Gun owner here. I agree. Canada’s current position regarding home defence is fine. We don’t need to include firearms in our daily lives to protect ourselves from each other. Governments have been hard on legal owners and in many cases a lot of it is political noise and grandstanding.
We do not have the right to defend ourselves with firearms. There’s simply no need.
Additionally, defending a home with a firearm is incompatible with safe storage.
What am I going to do? Ask the intruder to hold on while I go assemble a weapon with parts stored in three different places? All under lock and key?
Keeping a loaded firearm around is WAY riskier for people INSIDE the home than any outside threat.
We need to start working to see and hear (and support) each other not put up new barriers to keep each other at , ahem, arms length.
Generally true. The one difference is for people who are rural. I dont have a loaded firearm but I do have a powerful .22 airgun right by my front door. Its mostly there for protection against animals - several times we’ve had black bears walk across our front lawn, only a few feet from our door and we’ve had a bear tear the side off a trailer to get at the food scraps inside.
Having said that, I know that many of my neighbors have real firearms for the same reason. Two bears have been shot after they no longer were scared off by warning shots and unfortunately Fish and Wildlife generally refuses to relocate them (they were here first). And there have been sightings of grizzlies within 2 kms. NO ONE wants to mess with a grizzly.
But the unspoken thing about living this far from the nearest RCMP station is that we all know that even in an emergency, the officers aren’t going to be here in any less than 30 minutes and that’s IF they happen to be patrolling on this side of the county. And a lot can happen in 30 minutes. So we all keep some kind of protection around because we can’t rely on being protected in a reasonable amount of time.
We have a camp with coyotes around and I’m aware of this exception - it’s part of the reason I’m a firearm owner.
But this case is not true for the vast majority of Canadians. The additional nuance here being that it’s still illegal to use or point that firearm at/on a human, even a trespasser.
Illegal and necessary are two different things.
Philosophically, Im from a long line of pacifists. Practically, if Im Gerald Stanley and someone is on my yard and threatening my wife, Im pointing my gun at him and telling him to get the hell off my property. I’ll deal with the charges later.
Gun owner here. I agree. Canada’s current position regarding home defence is fine. We don’t need to include firearms in our daily lives to protect ourselves from each other. Governments have been hard on legal owners and in many cases a lot of it is political noise and grandstanding.
We do not have the right to defend ourselves with firearms. There’s simply no need.
Additionally, defending a home with a firearm is incompatible with safe storage.
What am I going to do? Ask the intruder to hold on while I go assemble a weapon with parts stored in three different places? All under lock and key?
Keeping a loaded firearm around is WAY riskier for people INSIDE the home than any outside threat.
We need to start working to see and hear (and support) each other not put up new barriers to keep each other at , ahem, arms length.
Generally true. The one difference is for people who are rural. I dont have a loaded firearm but I do have a powerful .22 airgun right by my front door. Its mostly there for protection against animals - several times we’ve had black bears walk across our front lawn, only a few feet from our door and we’ve had a bear tear the side off a trailer to get at the food scraps inside.
Having said that, I know that many of my neighbors have real firearms for the same reason. Two bears have been shot after they no longer were scared off by warning shots and unfortunately Fish and Wildlife generally refuses to relocate them (they were here first). And there have been sightings of grizzlies within 2 kms. NO ONE wants to mess with a grizzly.
But the unspoken thing about living this far from the nearest RCMP station is that we all know that even in an emergency, the officers aren’t going to be here in any less than 30 minutes and that’s IF they happen to be patrolling on this side of the county. And a lot can happen in 30 minutes. So we all keep some kind of protection around because we can’t rely on being protected in a reasonable amount of time.
We have a camp with coyotes around and I’m aware of this exception - it’s part of the reason I’m a firearm owner.
But this case is not true for the vast majority of Canadians. The additional nuance here being that it’s still illegal to use or point that firearm at/on a human, even a trespasser.
Illegal and necessary are two different things. Philosophically, Im from a long line of pacifists. Practically, if Im Gerald Stanley and someone is on my yard and threatening my wife, Im pointing my gun at him and telling him to get the hell off my property. I’ll deal with the charges later.