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Thread: Bill S-223

  1. #561
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    Murderous rampages? In Canada? We have a crazy once every couple of years, but let's be honest here: controlling guns won't reduce gun violence in canada because gun violence is already pretty darn low. Investing in meantal health, although a very noble thing to do considering the abslutely poor quality of life that mentally ill people have to endure, won't reduce gun violence much either. Mostly because gun violence is almost negligible in canada. There was 172 homicides made by firearms in 2012. That's about 33% of all homicides that year. Since 1972, the firearm-related homicide rate has decreased 45% (while the non-firearm-related homicide rate has decreased 22%). In 2012, about half (46%) of all homicides committed with a firearm were gang-related.

    Neither gun control nor treatment of mentally ill people will reduce gang-related gun violence. Gangs illegally buy guns from the US, they don't get them legally in canada. They are not mentally ill (not by the medical definition of it, at least). So for as long as we'll share the longest open border in human history with the number 1 gun producer/consumer in the world, guns will illegally enter the country and find its way into our hardened criminal's hands. Even an Australia-style complete ban on guns wouldn't change that. We're not an island surrounded by sharks and crocodiles like Australia.

    If we want to throw money at a problem to save lives, the choices are plentiful, and we could save lots of lives for not so much money: clean water for northern native communities, more prevention of drinking and driving, more safety courses for people who work in dangerous jobs (fishing, construction, etc..), better cancer detection programs, the list goes on an on.

    I will not say that 172 death per year is just another statistic; those were people with families and loved ones (mostly). But reasonnably, we can't reduce the amount of gun-related homicides to 0 in canada. We just can't. Both anti-gun and pro-gun will have to get to that conclusion. And either we accept that resources will have a lot more impact somewhere else (other than gun control) in our society, or we just waste them. The system as it is mostly works: we control who can legally own a firearm through the PAL/RPAL system, so criminals and mentally ill people (mostly) can't access firearms, and criminals have to resort to illegally importing firearm from US.

    Now can we let S-223 rest in peace please. It's like the attention-starved child of bills. If we don't talk about it, it'll go away. I promise!

  2. #562
    CGN Ultra frequent flyer VanIsleCam's Avatar
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    Well said +1.
    Proarm Militant - Variant Factory - Data Shopper - Fringe Minority

  3. #563
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    Less than 20% of gun deaths are from violent crimes. The remaining 81% of gun deaths are overwhelmingly suicides, followed by a smattering of accidents and a very small handful of lawful shootings.

    For those who claim we don't lock up knives, tall buildings, etc. the research is very clear: suicides are typically spontaneous decisions and guns are by far the most effective means of suicide in terms of survivability. This isn't Heidi/Wendy research, this is 40+ years of medical data. Small barriers DO prevent many people from ending their lives. None of this is supposition or opinion.

    I have been flamed for this before, but I have absolutely no qualms about removing firearms from people who have been committed.

    FF


    Quote Originally Posted by VinnyQC View Post
    I will not say that 172 death per year is just another statistic; those were people with families and loved ones (mostly). But reasonnably, we can't reduce the amount of gun-related homicides to 0 in canada. We just can't. Both anti-gun and pro-gun will have to get to that conclusion. And either we accept that resources will have a lot more impact somewhere else (other than gun control) in our society, or we just waste them. The system as it is mostly works: we control who can legally own a firearm through the PAL/RPAL system, so criminals and mentally ill people (mostly) can't access firearms, and criminals have to resort to illegally importing firearm from US.

  4. #564
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    Quote Originally Posted by FyreFighter View Post
    Less than 20% of gun deaths are from violent crimes. The remaining 81% of gun deaths are overwhelmingly suicides, followed by a smattering of accidents and a very small handful of lawful shootings.

    For those who claim we don't lock up knives, tall buildings, etc. the research is very clear: suicides are typically spontaneous decisions and guns are by far the most effective means of suicide in terms of survivability. This isn't Heidi/Wendy research, this is 40+ years of medical data. Small barriers DO prevent many people from ending their lives. None of this is supposition or opinion.

    I have been flamed for this before, but I have absolutely no qualms about removing firearms from people who have been committed.

    FF
    No flames from me. I firmly believes that controlling who gets guns is a boatload more effective than controlling which gun they can get. And although you don't cite your data, I've seen pretty much the same stats. I believe they were in the RPAL course.

    Where I believe we differ, is in classifying a person who wants to end his life as mentally ill. Lots of mentally ill people don't want to kill themselves, and lots of people who want to kill themselves are not mentally ill. Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive, but not as much correlated as anyone would believe. The best correlation between suicide and mental illness is with depression but it isn't even that good a correlation. When most gun owner say that resources should be diverted from gun control to treating mentally ill, they usually don't mean the depressive suicidal type; they mean the mass-shooting psychotic type. What most pro-control people are afraid of is to be killed by a gun, suicide isn't even remotely on their radar.

    That being said, I don't think more gun control (restricting/prohibiting more firearms/devices) will change anything to murder or suicide rate at this point. Maybe better gun control would help (more thorough screening during the process of acquiring a PAL, especially NR-PAL, which are a joke to get). And I honestly don't know anyone, gun owner or not, who would have any qualm about removing firearms from someone who's been committed, has perpetrated a violent crime of any kind, or has a substance abuse problem (I could probably add to that list, that's just from the top of my head). The safer the gun owners, the less stigma we all have. However, S-223 was about pretty much taking away all restricted firearm and semi-automatic rifles from everyone. That, I honestly believe wouldn't help much for either suicide or homicide rate. Most homicides aren't the product of legal firearms, and killing yourself requires a single bullet, which can be delivered just as well from a pump action shotgun as from an AR-15 with a 30 rounds magazine.

    In any case, the suicide rate by firearm is slowly, but steadily diminishing. From 2000-2005, the rate for total suicides fluctuated slightly, but was basically stable. During the same period, the firearms-related suicide rate showed a downward trend, and the percentage of the suicide death rate that was firearms-related also declined (from 18.8% in 2000 to 15.5% in 2005). It's not diminishing as fast as the homicide rate, but we're going in the right direction. And using resources to prevent suicide in general will obviously yield better results than using the same resources exclusively on firearms-related deaths.

    My other point is that there isn't a wave of "murderous rampage" in canada. Mass shootings are rare. Very rare. Firearms death are quite low, statistically speaking, and as the amount of dead gets lower, preventing each one gets more expensive. Of course, a human life has no price, but our society still has a finite amount of resources, and from a cold, rational point of view, they should be applied where they will be most effective. The more lives we can save per dollar, the better. And a this point in time, gun control just isn't it. Not when tens of thousands have little access to clean water (let alone medical services or a worthwhile education). Some of these people will die from disease that our doctors barely even study anymore because they were thought extinct in the western world.

    Our roads kill about 2500 people per year, between 1300 and 1500 of those deaths are related to impaired driving. We could potentially save more lives on our roads than the total of firearms related deaths. If we account for injuries, the comparison becomes ridiculous: 300,000 people are injured in motor vehicle accident every year(64,000 in impairment-related crashes). According to the rcmp, 606 hospital admissions were a result of gunshot wounds in 2010. Surely, preventing 1% of all driving-impaired crashes has got to be easier than preventing 100% of all related firearm incident.

  5. #565
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    Well, it seems I just wrote a whole huge freaking wall of text just to say bill s-223 was an ill-thought piece of junk written by and old senator afraid of her own shadow but ignorant of some of the real life threatening dangers of this world.

    It's a POC. Let's all agree to let it be forgotten until the end of times.

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