Dan O.
Its true that concealed weapons up here are not a big problem. Must of the ones I see are on Americans who smuggle them across the border for protection against wolves, hostile natives and other perceived evils when they go fishing. Although I have watched a few people die in front of me from handgun injuries, I guess we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that gun related deaths in Canada are really not a major public health issue compared to drunk driving or smoking for instance. Our current firearm laws (prior to registration) were pretty reasonable and in terms of lives saved per tax dollar our money could now be better spent on other programs.

borealboy; even though Toronto is sin city compared to most of Canada, you can still walk the streets without fearing that someone is armed and ready to shoot you. It may not be as good as lazyarcher's area where every second person is an insurance salesman (just kidding) but I feel a lot better there than in American cities. I fear that the governments ultimate aim is to turn hunting into just a hobby, in which only primitive weapons are allowed. The banning of automatic weapons and handguns would be the logical first step. You'll notice that bows and crossbows never required registration even though I believe they are much more lethal than an airgun with a muzzle velocity of 501 ft/sec.

I would expect licenses on the registered firearms will be intoduced over the next few years to try to get people to turn more of them in. I know the government was and is hoping a lot of guns will come off the street by the widow effect. The effect where widows turn in your guns after you pass away because they don't know what to do with them. The illegal guns will still be out there but the legitimate gun numbers will dwindle. When gun numbers drop it makes it easier for the government to claim success in registration whether crime drops or not. At a certain point it's much more politically acceptable to confiscate and ban weapons or at least increase gun laws.

Watch for increased primitive weapon seasons and bag limits. There should be a logical progression of hunting seasons changing from rifle seasons to shotgun, to black powder, to bow as time progresses. One spoonful of dirt moved at a time moves a mountain in time.

Dan O.

The Widow effect,, I saw that one firsthand! A buddies extremely wealthy uncle passed a few years ago. We used to go over and talk about our hunts every year during the x-mas holidays, he would take us downstairs and open up the safes and show us his new purchases(he had a collection probably in the $70-80,000 range).

When he passed we figured we would get first crack at purchasing what we wanted out of the collection. Well we were talking to his son and we asked what was going to happen to the collection. He told us its already been taken care of,,, they were all turned into the police!

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<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote<font size=1 face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Make it very difficult or impossible to obtain handguns and other weapons designed solely for killing people. Countries that have done this (basically every developed country in the world except the USA) have extremely low rates of firearm deaths <hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' size=2 id=quote>

The legal acquisition of handguns was banned in Britain after the murder in Scotland of school children. Now England boasts one of the highest firearm crime rates of westernized countries (even higher than the US). An article in the news recently stated that handguns are almost a fashion statement in London, and the out right ban on them has done absolutely nothing to stem the tide of illegal imports or murders. In fact the murder rate has increased.

The general public either doesn't realize, or chooses to ignore, the fact that handguns have been registered since 1934. Yet even with this new &quot;wonder&quot; system I've had to re-register my revolver twice since the Rock Initiative, same address, same owner, owned it for 20 years.

All this miss-spent money should have gone into providing better training courses for people who wished to aquire firearms and for law enforcement efforts to stop the illegal importation of handguns. More lives would be saved by instituting an educational program in schools-similar to the counter-attack/drunk driving program- where survivers, doctors, criminals could tell their tales on how much fun being shot is, etc, than this bureaucratic excercise of having us write down how many guns we own.

But I guess it's easier to have law abiding people be even more law abiding than to actually deal with the root of the problem.

Some one suggested that the government would eventually make hunting a primitive weapons hobby. If Rock had his way, hunting would go the way of firearms- gone completely. It is still to clear in my mind the statement he made about &quot;how nice it would be if Canada was a non-hunting country&quot;. How many his political supporters subscribe to this philosophy as well?

RC

This thread has generated alot of interesting discussion. The question that still bothers me is how do we get illegal weapons off the streets of our big cities? I think we all agree that regulating hunters is not the solution. The manufacture and sale of assault weaponry for non-military use is still a huge industry worldwide. I'm still waiting to hear of a reasonable solution to this problem. Clearly our government doesn't have the answer.
Dan O. in response to your comments, I covered my bases this year and took up bowhunting. So far the only lives saved by this decision are those of the deer

I don't think it will ever go non-hunting in the forseeable future. The tourist resorts in northern Ontario and other provinces would scream so bad there wouldn't be a liberal seat outside of the GTA.

Dan O.

What should we do?? well we could of built one huge prison with a billion dollars. Start by throwing the politicians in first, then create a 3 strike law, actually make criminals serve theyre time!!

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Toronto did threaten to split off and become a seperate province at one time. Maybe we should just seperate from them first?

Dan O.