r/canadaguns 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.

Previous politics threads can be found here. Previous threads can be found here.

We understand that politics is a touchy subject, and at times things can get heated. A reminder of the subreddit rules, when commenting, where subreddit users are expected to abide.

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u/GoodGuySunBro Jun 08 '22

https://youtu.be/eOun8FVB3WY

Travis Bader and Dan Fritter (owner of Calibre Magazine) discuss the looming handgun freeze and I think everyone should see the discussion because Dan raises some very good points here. The entire podcast is a little long but I recommend watching the whole thing.

For those who don't have time here's some key takeaways:

  • Stop calling Trudeau the gun salesman of the year, this is counter-productive to the cause and needlessly antagonistic.
  • This handgun ban IS NOT about public safety. It's about scoring cheap political points. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can adjust our approach to make the most impact.
  • We need to shift the focus onto the major issues facing Canadians that the government wants to distract us from. Things like affordable housing, inflation, healthcare and the opioid crisis are significantly more severe and relevant to the majority of Canadians, and the government is doing nothing about these things!
  • In the event of a handgun ban it will cost the government and Canadian taxpayers likely over a billion dollars to implement and will not have any effect on public safety and the money would be better spent trying to solve one of the many issues above.
  • We need to get organized and get active. Write or visit your local MP and tell them that this issue matters to you. Especially in ridings where the number of firearm owners exceed the margin that the MP won by, this is significant leverage.

This issue is not a firearm owner issue - this is a Canadian issue. We need to stop trying to sway non-firearm owners using firearm related arguments because they simply don't care. Make this about Canadians and how this is a massive waste of resources that could be better spent addressing real issues. The government is using legal handguns as a scapegoat so they can score cheap points without doing any real work to better the lives of Canadians. We need to tell them that we're onto them and we won't stand for it.

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u/throwa37 Jun 09 '22

This handgun ban IS NOT about public safety. It's about scoring cheap political points. The sooner we accept that

Who doesn't accept that?

6

u/CalibreMag Jun 09 '22

A shocking number of people, honestly. Go stand in a gun store for a few hours and most comments you'll hear will be older gents saying "this won't prevent crime," and sort of leaving it at that. The average understanding of what we are facing is quite simply too shallow to skip a stone across.

This is partly why I want to start doing more polling and whatnot with Gunvote. Our community is not as homogenous as it seems from the online experience. Like, the vast majority of gun owners aren't even on social media. And yet, social media leads gun advocacy in Canada; it's the primary method of messaging and fundraising, and I think (for a variety of reasons) both of those are significant problems that we need to recognize, address, and confront if we're to be successful.

4

u/CanadaGunsMod Jun 09 '22

Our little community here has roughly the same number of people as the CCFR socials. I'm willing to bet there's 80% overlap, if not higher.

So, at best, we're reaching 80,000 out of 2.2 million.

4

u/throwa37 Jun 09 '22

Fair enough. I meant more like that everybody on this sub already understands.