But you can't own a handgun unless you have a special license.
Nah. You don't need a special license for handguns. A normal PAL (Possession and Acquisition License) is enough to own a handgun.
What's really silly though is that the Canadian government recently banned AR-15s, M-14s, Ruger Mini-14s and similar semi-automatic rifles. They left the SKS alone though...so that's nice.
To start firearms ownership in this country is already a lengthy and drawn up process. You need to undergo tests, criminal background checks, and personal reference checks. Then there's the firearms themselves. Military style semi-automatics and all handguns are considered restricted. Buy one and you automatically get entered into a registry. Due to this fact, you really have to be an idiot to use restricted firearms to commit crimes. Anyway because of this a most of the firearms used to commit crimes (generally easy to conceal handguns) are actually smuggled from the US.
Remember the mass shooting that took place in Nova Scotia, Canada earlier this year? The mass shooting that is our nation's deadliest yet? Yeah that dude was not a legal firearms owner and all his firearms were illegally obtained with most of them coming from the US. He was also batshit crazy, violent, and not a legal holder of a PAL firearms license.
So yeah...Canadian government sees that and goes? Oh whelp....let's ban semi automatic 'scary black' 'assault rifles'.
Instead of doing the difficult thing (spending more resources securing the borders from arms smugglers), they did the easy thing and passed what is essentially an Executive Decision (Order in Council) blanket banning 1000s of different models....mostly semi automatic rifles. They did this while Parliament was out of session due to Covid19 and the opposition wasn't around to challenge them. With a stroke of a pen, law abiding Canadians throughout the country suddenly find themselves in possession of expensive firearms they can't even take out of the house and must surrender within 2 years.
Meanwhile handguns are still legal, you know the type of firearm that is responsible for most of the firearms related crimes in the country.