premiers are saying is that the more effective policies would be to stop the flow of illegal guns to the street and to mitigate the issues, systematic or otherwise, that lead to gang violence, poverty, crime, and mental illness… which this ban, along with a lack of funding and other policies, does not address and yet will very likely come with a multi-billion dollar price tag.(Good thing that the Canadian governments isn’t dealing with anything else currently that may cause deeper deficits with an efficient response that would empirically save lives)One would think we’d know better after a few years of watching what happens when politicians in a neighboring nation go with their guts and refuse to listen to experts. Especially in recent months.Speaking of feelings over facts, there is a poll that keeps getting brought up about how 80% of Canadians support a ban. A poll that 1,581 online survey responses is 35,151,728 Canadians. How much the responders understand Canadian gun laws may be debatable, but according to the survey, “Nearly half say current gun control laws in Canada are either too strict (13%) or about right (34%).” Weird.Feelings versus factsWhile there are polls and studies saying that a majority of Canadians are against bans and there are plenty that say Canadians are down with bans, there are vast differences in support between rural and urban areas. This seems a bit harsh to create bans for an entire nation while the vast majority of Canadians live in small urban areas. Should we assume that city-dwellers would be cool if their sports and hobbies were dictated by small town folk and indigenous groups?And will some NDP politicians represent their constituents again?The loudest and most common talking-point has been that all these rifles are made for one thing and one thing only… to kill other human beings …and that hunters and farmer wouldn’t use these guns to hunt with, namely because of the smaller .223 rounds. I could maybe agree with this, but most animals that one can hunt in Canada require the same or smaller rounds actually. Also on the banned list is a lot of .308s that are commonly used for hunting. A M14, although a bit clunky, is used by many to hunt deer and other animals… and is as semi-automatic as other semi-automatic rifles not on the list. That’s on top of it being a non-restricted rifle, because it wasn’t considered a “black gun” …until it suddenly was on Friday. The Ruger Mini 14 and Mini Thirty are also used primarily for hunting and operate similar to many other hunting rifles not on the list. Images abound on the internet if one needs proof.After the list of rifles on the ban, the government admits that this will very much affect hunters. So can we quit the rhetoric about how none of these guns are used for hunting, when the people that wrote the bill say that many of these rifles are used for hunting.I also ponder how this may affect indigenous groups that have held on to rifles on the government’s ban list for their own community self-defense, if you will, until now. But maybe it doesn’t matter much yet as they, according to those rolling out the ban, are currently exempting them from a ban… also that’s a a legal noGO to talk about in Canada. But how indigenous groups are affected by policies have historically been pretty low priority for the Canadian government.I do want to ask how those other campaign promises are working out. Is getting clean water to reservations too expensive or is working with indegenous groups too complicated or is electoral reform too expensive and too complicated that this is the low hanging fruit that will make a party look like they keep campaign promises while using less critical thinking?Speaking of legal NoGOs, maybe I’m the only one that finds it a little ironic to roll this out on International Workers’ Day. If this is proof that this is not some “leftist gun-grabber cabal”, then I don’t know what is. (Liberals and liberals are not leftists by any stretch of the imagination) International Workers’ Day was created to (and still does) celebrate the working class shmucks of the world and their solidarity across the world… by the same exact people that use to say “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.”And just sayin’ here… does it matter to supporters of this and other bans that this Liberal government just started shipping military equipment to an authoritarian regime in the Middle East that will very likely be used on civilians living in a neighboring nation? If we are so worried about civilian populations, how do we square that? Canada to resume approving military-goods exports to Saudi ArabiaTo answer the question more directly about my honest opinion and feels…Canada has had common sense gun laws for a long while. The results speak for themselves, as there isn’t a legal firearm problem. There is a suicide by gun problem and there is a few urban areas that have some illegal handgun problems. I am no real fan of US-style gun laws and have a deep dislike for a corrupt and divisive NRA. I have gone toe-to-toe with many American gun-nutz defending Canadians gun laws. Because no laws are perfect, there is always going to be an issue… but the Canadian gun laws have historically struck a successful balance of common sense gun ownership and public safety for a long time and that hasn’t changed until May 1st.I do feel that maybe it’s fine to do something about certain restricted rifles that can only be used at ranges. As an ex-service member, I get what some of these rifles can do. Granted, with only 5-rounds at the range, they are nothing like the military versions. I think many of these rifles are cheesy and relatively pointless to own, but I also think Lululemon is the worst use of fabric and Adam Ruins Everthing would probably show that Lululemon has more adverse on people’s lives and health than these rifles ever had… yet, I’d prefer to listen to experts and judge not from what I saw in an action flick or what happens in another country to the south with different laws. So it’s not really my place to say you can’t have an AR15… but there is already a bunch of hoops to go through to get anyways. There hasn’t been a multi-person shooting with an AR15-styled gun in Canada yet and it’s above my pay grade to share my opinion.Regardless, as stated above… there are many non-restrictive rifles used for hunting and not considered to be “assault-style” weapons on there that abruptly and magically became bad guns on the morning of May the 1st. This to me shows how willy-nilly this was put together, lacking the commmon sense part of the historically common sense Canadian gun laws. And the government notes that the current ban will knock out a bunch of businesses and cost at least tens of thousands of jobs right off the hop… in the middle of a pandemic and an economic downturn.The other thing is that the Canadian forces has some of the best shooters/snipers in the world. Historically many have been trained by civilian shooters. It may not have an immediate effect, but if Canada appreciates a military that is good at the missions that it’s been tasked for by NATO and the UN then it is kneecapping its future abilities.Speaking of, I’m wondering why the sameSo maybe instead of wasting inefficiency on a wide net of a ban, maybe tighten some rules on the rifles on the list to people that have already trained with them in the military and/or tighten up regulations some to the others that will be those potential trainers and competition shooters. There is a myriad of regulations that would be more effective, although a pain in the butt, but keep the rifles available to be used by hunters, sport shooters, and military trainers.Essentially, if the experts and the boots on the ground say tighten some hoops, then tighten some hoops. We like the politicians that are letting the health officials speak and influence policy in the time of this pandemic.Why is this any different? Best plan would be to give the police and health workers the ability to do what they need to do to get illegal guns off of the streets and out of the hands of people who aren’t legally allowed to have said rifles and guns, while being “also respectful of those Canadians who do responsibly own those firearms." It’s a much cheaper and an extremely more efficient way to get things done… and then I can go back to defending Canadian common sense gun laws against 2A NRA-fanboys.But now I get barrages of responses that I’m “one of those guys”. Twitter has been hilarious, but very sad to see that some gun-rights really do have a good point about how childish gun-control advocates can be. I’ve experienced here as well when making comments about how it will affect hunters and what experts say, only to have snippy resource-free responses and then blocked before I can respond to clarify or even answer their questions.Seriously, please don’t ask a snippy objective-driven question and then block me before I can answer. It’s childish. (I don’t speak child, so I’ll delete childish comments)I also don’t like defending positions that have very valid points against people that are confused by emotion. I used to have to defend Obama for not being a Muslim-Marxist-Kenyan, while I had a myriad of complaints about the guy. (wasn’t a fan of Obama… way too right-wingy for me)Please fellow Canadians, go learn about the laws of your land. Find out what one must do to obtain the proper licensing to own and operate the rifles, along with the differences of them. It sounds like you’d be more educated than some politicians. But mostly… Quit putting me in that corner and being so damn myopic and binary. I can call out a multi-billion dollar inefficient boondoggle without being a Conservative party shill… it just takes a common sense. At least it used to count for something,the most appropriate tweet I’ve seen all week…“What's difficult is to convince a person that a policy they favour is flawed because of said explanation. It's not the explanation people resist; it's the consequences that flow from it.”