“We believe that most gun owners in this country are responsible and follow all necessary laws,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. “However, we are facing a level of gun violence in our communities that is unacceptable.”
Proposed legislation has revived a long-running debate in the United States over whether Congress can act to stop gun violence, following mass shootings in Texas and in Buffalo on the US-Canada border in recent weeks. Is.
“Unfortunately, the reality is in our country [gun violence] getting worse and getting worse over the years,” Trudeau said. “We only need to look south of the border to know that if we don’t act resolutely and swiftly, it gets worse and worse and becomes more difficult to combat.”
Several provisions of the proposed law were featured in a gun-control bill introduced last year, but did not pass before federal elections were called in August. Gun-control advocates criticized its repurchase program for banned guns, which was voluntary. Liberals promised stricter gun control measures if re-elected.
Such measures have widespread public support, especially in urban centres. The Liberal Party typically employs guns as a wedge issue during federal election campaigns, portraying its conservative counterparts as supporting easing gun-control measures to gain an edge.
Gun-control advocates have long called for a national ban on handguns. But some provincial and municipal officials have opposed one.
The “freeze” envisaged by the proposed law is not a restriction because people who already own them can retain and use them. But they could only transfer them to businesses, and chief firearms officers would be barred from approving the transfer of handguns to individuals.
The bill is likely to be passed with the support of the New Democratic Party. Conservatives on Monday criticized liberal gun-control efforts, alleging they unfairly target law-abiding gun owners and fail to adequately stamp out illegal arms smuggling across borders.
“Today’s announcement fails to focus on the root cause of gun violence in our cities: illegal guns smuggled into Canada by criminal gangs,” Conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho said in a tweet. “PM has 7 years to fix this serious issue, yet he chases the headlines and buries his head in the sand.”
The measures unveiled on Monday come after the government banned 1,500 makes and models of “military-style assault weapons” in 2020 after a gunman posed as a police officer in rural Nova Scotia, 22 people died, including a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer. In the nation’s deadliest mass shooting.
The government said on Monday it plans to launch a mandatory repurchase program that would offer compensation to owners of banned firearms. Details of the program are expected this summer, and the government will begin buying back guns, including the AR-15, the kind used in the school attack in Texas, by the end of the year.
“It’s going to be tough,” said Canadian Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino. “But we’re going to get it done.”
Some of the measures announced on Monday would not require parliamentary approval, but would require a change in the rules.
According to statistics from Statistics Canada, while mass shootings are relatively rare here compared to the United States, the rate of firearms-related homicides has increased since 2013. It said the percentage of homicides caused by a firearm increased from 26 percent in 2013 to 37 percent in 2020.
According to the National Statistics Agency, about 60 percent of firearm-related violent crimes involve handguns. But it said there are “many gaps” in the data, including “sources of the firearms used in the crime” and “whether the gun used in the crime was stolen, purchased illegally, or smuggled into the country.” “
During a public inquiry hearing this year on the “causes, context, and circumstances” of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, evidence was presented on the provenance of a large cache of weapons that attacker Gabriel Wortman had during hours. Long attack.
Wortman, a dentist, did not have a firearms license and obtained his weapons illegally. The commission heard that there were “two, and potentially three” instances when police received information about access to firearms. Very little, if anything, was done according to the testimony.
Many of the guns were unearthed and shipped to gun shops in nearby Maine. A friend there told police that Wortman carried one or more guns without his knowledge or permission, while he sent the shooter to his residence as a sign of gratitude “for helping with clearing trees and other odd jobs”. Gave in “Ruger P89”. ,
An AR-15 arrived from a gun store in California, but Wortman first saw it at a gun show in Maine and someone else bought it for him. Witnesses told the RCMP after the shooting that Wortman would disassemble the firearms and haul them into the tonnage of his truck to be smuggled across the border.
