Pressure mounts towards handgun ban in Canada

[johndoe3]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker ... -1.4819711

Excellent article on who wants a handgun ban in Canada. The liberals in the cities of Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Fredericton are the main constituents for handgun bans, falsely seeing a handgun as the cause of shootings. Meanwhile, the more rural people see handguns correctly as a tool, one used for good purposes and occasionally used by miscreants for bad purposes. The following graph illustrates that there is really no upswing in gun homicides in Canada for 1996-2017, above what is normal statistical variance.



Canadians may reach a compromise, with handgun bans in the big cities and no ban in the rest of Canada. They should instead sit back and recognize that even the small upswing in shootings from 2013-2017 in the chart above is mainly due to certain adherents of Islam who are intentionally killing Canadians in infrequent terrorist actions (just like in the USA).

[a_canadian]

They should instead sit back and recognize that even the small upswing in shootings from 2013-2017 in the chart above is mainly due to certain adherents of Islam who are intentionally killing Canadians in infrequent terrorist actions (just like in the USA).

Golly, do you have some links to data supporting this claim? The Danforth shooter was claimed by ISIS after the fact, vaguely, and some of his prior activities certainly seem to point to a connection, but nothing seems to have been proven so far in connection with terrorism. But aside from that, what Islamic extremist handgun shootings have there been here?

Quite the contrary, the vast majority of handgun related killings and injuries have come out of gang related folks. On the West coast this means primarily second generation Sikh men in their late teens and early 20's. In several cities in Southern Ontario this means the same age group and first or second generation men of African or Caribbean origin. And no, I'm not saying anything 'racist.' Try this: open a Google Image search and type in 'Toronto murder suspect' without the quotes. Now start paging down. Count the white faces... you won't run out of fingers for a while. It'll vary depending on your screen resolution and default zoom level, but for me with a fairly high resolution screen and 120% zoom level it took 10 pages of images before getting to 10 white faces... and 3 of them were politicians including our prime minister. And contrary to your claim, extremely few of these are from Syria or other Middle East countries, and almost none are suspected of Islamic terrorist activities. Drug money is a hell of a drug. And Toronto is fast becoming something like Detroit-North, with ghettos and gangs defining certain segments of the population.

Toronto's case is especially clear-cut, but one can find similar results in other cities in the region. The further out one goes from the big population centres the larger the first nations component, where alcohol becomes more of a relevant factor owing to biological and social factors.

A handgun ban seems unlikely, though there will probably be tighter restrictions on licensing. Many politicians here, and obviously the police chiefs, clearly understand that legally owned handguns are rarely used in violent crimes. The brother of the Danforth shooter (who is still in a Fentanyl-induced coma) had 33 identical new S&W handguns in his apartment when it was raided last year, along with something like 43kg (90-ish pounds) of that drug. These pistols seem to have been brought across the US/Canada border illegally, so a handgun ban would have done nothing to prevent that. Same goes for almost all handguns used by gangsters. There is a thriving black market. If one has the cash or the connections to criminal types, buying a handgun is actually quite easy here. And politicians like being re-elected, so many will not go so far as to support a ban which would only attack sport shooters. After all, we're only allowed to shoot handguns inside official shooting ranges, except for rarely issued permits granted to guides and hunters in the North. It's not like Canadians are just shooting in the woods and on farms, unless they want to face serious charges.

[johndoe3]

a_canadian writes
Golly, do you have some links to data supporting this claim? The Danforth shooter was claimed by ISIS after the fact, vaguely, and some of his prior activities certainly seem to point to a connection, but nothing seems to have been proven so far in connection with terrorism. But aside from that, what Islamic extremist handgun shootings have there been here?

Valid point, the question is whether my assertion is merely hyperbolic language or is there some basis of fact? Probably somewhere in the middle, meaning muslim involved homicides but saying they are all terrorist related is hyperbolic language.

Consider the following article on Frontpagemag.com (and published elsewhere too). In it, the article explains the rise in gun homicides in Ottawa in 2016 during the timeframe I cited in my original post (small rise in gun homicides in 2013-2017). The average gun homicides in Ottawa per year were very low for a city of ~1 million at 10 per year. In 2016 the gun homicides rose to 24, and the article at least partially explains why.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265366 ... greenfield

Canada’s capital is a small sleepy city of less than a million. Its average annual murder rate is only 10. That’s a weekend in Chicago. But last year something strange happened to Ottawa’s murder rate.

It shot up to 24 homicides.

The last two murders were of Somali Muslim sisters Asma and Nasiba. Their murderer was their brother, Musab A-Noor. Despite the obvious history of Muslim honor killings of women, often carried out by brothers against their sisters, Musab was found “unfit” to stand trial. A director at the Somali Centre for Family Services insisted that Somali settlers in the city need more mental health funding.

Something certainly seems to be needed.

There were an estimated 66,000 Muslim settlers in the Ottawa - Gatineau metropolitan area. Despite forming some 5 percent of the population, they are startlingly overrepresented in Ottawa’s murders.

The article goes on to show the muslim connection in the rise from the average of 10/year to 24 homicides in 2016.

The muslim involved homicide increases in Ottawa by muslims that comprises 5% of the population were muslim honor killings, muslim involved gang/crime killings, muslim involved terror-related gun homicides, etc.

So...maybe I was wrong in conflating all the muslim involved gun homicides in Canada to terrorism (or not). You likely will say that like the great increase in homicides in Sweden that are disrupting that society, in Canada the increase in gun homicides that are muslim related is the cost of doing business due to muslim immigration to Canada--bringing their foreign societal norms to Canada and resistance to complete integration (conclaves of immigrants).

In Canada as in the USA, police and the government are quick to deny terrorism links or muslim links even though they are obvious. It does take peeling away the obfuscations, which is a reluctance to state the truth (fake news), and instead charge mental health reasons or gang/crime related reasons for the shootings. For example, a police chief saying that the shooter was not heard saying "Aloha Snackbar" during the shooting and therefore it cannot be Islamic terrorism.

[a_canadian]

Thanks for agreeing at least in part that the conflation of 'Muslim' or 'Islam' with 'terrorism' is an error. I have no problem at all in agreeing with the facts; Muslim men are far, far more likely to harm women than is normal for historical Canadian households. It is well established by many studies that many interpretations of the Koran allow for violence against women, while some do not, and as a result many countries report relatively high numbers of injuries to women as well as homicides, committed by family members for the most part. But this is not 'terrorism.' At least not in the sense of Islamic extremists blowing people up or shooting them or throwing acid onto schoolgirls. It's important to use clear and correct language when speaking of these things.

As it happens I am in agreement with Sam Harris' take on the Muslim faith in general, namely that it is a menace to society on a global scale, regardless of the many good deeds done by particular Muslims. In much the same way, though building a case is somewhat more complicated, I feel that Christianity has been and remains a menace to us all, though probably on a slightly lesser scale. Slightly. Religious delusion in general has proven itself a net detriment to the advancement of the human cause. Whatever the many gifts to culture, the costs have been excessive, and we ought to abandon all religious exercises and work collectively towards a more rationality-driven morality, using the lessons of the past (there is no need to abandon ALL that religious pursuits have given us) to build a stronger, more unified future. Murdering innocent people is not useful. Any belief system which says otherwise is criminal in nature.

And of course it is plain that the Swedish governments policies around refugee immigration has proven to be deeply flawed, resulting in horrible crimes against Swedish girls and women, just as is the case in the UK with thousands of girls having suffered gang rapes by immigrant Muslim groups. Douglas Murray's work in bringing these crimes to light makes that clear. We need to be more considered in our approach to accepting refugees from Muslim regions. Not banning it, but as with the responsible ownership of firearms, it should not be a willy-nilly thing where everyone just gets to do whatever they like. An angry, ill-educated Muslim man is rather similar to putting weapons into the hands of angry, poor urban youth in America. Or Canada. Or anywhere really. The process for approval must be made much more thorough.