Self Defence In Canada: Prohibited Weapons

thank you so much for joining me. I have a great topic for you today. It’s an interesting topic, and it has to do with self defense in terms of prohibited weapons, firearms, this sort of thing. Can a person defend themselves carrying an illegal weapon in Canada or carrying a firearm that you know very few people have carry permits and fire in Canada. You know, the police do, for example, but the short answer is yes with a qualification. So let’s say you’re a criminal and you’re carrying a prohibited weapon like you got brass knuckles there’s a whole regulations on prohibited weapons. I won’t get into but brass knuckles is one , switch blades, centrifugal force knives, nun chucks you see Bruce Lee type nun chucks. What if you’re carrying those and someone happens to attack you and you act reasonably.  They’re carrying nun chucks, their knife, yes, you can defend yourself and you wind up killing them and you acted recently the circumstances. You defend yourself in court you win but of course you’re gonna get convicted of the other offenses, much less serious, better than getting convicted of murder. But these scenarios do play out. I mean, gang members carry these types of things, obviously, and sometimes they win self defensive or defensive other cases. So that’s the kind of the short answer about prohibited weapons. By the way don’t carry prohibited weapons, don’t carry firearms, unless you’re a police officer, or a very narrow group of people who have licensed to carry in Canada and we’ll get into the law on that. So you know, optically though, it’s doesn’t look in the Judge’s eyes if you have a prohibited weapon on you or others thing you’re up against it already, but you may be able to win that case. I mean another gang member comes up to you threatens to shoot you, you pull out your gun, he pulls out his gun, you wind up killing them, but don’t forget you’re gonna get charged with pointing a firearm, you’re gonna get charged with all sorts of offences. The restricted firearm, you’re still winding up in jail for years but maybe not 20 or 25 years thankfully. So all kidding aside, a real gray and more nebulous area, which I kind of hesitate to get into is what about legal weapons? Is someone in Canada entitled to carry a legal weapon for self defense?  I would say not. You have to be very careful about carrying a legal weapon. So let’s take a legal knife. Let’s take a Swiss army knife. So let’s say in your day to day life, you open your beer cans, you use a swiss army knife for everything. You keep it in your purse or you keep it in your pocket. Is that all legal? Well, if you intend it for self defense, it may not be. If you intend it for your everyday life it may be. You have to be very careful with your intent here. Now let’s say you happen to, you’re on your way to work with your swiss army knife and someone cuts you off, grabs you in your car and starts  stabbing you and you stab them back with your swiss army knife. What’s going to happen? Well hopefully you can win it in self defense. Would you get charged with possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose in a public police? Probably not if you could establish the intent that that knife wasn’t for self defense, but it was for your day to day utilitarian work purposes. So let’s face it, there are people law abiding citizens who carry certain implements which are normally legal. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that by the way. I don’t want to get into much legal advice for that. But I’ve seen the situation where a worker who is carting a knife back and forth to work is legally in possession of that and their intent is very clear and they had to protect themselves with it and they ultimately won all their charges including carrying a concealed weapon. So it really kind of boils down to your intent with carrying that sort of thing. But you really should familiarize yourself with what prohibited weapons are. There’s all sorts of regulations, you can read about it. I don’t recommend carrying anything I mean, just you know, walk in safe streets walk in daylight or walk with people but anyway, that’s kind of a short primer on how prohibited weapons work in self defense and the bottom line is someone might win their case, but that get convicted of carrying that weapon or using that weapon or pointing a firearm and that sort of thing.