this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The already strict gun laws in Canada are effective at preventing the wrong people from getting access to firearms on the legal and regulated market. There are significant legal hoops that you must jump through to get licensed and further regulations and controls you must comply with to legally own a firearm in this country.

Those who can't or don't want to comply with these regulations have to pay a significantly marked up price for a firearm that was smuggled in from the US completely independently from the legal market. The vast majority of the people you hear about getting into shootouts in the major cities got their firearm through that black market. They are not affected by gun bans. They de facto already own their firearms illegally and trying to make firearms more illegal won't change anything for them.

The authorities have dismantled firearms smuggling networks over and over again and there is no reason to believe it will stop anytime soon because as long as there is a demand on the streets for those guns, someone will make money supplying them. We share the longest undefended border with a country where it is easy for just about anyone to buy a firearm and it in unreasonable to think we will be able to stop the smuggling by border enforcement alone.

The only gun problem Canada has is America's gun problem. It also has a street gang violence problem that fuels the demand for the influx of illegal firearms. The latter should be the main focus of a government that actually cares about reducing gun violence in the country, and not just virtue signaling for votes, like the liberals have been doing for the last two decades when it come to gun regulation. Mind you, the conservative's go-to solution of just increasing jail sentences for everything isn't really that effective either.