In the 80 years of handgun registration in Canada, there hasn't been public push-back or agitation from our fraternity to pack in public places. Reversal of long-gun registration that turned citizens into criminals was won by a carefully measured appeal to common sense. What remains is shaking out the peculiar anomalies canvasback related above and replacing them with improvements. Militating against it is dying-off of an increasingly older population who wants it and sharply decreasing interest in the shooting sports. Hope rests on a sense of fairness that a majority of citizens provided for the long-gun registration reversal.
King, I don't know what, if any, other firearms forums you follow, but there are two undercurrents in Canada I am seeing lately.
One is a growing realization by hand gun owners (I am not one) that the 80 years of hand gun registry has been just as useless in preventing and solving crime as the 15 years of the registry for long guns. Secondly, as CC grows in the US,(What, now 49 of 50 states or thereabouts? A dramatic increase from 25 years ago) the idea of concealed carry is taking hold up here.
Gunnutz.com, of which I am a member, has 100,000 registered members. And I would hazard a guess the majority don't hunt. They are handgun owners and black gun owners and I am constantly amazed at how young many of them are. I suspect that looking at the traditional shooting sports is not giving a true representation of the numbers involved in gun ownership.
Gun owners in Canada have, statistically, 1/4 the likelihood of being involved in crime WHEN COMPARED TO THE POPULATION AT LARGE. In other words, we ARE the law respecting and abiding population the police and politicians want us all to be. We drag the crime average down in any given jurisdiction. It is not common sense that has been visited upon us, starting in the 1930's, it is shameless politicking, aiming to win the votes of the ignorant.
And BTW, we haven't yet reversed the criminality of gun ownership. That will only happened when our gun laws are removed from the Criminal Code of Canada and turned into regulatory issues, much like the motor vehicle licensing and registration that is so often used by the anti's as a reminder as to why we shouldn't have our panties in a bunch. Idiots!
