Geographically, the United States and Canada inherited very similar landscapes but culturally, socially, and politically, they have taken quite different paths into the 21st century. Initially, the land and its indigenous people necessitated the use of firearms for protection and food. The U.S. was born of rebellion. Canada emerged as the natural outcome of colonies becoming independent through maturation and petition. Each chose a quite different philosophical approach to society, politics, and government; and it is these differences that help us explain why America remains committed to its personal possession of firearms, with all its consequences, while Canada has chosen to foster a policy of strict and limited gun control.
America’s relationship with firearms developed out of English Common Law and the English Bill of Rights which guaranteed the right to bear arms as a fundamental and, therefore, an inalienable human right and was guaranteed in the U.S. Bill of Rights. Canada’s Fathers of Confederation chose to exclude this fundamental right from its Constitution and its Bill of Rights for reasons that can now only be described as elitist and racist. To own and bear arms in Canada is a privilege and not a right. The right to own firearms is neither guaranteed nor defended by the founding documents of the nation. In fact, the laws governing firearms are part of the Canadian Criminal Code. This omission, since 1867, and the inclusion of firearms regulations within the Criminal Code, since 1892, has served to differentiate America from Canada and has permitted Canada to implement some of the most restrictive gun laws to govern law-abiding citizens in a free and democratic nation.