Banning, or not banning, handguns is just one factor to consider when it comes to the complex issue of preventing crime
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I received a lot of feedback from my May 2 column, “Debate on gun control fueled by simplistic slogans” and some interesting follow-up issues arose from it.
Here’s a sampling of the responses and my observations about them.
1. “Ask any police officer in Canada, they will say banning handguns will do nothing.”
This is almost correct, but wrong in some important ways.
The first thing is that it is a sweeping generalization.
There are tens of thousands of police officers in Canada, in federal, provincial and municipal services, so there will obviously be different viewpoints among police officers on the issue of banning handguns.
It is likely true that most take the position that a handgun ban would be ineffective. But ascribing a uniform viewpoint to an entire group of people is inaccurate.
Just because most members of an organization, or the organization itself, assumes a particular position on an issue does not mean 100% of the members of that organization agree with it.
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It isn’t an assertion that not a single life would be saved by banning handguns.
That’s something the police cannot possibly know and it would be callous to the victims of gun crime and their families to make such an argument.
What many police who oppose handgun bans are saying is that the resources it would take to achieve it could be better and more effectively used for other initiatives to fight gun crime, such as stepping up efforts against gun smuggling across the Canada-US border.
Taking a step back from the issue of banning, or not banning, handguns, consider that crime prevention is a complex and difficult issue.
In 2019, Canada had 552 homicides with a population of 38 million people. The US had 17,709 homicides with a population of 329 million.
That means the US, with eight to nine times the population of Canada, had 32 times more homicides.
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Many people don’t like the argument “at least we aren’t the Americans when it comes to gun crime,” but there are reasons our numbers are lower, including our historical and cultural differences with the US, as well as efforts by our police forces, and credit should be given where it’s due.
2. Another position I heard in response to my column was, “banning handguns will do nothing. If I want to get a handgun I can get a handgun.”
It was interesting that people making this argument never said “people who want to get a handgun will get one,” it was always “I can get a handgun if I want one.”
This raises the question of whether their belief is that the right to legally obtain a handgun should be protected, or is it that obtaining an illegal handgun is so easy that banning them will not change this?
If their position is the latter, why would they want to allow it to continue, given that the illegal possession of a handgun is both unethical and likely to cause societal harm?
Maybe we wouldn’t have as much of an illegal handgun problem if more people who say they know how to get them illegally but don’t do it, would report how they would do it to the police.
— Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and teaches Disaster and Emergency Management at York University. He can be reached at [email protected]