r/canadaguns • u/AutoModerator • Jun 06 '22

Weekly Politics Thread

Please post all your Politics or Ban-related ideas, initiatives, comments, suggestions, news articles, and recommendations in this thread. Unless new information is published in the media, recurring articles related to the gov'ts ***possible*** legislation are to be posted here. These threads will be weekly, until it's necessary for another per-week.

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u/drain-angel BC Jun 07 '22 edited Jun 07 '22

I wonder why accessibility is seldom discussed when it comes to outreach? When I was working on getting my PAL (2020), I didn't know anyone with guns and I was lucky to convince my friend to go to a range about 30 minutes away with drop-in & rentals. I had my PAL booked about a week and a half out for $200, and there are plenty of cheap range memberships around Vancouver especially if you are young (Student) that are always taking members, and even then some are pretty dirt cheap alongside with crown land being a little far but not that much.

But recently I've been helping a buddy of mine in the GTA try to get his PAL. And it's like a completely different country in terms of shooting "accessibility". $400~ for a CFSC/CFRSC, classes booked out months in advance, no walk-in ranges with rentals for unlicensed shooters within 2 hours of him, and eye-watering prices for range memberships, that is, if you can find one that would accept you into their months-long waitlist or membership lottery. (GTA shooters feel free to correct me if I'm being hyperbolic or wrong).

Why isn't this a bigger part of the conversation? How can people who are interested in guns even get to try them out besides driving (and that's assuming if they have a car) a really stupid distance to find a range that has rentals near population cores? Like I thought having to find a friend to shoot guns with at a range supervised for the first time was silly, but this is on a whole other level.

Maybe the CCFR or ranges or us can start offering volunteered supervised shooting and get EVERYONE interested to break down some of these barriers? And is the GTA the only population core with these issues?

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u/Apples_and_Overtones Your feet suck and so do you Jun 07 '22

If I'm not mistaken or misremembering, there was a plan to shutter a lot of ranges/gun shops in the Toronto area as part of some sort of "safety" movement or something. I think that happened to some extent (again, IIRC (I'm not from the area)) so that could be partially why accessibility in that area sucks.

Obviously, that of course had great impact (read: zero) on crime in the region.

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u/RaHarmakis Jun 07 '22

there was a plan to shutter a lot of ranges/gun shops in the Toronto area as part of some sort of "safety" movement or something.

Works about as well as combating Street Racing by closing race tracks, and banning high end Ferrari Hyper Cars.