This has been a frustrating thing for me, as a gun owner in Canada. People largely just don't care, which is absurd. The way this has played out has been the most insane case of decision-based evidence-making. For those who might not know how this has gone:
First, Trudeau says he wants to ban Assault Rifles. Good news! This has already been done, in 1977. Any gun that could be classified as an assault rifle has been illegal here for over fourty years. The response to this was not to reconsider their ban or classifications, but to simply rebrand as an “Assault Weapon” ban instead. What’s an Assault Weapon? Literally whatever they decide. It’s a meaningless term that can be applied to whatever scary thing is in the American news, rendering any firearm prohibited on a whim and criminalizing its owner.
Next, after failing a rebranding attempt, it was proposed that a gun ban is what Canadians wanted. Numerous polls and surveys were conducted to support this, except whoops – In the federal government's own survey, it was determined that 77% of Canadians did not want a gun ban, and instead wanted better policing and border security. Well, nevermind that, they just ignored their own survey and started touting a survey of ~1500 people from the Angus Reid forum, where 80% of respondants were in support of a ban.
So then, after failing to prove that people wanted this, everyone was told that this was a necessary step for our safety. Trudeau nominated Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety and Border Security, to conduct an extensive study to prop up their claim that most guns used in crimes in Canada came from Canadian gun owners. Blair would interview police officers and chiefs in cities, towns, rural areas, RCMP officers, criminologists, firearms experts, community activists, doctors, anyone they could find to get all perspectives and the results of this study would be revealed to support their motion to put forward a gun ban.
Well, guess what? The study came back and it turned out that it wasn’t a good idea. Turns out, “Assault Weapons” are not used in shootings here, and the guns that are used in shootings here are illegal handguns, illegally owned by criminals, who use them illegally. Where did these guns come from? In the vast majority of cases, the United States. Over 85% of guns used in crimes in Canada came from the United States, smuggled across the border, and were sold to criminals. So did we reveal the results of the study? No. It was just quietly shuffled off, because it didn’t support a pre-determined conclusion.
Finally, realizing that a gun ban didn’t make sense, wasn’t wanted, and would not accomplish anything, our current administration, lacking the majority government to make this happen, waited until parliament was suspended due to the pandemic and used an emergency Order in Cabinet to just force the ban through anyway, turning nearly two and a half million law abiding Canadians in to criminals basically overnight.
It should go without saying that this is completely unacceptable. Picking and choosing your data and flat-out lying does not support good government. More upsetting, nobody here outside of the gun-owning community cares. You can't be in support of insane government overreach just because you agree with the outcome. Imagine this situation was reversed – We had a conservative minority government in power, and they decided they didn’t like legal marijuana. They knew it didn’t make sense to ban it, they knew banning it wouldn’t do anything, they knew people didn’t want it banned, and they knew that if they tried to follow normal process, they would never be able to ban it – So they just wait for a crisis, and take advantage of the situation to force it through, criminalizing millions. Then people would be outraged, but, gun owners have been so vilified here that nobody is willing to say a word about it.
It's been a struggle to get people to be upset about this. Everyone is too eager to write off anyone with such an opinion as a right-wing gun-nut who is probably a nazi and a racist. Extremely frustrating.
torontosun.com
www.guns.com
