This is a preposterous story. Okay, we have debates in Canada (yes,
I'm Canadian), much as you have debates in the USA and elsewhere,and
not all of our laws are identical to yours.

But this story is a total fabrication. No such sentence was carried
out.

Yes, we can own guns in Canada, including handguns. We need a permit
to carry one (almost impossible to get), and need a permit to transport
them, but that doesn't mean we don't have them. There's plenty of
hunting, by the way, up here in the Great White North, and last I
checked, our hunting stores look a lot like yours. Plenty of guns for
sale. Our gun crime statistics, incidentally, are virtually identical
to the USA, if you compare cities of comparable size. Yes, our cops
carry guns.

> Ever since the outlaw of hand guns in the country of Canada the crime
> rate has seriously escalated out of control.

No, our crime rate isn't out of control, though we would prefer it was
smaller, as I suppose would most societies. And guns haven't exactly
been outlawed recently (or at all, for that matter). The gun control
debate rages on up here, much as it does down there. We probably have
fewer guns per capita, but we're certainly not gun-free.

But we are a pretty big country, I'll give you that. With a population
of only 30 million people, we have significantly more land mass than
the USA.

Come visit some time!

Cheers.