Recurring Canadaguns Politics and Debate Thread

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[u/FireteamOrcale]

Anyone else notice all these social media pages posting about the number of PAL holders and talking about Toronto area applicants up 50%? Kinda strange since these people never seemed to care before and all of a sudden they are all posting about it

[u/Natural_Comparison21 → u/FireteamOrcale]

May be a temporary blip or a growing trend of peoples views on gun ownership changing.

[u/FunkyFrunkle → u/Natural_Comparison21]

Maybe a bit of column A, and column B.

Crime has taken a slight dip on the national average but for some places in Canada, that change isn’t reflected at all in every day life to any appreciable degree. Shootings, extortions and gang violence has become the new normal. This is all happening against the backdrop of the police struggling to stay on top of it with fewer staff and resources, to the extent that most police services have refused to babysit the governments gun buyback.

Something has to give somewhere, so what’s giving way? It’s the idea that the police will always be there, or at least, close enough to protect you. We’re seeing that notion challenged in a big way, and people are turning to the idea of owning a gun for self defence. This is unprecedented in itself, as this would have been inconceivable 10 years ago.

If you told the Canadian gun community in 2016 that the idea of self-defence would be a topic of mainstream conversation, you’d be laughed out of the comment section.

The ironic thing? These are people who probably held an agnostic view about guns at best, or a negative view at worst and now these same people are going through the trouble of obtaining them for the express purpose of self defence. Around 30% have admitted as much in a recent report. Meanwhile, gun owners have traditionally been more… self-policed about that kind of idea?

You also have a segment of the population that is becoming more convinced that things are about to go to shit and they don’t want to be caught, in their minds, unprepared. Bushcraft is enjoying a resurgence of interest in tandem with firearm ownership.

The important thing here is people are individually coming to a different, more open-minded conclusion about the idea of gun ownership than they previously might have held, which is a good thing. If we can build on this momentum, this is exactly how overreaching gun control dies a sudden death.

Gun control survives by consensus. If it loses consensus, it loses its return value. It stops being valuable in politics. I would have to imagine that the recent news article about the surge in ownership, and the motivations behind it has got to be worrying the gun control groups.

They’re starting to lose ground to a growing paradigm shift in what is historically their own backyard, urban Canada. This isn’t something they can fix by just blaming legal owners more. People who live in urban centers aren’t seeing hunters run around holding up stores or breaking into peoples homes, but the gun control crowd has been pulling the same schtick by blaming them for the past 40 years, it’s not inconceivable to think that people are starting to tune them out.

The depressing part is that things had to go to shit for people to get a clue.

[u/Natural_Comparison21 → u/FunkyFrunkle]

Generally people have to learn things the hard way unfortunately. However I also do agree with your assertion around gun control groups are getting scared. I would also be scared by a increased number of PAL holders by raw numbers and a consistent adult percentage of population of 7.2%. I also imagine the number of people with non pal required items such as crossbows has increased. Albeit a lot of the people who own crossbows also own firearms as historically atleast people buy crossbows to hunt in Canada. Same deal with bows.

[u/FireteamOrcale → u/FunkyFrunkle]

I am happy to see the number of PAL holders grow and like you said it can be a result of changing views on firearms.

I just have some thoughts like what if they are being told to post this from some weird angle to try and make it seem like there are too many guns/gun owners to see if people will get upset about it.

At the end of the day though the more of us the better because it creates a stronger community and it’s great to see people getting into the sport. I mean I just got in a year ago and I’ve missed out on a lot of cool stuff but i love my WW2 Bolt actions, MRA Ren MK 2 and others and am very happy to at least be in a position to own these and have a bit of (expensive) fun while it lasts

[u/FunkyFrunkle → u/FireteamOrcale]

I’m encouraged by not only the growing numbers, but just how much trouble this whole farce is having getting off the ground in Canada. Not to mention that this whole shitshow is heading to the Supreme Court which was a huge hurdle to overcome in and of itself.

It’s also worth giving the CCFR’s latest episode a listen. People who are interfacing with the buyback are having a straight up bewildering time trying to get anywhere with it. The program not returning calls, “further instructions” never being sent, people being sent confirmation receipts for guns that were never turned in, you name it.

Keep in mind, this program is so bad that it’s this much of a clusterfuck with limited participation.

Call me crazy, but it almost seems like they don’t care anymore. It’s almost like they know that this thing isn’t enforceable, isn’t realistic and isn’t really that popular and they’ve resigned themselves to it by just letting this program go off its meds and wander around aimlessly.

I think there’s a very deliberate reason why Carney hasn’t mentioned the program virtually at all since the election and why he deflected the idea of banning the SKS. Something is in the air, and it’s worth considering the whole issue.

I think things stand a very real chance of coming back around over the long term.