All drawn from a Reddit thread.
Here’s the setup. Calibre Magazine ran an article misleadingly titled ‘Total Spending On Long Gun Ban Will Exceed $100M This Fiscal Year‘. Misleading because the actual text of the government document references “to complete the collection and destruction of business owned assault style firearms and to establish a compensation program.”
The thread filled quickly with the usual arguments opposing any gun ban, but also with arguments saying that the compensation was wasteful and shouldn’t have been attempted. My response is, basically: fine. Then we’ll ban them without compensation.
The trolls and downvoters descended in an effort to hide my response as deeply as possible.
What follows below are some of the arguments I made against common talking points generated by the pro-gun lobby. Use them at your leisure.
(Note: text I wrote is normal. Text other people wrote is italics)
Well the government could just declare assault style firearms to be illegal and not offer any compensation at all for existing owners. Would that be better?
Because, you know, there’s no place for assault style firearms in civilian society, and we should be rid of them one way or another.
The Definition Side-Issue
Assault style is a made up term. It’s like hamburger style meat, it means these aren’t assault rifles. There are firearms that function the exact same but with a wooden stock that are still legal. or
Elaborate on what you think constitutes an “assault style weapon” and what makes it so unsuitable for Canadian society. or
What is an assault style firearm? Is that like a chicken style nugget?
If you use a word, it better have at least some definition. Otherwise your argument is literally meaningless. The point is, C-21 gives no definition to “assault style” and “military style” weapons because they are made up terms.
My response, scattered across various comments:
I don’t care. You’re just deflecting by raising a trivial objection.
If you’re banning firearms based on a definition then the definition is pretty important.
That’s not the question here, though. The question is, should we compensate owners or not? I’m just as happy not compensating anyone; just ban the guns. But in typical fashion, pro-gun people demand compensation then complain about how much it costs. That’s the issue. Not your off-topic distraction comment about definitions.
It’s irrelevant. That precise definition isn’t the issue here. You’re just tossing up a red herring.
So you can’t define what an “assault style weapon” is because there really is no definition beyond what is politically convenient and no measurable characteristic that separates them from any other firearm. Got it. You’d think that if it was this important to remove from society that we had to ramrod it through via OIC there would be some specific aspect of the affected rifles that made it so necessary, but I guess I’m just missing the point or something.
That’s not the question here, though. The question is, should we compensate owners or not? I’m just as happy not compensating anyone; just ban the guns. But in typical fashion, pro-gun people demand compensation then complain about how much it costs. That’s the issue. Not your off-topic distraction comment about definitions. The same with your very off-topic comments about the delay. It’s just not what is being discussed here.The argument here is very simple. If you think it’s too expensive to compensate gun owners, then fine. We can ban them without compensation. Complaining about the cost of compensation is disingenuous.
Variations on the definition theme:
What about handguns? This whole thing is a sham.
Well if it were up to me handguns would be banned as well.
But you’re changing the subject. That’s not what we were discussing.
This is the same sentence: “Well the government could declare chazwazers style firearms to be illegal”. There is no such thing as an “assault style” firearm.
Sure there is. An AR-15 is an assault style firearm.
But if you wish to discuss ‘chazwazers style firearms’ I have no objection. I’m sure you agree that the government could just declare these to be illegal. You would have no problem with that, right?
The buyback
You’d be hard pressed to find a gun owner who wants a “buyback” with or without compensation. We want to keep our guns and that costs nothing. You demand that we give them up. If the worst case scenario happens, yeah, we wouldn’t want to be completely robbed. That doesn’t mean we’re “demanding” this to happen. It’s quite the opposite.
What you’re demanding is specifically this: “If you take our guns, we should be compensated”.
Which makes the response “compensation is too expensive” logically equivalent to “don’t take our guns”. Which is why arguing “compensation is too expensive” is disingenuous.
If you’re not prepared to give up your guns under any circumstances, then you shouldn’t be saying anything about the compensation.
Some people tried analogies.
Imagine tomorrow the government Bans your car. You’ve paid for it legally. Paid tax on it. It’s now illegal. Do you want compensation? Or do you think the government has the power to just decide your stuff is illegal and too bad.
The government does have that power. They declare stuff illegal and seize stuff all the time.
That said, they look at the harm versus the benefit. Cars have a lot of benefit. Though I could imagine government eventually banning fossil-fuel cars. Guns provide limited or zero benefit and cause a lot of harm (indeed, their entire purpose is to cause harm).
So I would accept that the government has the right to ban my car, I would say I prefer compensation, but that the case for banning cars is much much weaker than the case for banning guns, which is why banning cars is not a real possibility, while banning guns (or at least some guns) is very much on the table.
No, they don’t. There is absolutely no case for banning guns. Oh, so you would prefer compensation! Good to know.
Of course there is a case for banning guns. You don’t agree with it, but that doesn’t mean the case doesn’t exist.
Confiscating guns
You want the government to confiscate legally purchased property? and
Yeah, that would be a sane and rational thing to do in an civilized society. Just declare things illegal and literally steal them from people. What a fantastic precedent that would set for the country.
I’m surprised you think that would be a precedent. What do you think happened when the government declared heroin illegal? What do you think happened when it declared leaded gas illegal? The government has a long history of declaring harmful things illegal. Guns – especially assault style firearms – are harmful things. Declaring them illegal would be no precedent at all.
I’m saying that uncompensated confiscation would set a precedent. The difference between leaded gas and guns is that a large number of Canadians own guns worth thousands of dollars that they can’t use anymore. You didn’t have people with thousands of dollars worth of leaded gas sitting around. They just couldn’t get it from the pump anymore.
People also owned thousands of dollars worth of unleaded gas. They were given time to dispose of that gas. Then it was illegal. People can do the same with guns. You don’t have to just keep them. You can sell them.
Having the government buy them is a really nice concession to gun owners to make the transition easier, but it is by no means necessary. If you feel the government would be spending too much to do this, no problem, you can just be required to sell them elsewhere.
The point is, the government doesn’t even need to confiscate the guns. All it needs to do is make them illegal. What you do with them then is your problem, not the government’s.
>> People also owned thousands of dollars worth of unleaded gas
> No they didn’t, come on.
Yes they did. Every gas station in existence had thousands of dollars worth of inventory. Refineries and gas companies, even more.
The ‘benefit’ of guns?
I said: Guns provide limited or zero benefit
That is complete fucking nonsense, and there wouldn’t be millions of Canadians who own them if it were true.
Millions of people owned pet rocks. Didn’t make them useful.
The outcome, which is that you fed your family, is positive.
I agree with this as well. However, I would point out that for the vast majority of humanity, hunting deer for food is neither necessary nor practical. We are discussing a vanishingly small benefit here.
The same principle applies to self-defence.
It would, if they worked. But I think we’ve seen more than enough evidence that the idea of a ‘good guy with a gun’ is a myth. And the people most likely to be harmed by a gun are the gun owner and their family. Additionally, the prevalence of guns in a society make it much harder, and more dangerous, for police to enforce the law. Again, we are discussing a vanishingly small benefit here.
Are guns even harmful?
Guns can be harmful, if misused…
Guns are designed to be harmful. That’s their only purpose. If a gun isn’t harmful, it doesn’t even qualify as a gun any more.
Guns are designed to inflict physical harm, yes.
Then we are agreed (notice we didn’t have to have a long drawn out discussion about the meaning of ‘physical harm’ in order to agree on this).
“Guns are designed to be harmful” is not an intellectually honest talking point.
I don’t agree. The two purposes you describe: hunting, and self-protection, are applications based on doing harm. If guns did not do harm, they would not be thought to be useful in these applications.
>> Having the government buy them is a really nice concession to gun owners to make the transition easier, but it is by no means necessary.
> It’s legitimately shocking to me that you think that. The most rabid, dug-in anti-gun people still believe in the decency to compensate people when you dispossess them of their stuff. I feel like I’m talking to an alien, or a sociopath.
Well I often feel that way when I’m talking to gun defenders, so we have that in common. I mean, who wants to be in possession of something that could kill their entire family in a few minutes?
But yes, I’m onboard with the idea of providing compensation for gun owners to trade in their guns. It’s a concession I’m willing to make, because I know how expensive there are and how hard it is to find legitimate purchasers.
But when the pro-gun people turn around and complain that the compensation is too expensive, I find it disingenuous, because it’s nothing more than a restatement that the guns in question should not be banned. Which was my original point.
So again I say: if you don’t want the compensation, then fine. We can do it without compensation, the way we’ve handled many other dangerous things in society.
Getting rid of your guns:
If you feel the government would be spending too much to do this, no problem, you can just be required to sell them elsewhere.
You can’t actually sell them elsewhere.
I would be willing to discuss ways to make it legal to sell them elsewhere, for example, to American gun buyers. Perhaps an easing of the export permit requirement https://www.international.gc.ca/controls-controles/firearms_armes_a_feu/other-autres/license-demande.aspx?lang=eng would be in order.
> Nobody, and I mean nobody, believes that law is morality
Some people actually do.
But I am not one of those people, and have never made that statement, nor made any statement that implies that it is true.
> and that people have to follow any conceivable rule in order to be logically and morally consistent.
I haven’t made this argument either.
But, if we’re arguing with reason, and not merely on the basis of emotions, then it is important that the argument be logically consistent. If you additionally bring some sort of morality into the argument (eg. the statement that “it is wrong to take someone’s property”) then there is a requirement to be consistent with that statement as well.
I’m also fine discussing this based on emotions as well. We don’t have to stick to logic and reason. I’ve just been giving people the benefit of the doubt.
Law-abiding citizens:
>> If guns became illegal, then any law-abiding citizen would get rid of their guns.
> This point gets thrown around a lot, but I don’t believe it’s a good-faith argument; I think it’s just throwing the term “law-abiding” back in gun owner’s faces out of frustration.
We are constantly told that gun owners are law-abiding people. So it’s not unreasonable to expect that they would dispose of their guns.
> You can’t throw “law-abiding citizen” back at somebody when they say they don’t want their expensive stuff stolen by pandering politicians. It doesn’t work like that.
It is, because the argument that “you’re turning law abiding citizens into criminals” is a red herring. Leaving aside the fact that many gun owners are actually criminals, the only reason a gun owner is currently law abiding is that the guns in question are legal. But whether they should be legal is exactly the point we’re discussing. The argument is essentially, “You can’t make guns illegal because then they’d be illegal.”
> If I was PM and then I changed the law to make it legal for me to ra pe your wife, and then hit you with “hey, you’re a law-abiding citizen, right? Don’t be a hypocrite”, then I think you would see the problem pretty damn quick.
If you were a PM that made it legal to rape my wife, then I would no longer be a law-abiding citizen, and I have no trouble whatsoever admitting that.
The real question is this: if guns (of whatever type) were made illegal, is this an issue you would be willing to cease being a law-abiding citizen over. Discussing in that basis is far more honest than saying “the ban makes criminals out of law abiding citizens.”
> Or, as a less hyperbolic (and real-world) example, would you say that “it’s not unreasonable to expect” that women should refrain from abort ions, because their state passed an abort ion ban?
Similarly, the real question is: is an abortion ban enough to make you stop being a law-abiding citizen? Being a man, I have the privilege of considering that question abstractly. Many young women (and girls) do not have that privilege, and made the very hard decision to break the law in order to preserve their own bodily autonomy.
I’m guessing it is less traumatic for a gun owner to give up a gun than it is for a woman (or girl) to be forced into an unwanted pregnancy, but I agree that I may be misreading gun owners on this.