The Failure of Gun Control (Again)
Dorchester Review, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2021, pp 25-32
11 Pages Posted: 15 Mar 2022
Date Written: March 26, 2021
Abstract
A commonly heard boast is that Canadians are safer than Americans as a result of our more restrictive approach to firearms. Even if our gun laws are not beneficial, such a claim helps advocates of gun control feel good about themselves. Government policy assumes that restricting civilian access to guns saves lives and reduces criminal violence. But is gun control effective?
This essay presents scientific research that challenges the orthodoxy that restricting law-abiding citizens’ access to firearms improves public safety. First, the stage must be set by briefly reviewing the history of gun laws in Canada and then by describing the current situation of firearms and violence.
Canadian gun legislation has a dirty secret. Hiding behind government pronouncements about protecting the public from violent crime there is often an unstated fear of recent immigrants who are seen as threatening; which group specifically depends upon the era.
Canada’s firearms legislation is revealed to lack a solid foundation. Any apparent success is a mirage. The firearms regulations consist of an excessively complex bureaucracy, expensive as well as arbitrary, that cannot be shown to enhance public safety. Hunters and sport shooters do not require such a cumbersome regulatory system, and the laws do little or nothing to protect the public from violent criminals or to protect desperate people from suicide.
Focusing on guns rather than violent criminals lets Ottawa pose as a protector of public safety while maintaining progressive police and court policies. Such a strategy allows the government to court progressive activist groups and avoid charges of overt racism. Unfortunately, immigrant and indigenous communities suffer disproportionately from the failure of gun laws to reduce criminal violence.
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