Gun violence may be lower in Canada, but it will soon be technically legal to duel.
And that goes for casting spells, too.
According to The National Post, the Canadian government is cleaning up its criminal code by ridding it of obsolete laws—one of which prevents “challenges or attempts by any means to provoke another person to fight a duel.”
Duelers not only faced sudden death (as our own Alexander Hamilton found out the hard way) in the moment—but also a two-year prison stay if they survived.
The last time someone succumbed to duel-related injuries? That would be 1833, according to The Ottawa Citizen.
As the newspaper rightly notes, modern laws would prevent any two people from firing guns at each other anyway, given the fact that the results would be more like attempted murder or possibly, murder.
The government has been on a criminal code–cleansing kick of late, also on the cusp of removing laws banning the practice of “witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration”; the impersonation of another person during a college exam; and “(committing) an act with intent to alarm Her Majesty or to break the public peace.” (That is amazing news for The Sex Pistols).
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