Canadian Self-defense Law

[stormdog]

I was thinking about having a defensive weapon like pepper spray in my purse for when I start going out dressed fem. It turns out that in Canada, carrying *anything* with the intent of using it as a weapon is basically illegal and subject to prosecution. It seems to come down to a judgment call sometimes about whether the powers that be believe you happened to be carrying something that you improvised as a weapon instead of intentionally carrying a thing because it could be used as an improvised weapon.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I certainly felt a lot safer in the Netherlands than I did in the US, and from what I can find, weapons laws in general in the Netherlands are similar to Canada (though firearm regulation is notably stricter in NL). It seems reasonable to be in favor of similar policies here.

Some elaboration:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Criminal_Law/Weapons

https://www.torontodefencelawyers.com/crime-carry-pepper-spray-self-defence/

Comments

[sabotabby]

I used to carry pepper spray around, illegal or not. I think it's the smol femme equivalent of the cops' "it's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6" thing. The situations in which you're likely to need to use it are largely situations where criminal charges are the least of your concerns.

Incidentally, at least some of this jurisprudence comes out of the Christie Pits riots, where the good guys were not convicted for beating fash with baseball bats because they'd clearly come to the park intending to use the bats for playing baseball. The evidence was, "well, they also had a ball and mitts."

[stormdog]

That makes sense to me. I'm extra worried about doing anything illegal since it could derail my residency application.