Guns are not illegal in Canada. Criminals have no problems getting guns either. They are starting to force all cops here to wear video cams to weed out idiots, it helps prevent US insanity like where a physics prof called 911 for an ambulance and a cop showed up to smash his face and arrest him instead http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/nyregion/professors-detail...

The only reason police need to fear a non-criminal gun owner is if the officer acts abusively. A criminal on the other hand could get a gun wether they are illegal in the area or not and might be more inclined to use it regardless of the police behavior. I doubt outlawing guns entirely makes a police officer's job safer it just allows free reign to harass law abiding citizens w/o serious risk.

Criminality is not an identity but a consequence of circumstances.

Put it another way, it could be you ...

Some might argue that more abuses would occur because the police can operate without the fear of being shot back.

Well, they are restricted but not totally illegal. Even in the UK people can use shotguns. I'm not sure having guns really effects the Peelian stuff.

Shotguns and bolt-action rifles are licensed in the UK. So are black-powder weapons (mostly muzzle-loaders for re-enactment). Air guns are also allowed, in some categories without a license. More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_King...

Note that firearms licenses were pretty much non-existent in Sir Robert Peel's day, and as late as the mid 1980s it was possible to possess an AK-47 or similar (as long as the selector didn't permit burst firing). In spite of which, most police went (and preferred to go) unarmed.

The first thing authoritarian states do is take the guns.

That historically did not happen.

Fascism under Mussolini did create a law about guns. It did this many years after the PNF took power, and the law only states that you have to declare "substantial changes" in your ownership of weapons[0].

The same happened with nazi germany. There was a weapons law enacted in 1938, about five years after books had been burned, the gestapo had been installed and concentration camps for political opposition had been created.

This law deregulated the acquisition of firearms, which had been regulated since 1919[1].

[0] http://www.sanzioniamministrative.it/collegamenti/I%20Codici... [1] http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=402...

Presumably it's the first thing peaceful states do too.