r/canadaguns • u/AutoModerator • Jun 13 '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.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Can someone smarter than I am explain to the class how a "majority of Canadians/gun owners support the freeze on handguns and the semi-auto ban, according to a new Leger poll that Poly is pushing?

'70% of gun owners

9 out of 10 Canadians

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

These kinds of polls are always biased and one sided and meant to influence the opinions of voters who don't understand the issues. The questions alone show the bias involved, not to mention the small sample size and the severely exaggerated extrapolation of the data. Claiming 9 out of 10 Canadians support something based on the response of 1500 people in a country of thirty million? That’s just dishonest. Not to mention we have no idea where these 1500 people are located or what their political leanings are. The rest of the data is just as bad.

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u/Scopequest Jun 15 '22

I would wager the people responding to that pole are not familiar with reality and that this taints the validity of their answer and of the pole.

Example: 93% support stronger background checks... I bet they don't know the existing background check is life long and includes as much as it does. I bet if you asked them to give an idea of what stronger measures they support it would already be included.

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u/[deleted] Jun 16 '22

Future background checks will involve an RCMP officer getting into a time machine, going back to the day you were born, following you until the day you pass away from old age and then returning to our time to determine your eligibility for a firearms license. No one in Canada will ever be approved for a license again.

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u/TechnologyReady Radical Centrist Jun 15 '22

On the one-hand, the numbers coming from gun-owners seems to show there must be something wrong with this poll.

On the other hand... my father-in-law is a long-time gun owner (fudd) and ex-RCMP, and he doesn't really even understand this stuff. He supports Trudeau's ban on "assault weapons" because (he says) nobody needs a machine gun. Former RCMP officer. He also doesn't see why anybody should own a handgun.

So, given that the majority of gun owners in Canada are fudds, is this result as impossible as it seems?

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Too bad he’s too old to stack up. Seems like we would get along.

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u/WhoaUhThray Jun 15 '22

This reminds me of them saying in interviews ( Mendicino and/or Trudeau ) that they 'spoke with range owners and sport shooters' in crafting C-21. Like, really? WHO are these people?! If they actually supported more restrictions I'd like to know what reality they're in, and if they didn't, I would expect them to be out here saying to anyone who will listen that they were consulted and pushed back!

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Poly-esque poll that they're pushing

Yeah I bet that's not skewed or biased in any way

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u/Batsinvic888 Bats888 on YouTube Jun 15 '22 edited Jun 15 '22

The "gun owner" one is straight up useless. The sample size is so small it means nothing. I mean like seriously, if it was that high that would mean a significant amount of RPAL holders support a ban in their own guns.

The other one is absolutely nothing new. There is a reason I and many others have very little hope for the future of firearms in Canada long term. You could poke a hole in that survey because they said "assault rifle", but it's not out of line with what has been polled with different wording.

Polling Canada account posted these results too and also included Leger's US results. Gun laws should be... and support for [insert gun control]. I don't know what it says about the Canadian results, but the US results are all out of line with American polls. The background checks are in line with other surveys, but "assault weapons" ban support is at the high end ~65% and at the low end ~45%. "Buyback program" is also directly tied to the previous one and therefor is off. "Handgun ban" is waaaaaaaaay out of line. Gallup, a much more reputable American polling company, has handgun ban support at 19%.

Honestly, I don't think Leger is good at polling the US and while they're Canadian numbers are very high it's not out of line with previous polls.

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u/drain-angel BC Jun 15 '22 edited Jun 15 '22

Issues with Canadian polling (self-serving pre-selected demographic & engineered questions) and extremely questionable weighting (55+) and methodology aside, I still find it interesting that in both countries where attitudes towards gun control are inverse with age.

Look at the Boomers, GenX/Late Millennial, Zoomers in both countries. Perhaps there's hope in Canada if anything down the road.

Also this contradicts a StatsCan survey from 2017 and an Angus Reid poll from last month. Makes me question the Leger panel since they've been the most accurate with elections.

Edit : Apparently 60% of Tories (n=359) want handguns banned on page 28. Lmao this data is bunk.

0

u/DistortoiseLP Jun 16 '22 edited Jun 16 '22

The Angus Reid poll doesn't contradict it very much:

As for the question of banning handguns completely in Canada, the Angus Reid Institute found significant support for a ban in both 2019 and 2020.

In their data, current gun owners only slightly edge out opposing it and everyone else supports it, including former owners. It otherwise presents a two to one support on almost every other issue, including federal crackdown over provincial solutions.

The only question they found contention in was:

Would you support this type of gun buyback program knowing it would be funded by taxpayers?

The people who oppose this cannot be assumed to be gun owning sympathizers if they'd be happier seeing the guns confiscated without compensation instead. This is not the same question as asking if they're opposed to the purpose of a buyback program to take guns. That said, I don't know how informative data before April 2020 is supposed to be about attitudes now. That 2020 one also shows:

Most past Conservative voters oppose a ban on handguns but support one on assault weapons.

And only opposed the handgun ban at 59% at the time. "Contradictions" in that data compared to now can very well reflect that a lot has happened since then and a lot of opinions changed fast with them.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Probably wording of the question. The poll says nothing about handguns it says " do you support a ban on assault rifles" which are already banned and have been a long time

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u/DistortoiseLP Jun 15 '22 edited Jun 15 '22

I imagine some of them are the gun owners that genuinely want to keep this hobby quiet instead of putting on a rebellious posture on social media in a country where rebels get disarmed.

Make no mistake about this: The people on places like this sub that have turned guns into a deeply adversarial relationship with the neighbours and attach radical ideas that sink to reasonable ones that float are not at all as popular with the rest of Canada as they are with social media. Both other gun owners and the rest.

Never forget that social media is a place with a selection bias for people who want attention, and it's a place to express yourself, both of which Canada has never been comfortable with seeing from somebody with a gun. It's always a fatal mistake to assume places like this speak for the total.

Social media really added a whole new dimension to gun ownership in Canada it wasn't prepared for and never condoned. It brought a traditionally out of sight and mind lifestyle choice into public view where owners started asserting themselves as a group where everyone else could see them do so. This is all as new as the technology that enabled it and it shouldn't be a surprise at all that laws any older than this century don't accommodate it.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Self defence and property rights aren't radical ideas. For people who are constantly coddled and live sheltered lives, maybe, but not for the rest of us.

Anyways, another century of yelling "sports shooting!" to save the hobby. I wonder what OICs that will prevent in the future.

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u/throwa37 Jun 16 '22

The people on places like this sub that have turned guns into a deeply adversarial relationship with the neighbours

We didn't turn this adversarial, the Liberals did. I didn't want this fight and neither did anybody else here.

radical ideas

Like?

It brought a traditionally out of sight and mind lifestyle choice

I think you're underestimating the role guns play in this country. In the city? Sure, it's out of sight out of mind. But to extrapolate that nationwide is a fallacy of the urban bubble.

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u/drain-angel BC Jun 15 '22 edited Jun 16 '22

You want to talk about selection bias? Literally what kind of person do you think wants to take 5 sponsored polls a week just so they don't get flagged for a panel like Leger/Angus Reid/Ipsos/etc. so they can fill out a single political poll once a month?

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Cold. Dead. Hands.

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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22

Based