Police: Body found at US park is that of gunman

[iverglas]

91. pardon me, I hadn't realized the subject was changed

I had assumed the "he" in question was the person the thread is about; I gather you were referring to Kimveer Gill.

Gill had a "restricted" firearms licence - he was permitted to possess handguns and restricted semi-automatic long guns, for sports shooting, based on his membership in an approved gun club.

There were no actual indications of his problematic tendencies, other than the fact that he spent a lot of time in his parents' basement playing with his guns and knives and taking pictures of himself with them and posting them on the internet. (I downloaded and saved the whole collection before his personal page was removed.)

So he bought his firearms from a dealer, and his ownership of them was registered.

He is one of the reasons why I oppose any handgun possession (not ownership - owners with licences for sports shooting could easily store their firearms at the facility where they shoot), and possession of the restricted long guns in question, by members of the public. Another example is an individual in Toronto with the appropriate licence who took his handgun out drinking one night and killed a passerby on the street when he decided to shoot the bouncer who had thrown him out of a club.

You'll note that I have consistently referred to reducing the risk of such events. No public policy has ever eliminated the risk of any harm occurring.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/111026/dq111026a-eng.htm

Police reported 170 homicides with a firearm in 2010, down from 180 the year before. This is consistent with a general decline in firearm-related homicides seen over the past three decades.

Much of the decline in firearm-related homicides since the early 1980s can be attributed to a decrease in homicides involving rifles or shotguns. Rates of homicide involving rifles or shotguns in 2010 were about one-fifth of those seen 30 years ago.

Handguns accounted for 64% of homicides committed with a firearm in 2010, while rifles or shotguns accounted for 23%. Other firearms such as sawed-off shotguns, automatic firearms or other firearm-like weapons represented the remainder.

That makes about 41 handgun homicides in Canada in 2010. At the same rate, the US would have had about 370 handgun homicides, instead of the thousands it had. So obviously there is a reduction of harm associated with effectively restricted access. (Significant restrictions on lawful access result in greatly reduced unlawful access, since the number of items in circulation and available for unlawful transfer and theft is much lower, and the disincentives for such transfers and negligence are greater.)

Obviously, reducing access reduces the risk of the harms associated with access.

Harm will be caused with legally owned non-restricted long guns, too. Since people do need them for legitimate activities - hunting, pest/predator control - and since there is important personal and social value in those activities and so eliminating possession of those firearms is not reasonable (apart from being no more possible than eliminating most other things, since, as I said, no public policy is going to be 100% effective), those risks cannot be eliminated. However, measures can be taken to reduce those risks as well, with licensing, registration and safe/secure storage requirements, and public information and education campaigns, being the most effective.