GUN CONTROL : Canada Shying Away From Guns : Northern U.S. neighbor is proud of relatively strict laws and lower crime rates.

For years, Americans traveling to Canada have been greeted at the border by signs telling them to leave their handguns behind and by customs officials asking if they are carrying any firearms.

Canadians have long regarded their southern neighbors’ pistol-packing as inexplicable and dangerous. People here pride themselves on having relatively strict gun laws and lower crime rates.

Now, at a time when the U.S. Congress has been struggling to pass rudimentary gun-control legislation of its own, the Canadian government is poised to toughen its gun laws even further. The effort shows that, however similar the United States and Canada may appear, the two societies harbor major philosophical differences when it comes to individual rights and the common good.

“The emphasis in Canada is much more on public safety than it is on unbridled individual liberties,” said Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, a Canadian group. Canada has nothing like America’s second constitutional amendment, she noted. Here, gun ownership is considered a privilege, not a right.

As the law now stands in Canada, any Canadian wanting to purchase a handgun has to first submit to a police interview, explain why he or she wants to own the weapon and show that the gun will be stored safely. The police can even inspect the would-be buyer’s home, or interview the person’s employer.

Gun-control advocates say that since those requirements were put on the books in 1978, the percentage of murders and robberies carried out with guns here has declined.

One problem, from the Canadian perspective, is that however strictly handguns may now be controlled, it is still easy to buy shotguns, rifles and semiautomatic weapons here. And with handguns restricted as they are, long-barreled guns have become the weapons of choice for Canadians who commit crimes.

This situation was highlighted in December, 1989, when a disturbed young man named Marc Lepine armed himself with a Sturm Ruger semiautomatic rifle and gunned down 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique, a prestigious engineering school in Montreal. The murders shocked Canadians, who until that time had considered rampaging gunmen an alien, American phenomenon. To make matters worse, Lepine--who ended the spree by taking his own life--shouted before pulling the trigger that he hated feminists and deliberately killed only women.

The pending Canadian legislation--passed by the House of Commons on Thursday and sent to the Senate--arose from that massacre. If approved in its present form, it would require future buyers of both handguns and long-barreled guns to present two references, to pay a fee of about $45, to take a gun safety course and to affix photographs of themselves to their mandatory firearms acquisition certificates.

The law would also ban the purchase of semiautomatic weapons that can be converted to the fully automatic mode; ban handguns and rifles with large magazines; increase the penalties for gun crimes, and require buyers to wait 28 days before taking possession of their weapons.

All this would go substantially beyond the pending U.S. gun law, the so-called Brady Bill. As passed by the Senate in June, the Brady Bill would establish a five-day “cooling-off period” before a purchaser could take possession of a gun.

During that time, police are supposed to check the purchaser’s background.

The American bill is named for James Brady, the White House press secretary who was shot and permanently disabled in a 1981 attempt on the life of then-President Ronald Reagan.

Muzzling Guns in Canada

Here are some of the main points of a gun control bill approved Thursday in Canada’s House of Commons and sent to the Senate:

Prohibited weapons include sawed-off rifles and automatic and semiautomatic guns.

Minimum age to own a gun raised from 16 to 18.

Mandatory 28-day waiting period for firearms acquisition certificates. Two references needed to obtain certificate.

Gun owners required to meet regulations for safe storage of weapons but specifics not yet set.

Maximum sentences for illegal possession of a prohibited weapon raised from five years to 10 years.

Ban on gun ownership for 10 years for anyone convicted of violent crime with maximum prison term of 10 years or more. Lifetime ban after second conviction.

Military assault weapons owned as collector’s items would not be outlawed, but future imports would be limited.