Bill C-21

I wasn't sure, whether I should post my opinion in fear of being pegged as a gun fanatic. Just to be clear: I am not.

However, the crux of the matter is that this bill and soon-to-be-law is not going to help with what they are selling it for. It will not reduce the amount of murders committed with guns.

All statistics they provided as the reason for putting this bill in place did not mention the most important thing: How many people were murdered with legally acquired handguns by the owners of these handguns? Utter silence.

If you can believe the media and the police reports over the past few years, there was not even one such murder in Toronto. The only murder where a legal firearm was used was committed by a police officer who literally executed someone, who was lying on the ground, with multiple gunshots. And these are the people who are permitted to carry a concealed firearm when they are off duty.

Furthermore, the argument of preventing crimes due to panic reactions and in the heat of the moment situations is not valid either. Someone who owns a handgun legally cannot leave it fully loaded on their nightstand.

The gun has to be locked away in a safe with a trigger (or barrel) lock, separated from ammunition. One could not even use that gun in self defense during an armed robbery at home.

But removing that gun from the equation will make people safer? Before one can even assemble this locked away gun in the heat of the moment, one grabs a kitchen knife or the next heavy object instead.

Seriously, do the people who've come up with this bill have any common sense? If not, they should be at least be able to read the statistics. If yes, how is this bill going to help?

This proposed law is only targeting law abiding citizens who are legally owning a handgun for going to the shooting range. One must be the dumbest perpetrator to commit a crime with one's own handgun.

This bill is utterly useless. It was created to appease the public. Our politicians sell this bill as the solution to gun violance, while in reality criminals don't use legally acquired handguns in the first place. Criminals couldn't care less about the fact that one can't buy a handgun anymore.

If they really wanted to reduce the number of murders with handguns, they'd crack down on ILLEGALLY ACQUIRED handguns.

They could also require ballistic fingerprinting for every legally acquired handgun. Yet again, the fingerprinting only helps if people are dumb enough to use their own handguns to commit a crime.