The mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, again raises a by now common concern in Canada. What risks stem from bordering a nation 10 times as large with far more lax regulations on guns? From The Tyee's earliest days, our writers have examined the implications from various angles. A sampling:
Gun School
How many combat shotguns are there under my bed? Thanks to new laws, none of your beeswax.
Kai Nagata attends class in Surrey to acquire his firearms license, ruminating on the light scrutiny given Canadians nowadays when it comes to acquiring pistol grip shotguns and the like. (May, 2012)
Arizona Shooting: Americans Must Face This Reckoning
Steady poisoning of US political culture led here. Can that culture now take responsibility?
Essay reflects on the deadly mix of unbridled political hate rhetoric and loose gun laws that led to the shooting of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and at least 18 others. Co-writers Michael Fellman and David Beers warn: "dismissing this event as just the work of a madman is a refusal to engage in mature, adult analysis of the meanings of violence in American society. And then in the future this unexamined society may well careen to the next outburst and the next, down a slippery slope into some even more dire civic catastrophe." (January, 2011)
A Golden Age for US Gun Lovers
Americans have never been freer to pack heat, but conservatives stoke fears of a firearms crackdown.
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down any American city's ability to pass its own handgun control laws, we published this analysis by Joshua Holland explaining why there's no end to the gun debate to our south: "Gun politics not only raises right-wing ire, but also brings in big dollars for conservative candidates and the gun lobby." (June, 2010)
If Long Gun Registry
Is So Dumb, Why Do Police Like It?
Most Canadians want it, too. So why are opposition members helping Tories kill it?
Bill Tieleman on how renegade New Democrats and Liberals helped Conservatives "end registration of rifles and shotguns from a database police across Canada access over 10,000 times a day." (November, 2009)
Rising Tide of Smuggled Guns
Why British Columbia is being flooded.
This first in a two-part series by Kendyl Salcito and Lucy Saunders on how easy it is to move guns across our southern border tells the story of a network "involving the smuggling of approximately 40 handguns, $50,000 U.S. cash and $8,000 worth of low-quality diamonds into Canada." (May, 2006)
Gunning for Gun Smugglers
Border officers say they need more tools and teaming.
Second part of 'Rising Tide of Smuggled Guns' series by Salcito and Saunders finds "police on both sides of the border say their fight against gun smuggling is hampered by national policies that increase supply and demand and by a local lack of resources as other law enforcement priorities press for their attention." (May, 2006)
Living Next Door to a Gun Culture
The PM may have the gun registry in his sights, but there is no political support for the American way of firearms. The body count is just too high.
More than eight years ago, Crawford Kilian concluded that "Americans are stuck with their gun culture. But it ought to give us, as the Americans' closest neighbours, something to ponder: Why does the U.S. wince at every GI's death in Iraq, while ignoring every child's gunshot death at home? Why do Americans tolerate 31,000 such deaths a year?" (January, 2004)
David Beers is editor of The Tyee
8
Login or register to post comments
snert
42 weeks ago
I'd be willing to bet
that someone in that theatre wished they were packin'. Not that it would have done any good against full body armour but it might have made the shooter flinch.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/07/25/gun-sales-colorado.html
pwlg
42 weeks ago
Where there are more guns there is more homicide
From Harvard School of Public Health study of academic reports they found the following:
1. Where there are more guns there is more homicide
2. Across high-income nations, more guns = more homicide.
3. Across states, more guns = more homicide
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/
There were 32,000 violent homicides in the US in 2010. 15,000 were violent murders by guns (48 murders for every 1 million people) and 17,000 were suicides by guns.
Slightly more people in the US were killed in automobile accidents (33,000).
In Canada, in 2010, there were 625 violent murders (19 violent murders for every 1 million people).
April 5, 2012 Harper and his government got Royal Assent to abolish the long gun registry in Canada. Hours before Royal Assent a Supreme Court judge in Quebec extended an injunction preventing the feds from destroying the registry and ordered them to continue to register long guns in Quebec. A vast majority of Quebec residents favour the registry.
The Quebec judge wrote that the registry saved approximately 300 lives in Quebec since its inception 10 years ago and the Quebec police consulted the registry on average 1600 times a year. Over 2 million people across Canada registered their long guns and some had multiple guns. In Quebec more than 1.5 million long guns were registered.
It was also noted that the federal registry across Canada cost only a few million dollars a year to administer despite the massive costs on start-up or approximately $1 per year per registry.
Harper it seems didn't think a dollar a year for each registrant was worth saving even one innocent life in Canada.
pwlg
42 weeks ago
snert and others thinking what if...
There may just have been a few people "packing" in the Aurora Colorado theatre due to the fact that many states in the US allow their citizens to "pack" - carry a concealed weapon - in public, including Colorado.
This recent hypothetical scenario of a person carrying a concealed weapon who might have been able to prevent the needless violence in Colorado originated from gun lobbying groups to distract from those proposing to bring back laws preventing assault rifles and other unneccessary mass killing machines from being owned by citizens.
The US made assault rifle AR15 that appears to have been used in the theatre in Aurora was outlawed at one time but George W. Bush removed restrictions on assault rifles. The large rotary ammunition magazine the shooter had attached to the AR15 could carry 110 bullets.
Can someone explain to me how an untrained person with no firearms certification can purchase three significant weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in 60 days and not be flagged by authorities? There may be more compelling questions to seek answers to than some what if wild west shoot-out scenario that may have prevented loss of life and injuries.
Besides this, it is not a good choice to start unloading bullets from a weapon in a full capacity theatre with people running in all directions. Anyone with any decent weapons training would have ruled out discharging a firearm in a crowded chaotic theatre unless they were interested in adding to the number of people injured or killed by gunfire. I think this is called "friendly fire".
Hand guns are not the most accurate to use in a crowd despite how Dirty Harry and other Hollywood movies like to pretend they are. Firing multiple rounds accurately from a hand gun or assault rifle accurately is difficult even in a controlled environment.
pwlg
42 weeks ago
Is it normal
Is it normal in the US for a person to purchase sophisticated weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in a short period of time and not be flagged by the US Homeland Security, the FBI, the ATF, or even the NSA during a presidential election year? It was only a year and a half ago that Representative Kathleen Giffords was shot in the head at a political rally.
What does this say about the billions of dollars the US spends on domestic security in this present day climate of citizen surveillance? Are they more concerned about the non-violent occupy movements and their message about disparity and equality than they are about those purchasing several weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition?
gsarahs
42 weeks ago
Gun license applications are up in Colorado!
One has to shake one's head when you hear that 40% more gun license applications have been received in the last week, than normal in Colorado. It makes you wonder what will make the Americans understand that more guns are not going to shield you when these atrocities happen. Fewer guns due to more gun restrictions will reduce the accessibility of the ammunition and especially assault weapons. Unfortunately, I don't think that the US is about to change their ways, so the killings will continue and become more frequent. And every time they happen, everyone will get indignant and hold vigils, but nothing will change. Very sad and very stupid!
Starla
42 weeks ago
How is it whenever there is a
How is it whenever there is a tragedy we have this argument over and over again and again? I thought we all agreed that guns don't kill people PEOPLE kill people. You can't compare the US to any other country because it's gun laws aren't the only ass backwards aspect of its political system. It also has the greatest income disparity out of all first world nations and some of the poorest HC and education of everyone 3rd world and otherwise.
Vancouver BC is more dangerous to walk at day or night than most parts of Florida...
snert
42 weeks ago
pwlg
Simple, the firearms were purchased legally and as the ammunition was likely not purchased from the same source as the guns there would be no way to connect the dots.
A simpler explanation is just that's the way it is in the good olde US of A.
Hakuin
42 weeks ago
figure it out
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms