The city of Toronto has a gun problem, and politicians are lining up to offer variations of the same idea as the solution. You see, unlike every other city in North America, all of the gun crime in Toronto is committed by legal owners of AR-15 and AK-47 “assault weapons”. They’re all fully registered with the federal government, and have taken all the required training courses and keep their weapons under the strict storage and transportation rules, never taking them anywhere but to the legally designated shooting range and always on the permitted route to and from that range (and they’re all life-members of the NRA, of course). This is why, unlike every other city in North America, a ban on “assault weapons” will eliminate 100% of the gun-related crime in Toronto.
In the real-world version of Toronto, however, the proposed ban will have almost no impact on the crime rates, because almost none of the gun-related crimes committed in Toronto involves any kind of “assault weapon”, most being turf disputes involving illegal handguns between drug dealers and personal grudges among “young aspiring rappers who are just about to turn their lives around”:
Colt Canada’s model SA20, a commercial version of the Canadian C7A2 rifle.
Image from the Colt Canada website.
If Liberals are re-elected to a second term in government, their plan to tackle gun violence includes a ban on high-velocity, semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, and gun marketing bans that evoke America’s favourite action figure.
“There are sometimes advertisements and videos that appear (on social media) … to imply that we can be GI Joe on our main street,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said about the Liberal platform’s vague reference to “limit the glorification of violence by changing the way firearms are advertised marketed and sold in Canada.”
During a Q&A with reporters in Ottawa on Sunday, where Goodale fielded questions about their incumbent government’s election promises, the minister attempted to qualify freedom of expression implications with the types of promotional material that could be targeted.
“(It) depicts a kind of behaviour that is simply inappropriate and some people would find it quite threatening … and it leads to the impression of military assault weapons is something you just do, every day,” explained Goodale.
I’m not a big consumer of advertising, but I can’t recall the last time I saw any kind of ad for firearms in Canada that wasn’t in a gun magazine (and there are not many of those sold in typical corner stores). Scary black guns in Hollywood movie ads, sure … they’re everywhere … but that’s not in any way related to the advertising, sale, or use of guns in Canada.
