Sound familiar? Some Winnipeg city council members are calling for a national handgun ban. Because DO SOMETHING. A spokesman for the Winnipeg police was asked for his thoughts the effect on his city of adding even more gun control laws.
I can tell you that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police have indicated that that won’t make any difference. When we seize handguns, the handguns are always, almost 100% in the possession of people who have no legal right to possess them. They’re almost always stolen or illegally obtained.
I simply don’t see, as a 27-year-veteran, how adding another layer of law will make any difference anywhere in this country.
When we stop somebody in this city — and police do this every single day — and they have a handgun, somehow saying that this jurisdiction, that Winnipeg is handgun-free — and I’ll use air quotes — is going to make it safer or easy for us, is just nonsense. It won’t make any difference whatsoever.
There are handguns all over, they’re all illegal, and they’re in the hands of criminals. And the people that legitimately own them, they’re in safes and being taken to gun clubs. The two sections don’t intersect.
So if someone owns a gun legitimately and it’s stolen and it’s brought into Winnipeg, somebody saying, “Oh, it’s illegal to have that gun in Winnipeg,” is just another layer of…I guess it might make some people feel good, but it will not change the threat level one iota.
– Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Rob Carver