Try as you might to make this be a case for less gun control, it doesn’t cut it.  Do you think that if the good guys had guns, they’d be out there standing side by side with the Mounties, helping even things out?  Guns in the hands of the good guys would no way answer to this particular problem.  Nice morning stretch tho. Now for a quick run . . .

Nothing wrong with the Mounties updating their arms, I suppose, but this reminds me of the stories that we used to hear about how the “AK-47 and the MAC-10 are the weapons of choice of drug dealers”...yada yada yada, and “the cops need better arms to defend themselves” - until somone actually looked into the problem and found that wasn’t really true, either. The punks just had the usual stolen or pawned .38s and .45 ACPs and so on. An occasional automatic rifle may have shown up, but it wasn’t like the Chicoms were arming the insurgent gangs, either.

I am completely on the side of law and order, but I also reserve the right to have a healthy contempt for my government. And, sorry guys, that includes the police. Even nice Canadian ones. And if you extend their argument out to its logical conclusion, I suppose they want M-16s and maybe a BAR or two. And then we can have a real gun battle in a public area. Not good.

Given the record of police marksmanship, does anyone seriously think this is a good idea? Look at what happened in Pembina County last fall when farmer Jim single-handedly took on all of Pembina County’s finest, the Fire Department, the Grand Forks SWAT team, and God knows who else? In a six hour period, he ran off deputies from the field he was working in, the police chief was shot in the ass by friendly fire, Jim came and left town, came back again, set the PD building and the courthouse on fire, and finally come nightfall, left his farm and drove wounded to another town. More firepower didn’t help that situation a bit. There are way more Barney Fifes out there than Dirty Harrys.

I say arm the citizens, but the police have enough weapons.....

usuallyjustlisten said, Try as you might to make this be a case for less gun control, it doesn’t cut it. Do you think that if the good guys had guns, they’d be out there standing side by side with the Mounties, helping even things out?

No, only that the good guys would be able to protect themselves. This was referred to by Rob as a “a better long-term solution”.

You missed that one and then proceed to tell Rob that his argument “doesn’t cut it”?

You ain’t seen nothing yet!, ..

Unarmed Canadian Border Patrol walks off job after Shootout closes border post!

CBC News has learned that when unarmed Canadian border guards found out the murder suspects were coming their way, they left their posts at two crossings along the B.C. border: the Peace Arch crossing at Douglas, which was closed for a while, and the Pacific Highway Truck Crossing, to which traffic from Douglas was diverted.

..
A spokeswoman with Canada Border Services says the guards have the legal right to refuse to work if they believe they are in imminent danger

more on this

were they French Canadians, lol

More on the bizarre Canadians:

Former Canadian Minister Of Defence Asks Canadian Parliament To Hold Hearings On Relations With Alien “Et” Civilizations

A former Canadian Minister of Defence has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on with Alien “ET” Civilizations. Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: “UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.” Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. Mr. Hellyer went on to say, “I’m so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.” “Now is the time for open disclosure that there are ethical Extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth,” a spokesperson for the Non-Governmental Organizations stated. “Our Canadian government needs to openly address these important issues of the possible deployment of weapons in outer space and war plans against ethical Extraterrestrial societies.”

read on

I suppose all that ganja is finally getting/affecting their heads

Canada Exporting Ganja to the US

Canada ‘sells US high-grade pot’

Canada is a major exporter of high-potency marijuana, according to the man who leads the US war on drugs.
White House “drug czar” John Walters says new cultivation methods mean marijuana sold today in the US is much stronger than in the 1960s.

“We have a growing problem with the expansion of particularly high-potency marijuana coming from Canada,” he said.

LAST YEAR the drug produced in British Columbia ALONE was worth $9bn and most of it was exported to the US, he added.

I say we let free market prevail, legalize marijuana and bring this lucrative biseness that to the US, which is where it belongs, lol:

Frank proudly surveys the large log cabin he constructed himself, on a two-acre plot of aromatic evergreen forest he now owns.
“All this,” he says, “was built on marijuana.”

Over four years, Frank - not his real name - tended a patch of marijuana plants in a forest clearing about 45 minutes’ walk from where his cabin now stands.

He regularly pooled his harvests with those of several other growers in the small British Columbia (BC) town in which he lives, to sell wholesale to young men from just across the border in the US state of Idaho.

Frank says he made hundreds of thousands of Canadian dollars before hurriedly leaving the business when his American buyers were arrested.

But tens of thousands of illegal “grow-ops” remain in Canada. Estimates suggest marijuana may generate up to C$7bn (£3.5bn; US$6.1bn) a year in BC, the sunny province thought to be at the heart of the industry.

Canada’s new Conservative government says people like Frank are a menace to society, putting drugs on the streets and fuelling organised crime - and it has vowed to get tough on them.

But critics accuse the government of being wilfully blind to the historic failures of law enforcement, and ignoring public opinion and the findings of expert committees in favour of a policy of demonising marijuana - a policy they liken to the short-lived Prohibition of alcohol in 1920s and 30s America.

...

The industry has .grown. The Canadian statistics agency reports that in 2004 there were more than 8,000 cultivation offences recorded - up from 3,400 in 1994.
Experts deduce that the true number of grow-ops is much greater, as even large seizures seem to have little effect on the price of marijuana.

The federal police reported in 2002 that the cultivation industry had reached levels “that could be deemed epidemic in the provinces of BC, Ontario, and Quebec” - and they also warn that almost every large-scale operation these days is linked in varying degrees to organised crime.

.. smugglers have access to “transport vehicles, planes, helicopters. The sky’s the limit”.
.

long leave the market and its abilities to take care of itself!!

It’s not my place to complain but I don’t think most people read those big long comments. 

Speaking for myself I’d rather see snippets and links.

These criminals can wreak havoc because they don’t play by the rules and thus have access to the best weapons, and no amount of legislation from the Canadian government is going to change that.

So legalizing guns will cause criminals to start playing by the rules and using smaller weaponry?

So legalizing guns will cause criminals to start playing by the rules and using smaller weaponry?

No. Legalizing guns gives the citizen a fighting chance and puts fear into those doing home break-ins.

So legalizing guns will cause criminals to start playing by the rules and using smaller weaponry?

Legalizing them won’t have any affect on the criminals. However it is proven in the United States that honest people having firearms is the best deterrent to crime that you can do.

There’s been studies showing that when attacked having a firearm is better than submitting, resisting with hands and feet, or resisting with a different weapon. 

It’s also been shown that the fact that some people have guns protects others that don’t because the criminals don’t know who’s armed and who isn’t.

Canada’s crime rate actually pales in comparison to that of our country:

United States
Compared to the United States Canada has lower rates of violent crime such as murder and rape, but a higher rate of assault. Through the 1990s, the homicide rate in the United States was three times higher than it was in Canada, while the American rate for aggravated assault was double the Canadian rate. The rate for robberies was 65% higher in the United States.

Only one third of Canadian murders involve firearms compared to two thirds in the States. Guns are more likely to be used in robberies in the United States. Gun ownership rates are significantly higher in the United States, especially handguns. Most Canadian weapons are rifles or shotguns owned by farmers, hunters and target shooters, and are less likely to be used in crimes
wiki

interesting!

Japan has the most strict gun control laws in the developed world:

The weapons law begins by stating ‘No-one shall possess a fire-arm or fire-arms or a sword or swords’, and very few exceptions are allowed

Japan’s Gun Control