Trudeau promises more gun control and goes on the attack against Scheer
- Thread starter IronNoggin
- Start date
seachicken
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Yes thanks for keeping us informed. I agree with the other comments $42 million would certainly go a long way to do something better than buying back guns from honest people.
IronNoggin
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IronNoggin
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IronNoggin
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Saskatchewan MLAs Pass Unanimous Motion Asking Feds to Hand Over Gun Policy
Saskatchewan unanimously passed a motion this week calling on the Canadian government to hand over gun policy to the province, as it works to protect firearm users from federal Liberal Party attacks and further dismantle the national anti-gun regime.Unanimous Support
All 40 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in Regina who were present on April 25 voted in favour of the private member’s motion by MLA Fred Bradshaw.
Source: Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly – Debates and Proceedings
“That this Assembly calls upon the Government of Canada to devolve all the relevant parts of the Firearms Act to the province of Saskatchewan in order to allow it to administer and regulate legal firearms possession.”
—Private Member’s Motion By Saskatchewan MLA Fred Bradshaw, Passed on 25 April 2024
Why It Matters
The national anti-gun regime designed by the Liberals is unraveling as provinces, police and the public work to subvert the Liberal attacks against government-licensed firearm users.
Saskatchewan and Alberta are leading provincial opposition to the expanding Liberal crackdowns on honest citizens across Canada.
Since Bradshaw proposed his motion last year, the Liberals and their allies in parliament passed Bill C-21 as their newest law to criminalize lawful firearm users and confiscate our gear.
Premier Scott Moe: Protecting Gun Rights
“Our government remains committed to protecting the rights of law-abiding firearms owners and will continue to stand up against Bill C-21 while supporting initiatives aimed at the illegal use of firearms in our province,” Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said on his personal account on the X platform.
Saskatchewan Party Caucus Statement
Source: Saskatchewan Party Caucus
Saskatchewan Government Passes Motion to Protect Firearms Owners’ Rights
25 April 2023
Today, a Private Member’s Motion by Carrot River Valley MLA Fred Bradshaw calling on the Government of Canada to devolve all parts of The Firearms Act to the province of Saskatchewan in order to allow it to administer and regulate legal firearms possession was passed in the Saskatchewan Legislature.
The motion was introduced in response to the federal Liberal government’s Bill C-21, which criminalizes tens of thousands of Saskatchewan residents while accomplishing nothing to enhance public safety. The federal government decided through this bill that legally owned and used handguns could no longer be imported, purchased, or transferred, and effectively reduced the value of these firearms to nothing. This is despite the fact that most handgun crime is committed using illegally trafficked and acquired handguns.
“Our government will not allow the federal Liberal government to trample on the rights of law-abiding firearms owners,” said Bradshaw. “I am proud to be part of a government that will stand up for these rights and protect the rights of Saskatchewan’s many legal firearms owners.”
Last year, the Government of Saskatchewan passed The Saskatchewan Firearms Act to establish licensing requirements for seizure agents involved in firearms expropriation, require and oversee fair compensation for any firearms being seized, and require forensic and ballistic testing of seized firearms.
The Government of Saskatchewan will not stand idly by as the federal government brands thousands of law-abiding citizens as criminals. While the Government of Saskatchewan does not support Bill C-21 and its unjust punishment of law-abiding citizens, we fully support initiatives aimed at reducing the criminal and illegal use of firearms, preventing gang violence, and stopping the smuggling and sale of illegal firearms.
“Many rural residents across the province depend on firearms to protect their livestock and to hunt,” said Ray Orb, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities President. “Responsible firearm owners who practice gun safety and abide by the licensing requirements legislated by the Government of Saskatchewan should not be criminalized.”
With the passing of this motion, the Government of Saskatchewan continues to stand up for the rights of Saskatchewan’s law-abiding firearms owners.
Saskatchewan MLAs Pass Unanimous Motion Asking Feds to Hand Over Gun Policy | TheGunBlog.ca
Saskatchewan MLAs unanimously pass motion calling on the Canadian government to hand over gun policy to the province.
thegunblog.ca
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
So, what happened to Canada’s gun control emergency?
The situation was urgent, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said four years ago, nearly to the day. There was no time to go through Parliament – Canadian lives were at stake – which is why his government had to implement gun control changes immediately through an order-in-council. With essentially a stroke of his pen, Mr. Trudeau banned the sale, import, transfer and use of 1,500 of what he called “military-style assault rifles” (a made-up designation; he might as well called them “scary looking monster guns”).The announcement came in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in Nova Scotia, where a gunman killed 22 people – notably, with weapons he obtained illegally. The government’s announcement, however, was about prohibiting the legal ownership of certain semi-automatic firearms.
“There’s no place for these weapons. They’re the choice of people who engage in mass murder,” then-public safety minister Bill Blair said. “Banning assault-style firearms will save Canadian lives.” (In practice, firearm-related homicide actually increased 23 per cent in Canada from 2020 to 2022.)
The government gave itself two years to develop a buyback program, which would offer owners fair compensation for their newly prohibited weapons and grant them amnesty for their possession in the interim. (The buyback was actually a 2019 campaign promise.) The government extended that deadline first in March, 2022, to “address issues that have been identified since 2020,” and then again in October, 2023, for another two years.
The status quo, then, is that these deadly weapons, for which Mr. Trudeau said there is “no use, and no place” in Canada, and which needed to be banned immediately, can remain in Canadians’ hands and homes until October, 2025. The ban is still technically in place, meaning that legal gun owners can’t actually use the prohibited weapons in any way, but that won’t affect – and hasn’t affected – rates of firearm-related violent crimes, which reached record levels in 2022. But that makes sense when most of the crimes committed with firearms are committed by those who obtain them illegally. Indeed, according to Statistics Canada, “the firearms used in homicides [in 2022] were rarely legal firearms used by their legal owners who were in good standing.”
The government’s 2020 order-in-council appeared to be modelled after a similar move made by New Zealand following a tragic mass shooting there, at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. New Zealand’s government, unlike Canada’s, acted swiftly: Its buyback program began just four months later and it ran until the end of the year, at which point the government said it had collected more than 60,000 guns and nearly 200,000 illegal parts. The cost was considerable (initial compensation was the equivalent of about $84-million) and gun crime continues to be a problem (proponents of the buyback say it could take a decade to see its effects), but the execution of its buyback demonstrated, at the very least, a genuine desire on the part of the government to act – and a capacity to do so.
The Trudeau government, by comparison, excels at making announcements, and trips over its laces when it comes to implementation (see: pharmacare, defence procurement, appointing judges, vaccine development, dental care). On the gun file, it already fell on its face trying to defend a couple of amendments to its gun control legislation, tabled in November of 2023, that would have outlawed a number of popular hunting rifles. Then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino insisted that the Conservatives were engaging in “disinformation” about the amendments, since, according to him, they only targeted “assault-style firearms, not hunting rifles.” The government later acknowledged that, whoops, the amendments would’ve actually banned a number of guns frequently used by hunters, and walked the changes back.
Now the government is facing another obstacle with its very-much-still-theoretical buyback program. According to reporting by CBC News, Canada Post said in a recent letter that it will not participate in the collection of prohibited weapons out of concern about potential conflicts between its staff and gun-owners. Federal sources told the CBC that using Canada Post would be the easiest and most cost-effective option, though there are still other methods to consider; New Zealand set up collection points all over the country, but that route obviously comes with security concerns, which invariably hike up costs.
The good news for the government is that it has given itself two more years to figure it all out, even though there wasn’t a moment to spare back in 2020. Indeed, it was too risky to allow these deadly firearms to remain on our streets (though technically, they were never allowed on the streets), but apparently not risky enough to actually find a way to confiscate them. This is another job well done for this government, if the job was making an announcement and then flailing aimlessly for the next several years.
IronNoggin
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IronNoggin
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IronNoggin
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Liberal+RCMP Gun-Confiscation Costs
Canada’s Liberal Party-led administration is preparing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on its crackdown begun in May 2020 against government-licensed gun owners and businesses.This page is about the direct financial costs for taxpayers.
Liberal+RCMP Gun-Confiscation Costs | TheGunBlog.ca
Home > Liberal Gun Bans > Costs Canada’s Liberal Party-led administration is preparing to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on its crackdown begun in May 2020 against government-licensed gun owners and businesses. This page is about the direct financial costs for taxpayers. (We believe it’s the...
thegunblog.ca
IronNoggin
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seachicken
Well-Known Member
Keep the information going @IronNoggin it's a joke what they are doing. Cheers.
IronNoggin
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IronNoggin
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Poilievre vows to reverse all of Trudeau’s laws attacking legal gun owners
Gun owners will get a reprieve once the Conservatives are elected, Pierre Poilievre says.Poilievre promised to reverse every law that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has implemented to attack legal gun owners.
Speaking at a news conference, Poilievre fielded a question from a concerned firearm owner about how his party planned to change the narrative around firearm ownership.
“We (will) just reverse everything that Trudeau has done,” said Poilievre.
Poilievre and the gun owner, Stacey, chatted about the vetting process that he had to get to acquire firearms legally.
“This is the least likely person to commit a crime with a gun. He’s already been vetted by the RCMP. He’s gone through vigorous training and his firearms are known to the government because he has licenses,” said Poilievre. “Trudeau wants to take away this guy’s firearms.”
He added that the expected cost of retrieving firearms from legal owners would cost billions. He ridiculed Trudeau for spending $42 million on a gun buyback program, yet failing to purchase a single firearm.
“His latest attempt is he’s trying to get the mailman, from Canada Post, to come to your house and pick up your guns and take them back to the government, which is absolutely insane,” said Poilievre.
Canada Post initially refused to collect guns under the Liberals’ buyback program.
Since then, the CEO of Canada Post has gone on record saying that the postal service will not participate.
Poilievre talked about the ridiculousness of a legal gun owner being targeted.
“If he were a criminal, would he participate in giving the gun over to the mailman? No. He would lie, and he would sell the gun on the black market. So the only people who will lose their guns on this ban Trudeau brought in are licensed, law-abiding people who are not committing crimes,” said Poilievre.
The Conservative leader added that Canada allows 99% of shipping containers to come in uninspected, which is where weapons that are actually used in gun crimes are coming from.
Less than 1% of containers being inspected has also led to stolen cars going unnoticed at the federal Port of Montreal.
Poilievre pledged that he would keep the illegal guns out and reinstate mandatory prison time for gun smugglers and gangsters who commit gun crimes.
Conservative candidate Ron Chhinzer, a former police officer, also spoke to the flaws in the Liberals’ plan.
“Not once in my entire career, not myself or any of my police officer partners, have we ever seized a lawfully-owned firearm from a criminal,” said Chhinzer.
“And when we go after people like Stacey for that, it’s such a waste of resources. It’s attacking and making villains of the wrong people, and it’s totally disregarding all of the criminals that are coming into our neighbourhoods, stealing our cars, breaking into our homes with guns, doing shootings in public spaces. And, they painted this picture that they’re not the bad people, Stacey is.”
Poilievre vows to reverse all of Trudeau’s laws attacking legal gun owners
Gun owners will get a reprieve once the Conservatives are elected, Pierre Poilievre says.
tnc.news
IronNoggin
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IronNoggin
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Liberal gun grab program shooting blanks
The federal government's gun buyback program, aimed at recovering high-powered firearms blacklisted in 2020, has faced significant opposition from licensed gun owners, resulting in a mere fraction of the targeted firearms being recovered.Blacklock's Reporter says according to records only 723 were surrendered by owners, and another third were seized in police investigations.
Cabinet in 2020 blacklisted hundreds of thousands of high-powered firearms. Federal consultants counted 110,161 affected by the ban. The Department of Public Safety later estimated the number was as high as 200,000 while the Budget Office put it up to 518,000 firearms.
Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs (Lakeland, Alta.) requested the figures, highlighting the program's lack of success.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc attributed the resistance to the program to a misunderstanding, stating that the measures are designed to target illegal gun smuggling and sales, not recreational hunters and sports shooters.
However, a 2023 report revealed that licensed gun owners perceive the gun grab program as wasteful and unfair, as they do not see themselves or their peers as contributors to gun crimes in Canada.
The report also noted that less than half of owners with prohibited firearms are willing to participate in the buyback program, a significant decline from the previous year.
The government's initial notice required owners to surrender their property by October 30, 2023, but LeBlanc deferred the buyback until October 30, 2025, due to the stiff resistance.
“Every time governments or Parliament legislate in this area there is a very quick reaction from hunting groups and sports shooters, many of whom are in my constituency in rural New Brunswick,” said LeBlanc. “People I know go hunting.”
Liberal gun grab program shooting blanks
The federal government's gun buyback program, aimed at recovering high-powered firearms blacklisted in 2020, has faced significant opposition from licensed gun
LeBlanc obviously understands he is misrepresenting these measures.
Wonder why he thinks anyone would believe that at this point?
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
Bill C-21 will hardly bother gun-toting criminals
The year 2023 proved to be a contentious year for gun control in Canada. After much acrimony in both the House of Commons and the Senate, Bill C-21 was finally passed unamended, and received Royal Assent shortly before Christmas.Whether or not this is to be considered a good thing depends on where one sits in the Canadian gun control debate.
C-21 ushered in a huge, sweeping net of laws and regulations. For the proponents of gun control in Canada — Polysesouvient, Doctors for Protection Against Guns and the Coalition for Gun Control — C-21 is largely satisfactory, as well it should be as in its essence. It is a shopping list of their sundry gun control demands of the Trudeau government.
Nevertheless, they have not been shy in stating that it does not mark the end of their demands. On the other side of the issue, groups such as the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, the National Firearms Association and various provincial hunting/sportsmen’s organizations have been steadfast in their opposition to C-21. They claim it will do very little in terms of combatting crime committed with firearms while further hobbling the firearms/hunting industry in Canada and burdening legal gun owners with yet more pointless layers of red tape and bureaucracy.
Bill exploits voter ignorance
Gun control in Canada is one of those strange policy realms in which people can be considered as knowledgeable or pretty much in the dark. C-21 was crafted by people who should be knowledgeable to appeal to those in the latter group. As such, it has several elements that exploit any lack of knowledge of Canada’s gun control regime. For instance, so called “red” and “yellow flag laws”.
Red and yellow flag laws are redundant and simply an appeal to the sensibilities of those who don’t know any better. Currently, under Canada’s existing gun control regime, anybody can call to report any gun owner to the authorities at any time for pretty much any “relevant” reason; and the police will show up.
If the reason for the visit is deemed to be legitimate, then all firearms will be seized. That this is already open to abuse in terms of vexatious and petty complaints is of no concern to anyone, save unsuspecting gun owners paid an unexpected visit by police for no reason save a grudge or the ego of someone with an axe to grind.
Further, these complaint calls can be done anonymously under the current system.
Under C-21, the subject of the complaint can know who made the complaint. While that may be of some interest to the gun owner about to undergo punishment by process, it is of great concern to women’s groups as it will reveal the identity of complainants in legitimate instances, as they themselves may have to petition slow moving courts to act. (1)
Problems with C-21 do not end there.
With C-21 as the law of the land, components like magazines and barrels will need licence verification prior to being bought, sold or traded between licenced individuals. This issue highlights some of the pitfalls of legislation based on ideology.
This reality comes into sharp focus when one considers just what exactly a firearm “barrel” is. What is it? A hollow tube. Not at first. Metal? Sure. What kind of metal? Which metal do you want? Polymer? Absolutely. Rifled? Not always. Threaded or pinned to fit into firearm receivers? Not all. Of certain lengths? Nope. What length do you want? Able to withstand high gas pressures? Again, nope, not all. Of specific diameter? Nope, try again.
From a practical standpoint, lengths of hollow metal or polymer pipe or rods purchased at any home improvement big box store can be used as a gun barrel with varying degrees of success, from one shot to hundreds or more. Even the bodies of ball point pens have proven to be sufficient.
Given this reality, the transfer of gun barrels cannot possibly be regulated as per the wishes of Trudeau and his gun control whisperers; all of which is to say the measure is nothing more than performative public safety theatre.
C21 is similarly problematic when it comes to popular semi-automatic firearms, but only if you are a legal gun owner who has meticulously obeyed the law.
Consider the case of the Ruger 10-22
C-21 bans the future introduction into the Canadian marketplace of semi-automatic long guns that have or can accept magazines of over the current legal capacity of five rounds. One of the problems here is that like all other recreational items and activities, firearms have their own cottage industry in terms of modifications and accessories.
So, while semi-automatic long gun XYZ may come from the factory with only a three-, four- or five-round magazine, enterprising individuals in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world can and will make larger capacity after-market magazines for it. The response by government will then be to ban that rifle or shotgun, even though the importation or possession of such magazines is already a criminal offence. A consequence of that ban will be the criminalization of any Canadian who had already purchased that firearm.
Continued
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
Lest anyone think that such a scenario is absurd, consider the case of the Ruger 10-22.
The 10-22 is a semi-automatic rimfire rifle introduced by Ruger in 1964. It comes from the factory with a 10-round magazine. However, the rifle is extremely popular with hunters and sport shooters on both sides of the border, and as a result is one of the most modified rifles in existence.
Consequently, there are after-market magazines with various 10+ rimfire cartridge capacities in existence. Canadian shooters have been using them without issue for decades.
Then, in 2007, Ruger rolled out a not-so-successful pistol version of the 10-22 rifle, called the Charger. The pistol was sold in the States, but not in Canada. Still, all 10+ capacity magazines for the 10-22 became prohibited devices as they were decreed to be pistol magazines made for the Charger, even though they were specifically manufactured for a rimfire rifle that had been in existence for more than 40 years prior to that U.S.-only introduction of the Charger pistol.
The absurdity of declaring something that has been in existence since the 1960s as having been specifically made for something that appeared in the 2000s is mind boggling. But that’s not the end of it, as legally Canadian owners of such magazines are liable to multi-year prison terms. (7)
Schrödinger’s magazine
Another central plank of Trudeau’s gun control policy is the Order-in-Council (OIC) of May 2020 in which some 1,500 types of semi-automatic long guns were declared to be prohibited firearms. It was at that time Trudeau stated, “You don’t need an AR-15 to take down a deer” — except when the government says so. Fast forward to December 2023 and Sidney Island off the BC coast, where it seems you do need an AR-15 to take down a deer. Not only AR-15s, but Americans with AR-15s, 30-round magazines, suppressors and helicopters to shoot 84 deer at a cost of $10, 000 per deer. (3)
In concert with Trudeau’s 2020 OIC, the government plans on instituting a magazine capacity cap of five rounds for all existing long guns and magazines, and for all action types, not just semi-automatics. This captures magazines that are both detachable from the firearm and those that are permanently fixed in place on the firearm. It is a particularly thorny issue.
The Trudeau government found it necessary to use semi-automatic rifles with 30-round magazines for small deer in coastal BC, but at the same time it wants to tell an elderly Inuit hunter out on the ice with his family that his old lever action rifle, chambered in a cartridge adequate for deer and caribou but unsuited to emergency use on polar bears, save for its magazine capacity, must handicap himself further and endanger their lives by having that magazine capacity reduced from seven or eight cartridges to five.
And all for the sake of satisfying gun control advocates in downtown Montreal. For despite Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s assurances that First Nations people such as this hypothetical Inuit hunter were adequately consulted and happy with his government’s gun control regime, including C21, what became evident during the various hearings was that this was, in fact, not the case. (2) (4)
The magazine capacity issue becomes even more complicated when one considers the sheer number of 10-shot Lee Enfield rifles in the possession of First Nations hunters and families. Of course, there is still the minor detail that as of at this time, there is no knowledge as to how all the various magazine capacity reductions can be done while leaving reliably functioning firearms that still retain some monetary value. And finally, there is the not so small matter of “Schrödinger’s magazine”.
Under the Firearms Act, it has always been illegal to be in possession of a magazine of capacity greater than the prescribed number of cartridges. Now, as C-21 comes into force, it will be illegal to possess a magazine that can be “modified” to beyond the prescribed capacity.
In real world terms, this means magazines that have been limited to the prescribed capacity by some mechanical means, such rivets or metal pins for example. The issue lies in the fact that for many magazines, it is not possible to determine whether it is modified or can be modified by simply looking at it. And the only way for an individual to determine as to whether the magazine is modifiable is to try and see if it can be modified, preferably before that individual is found to be in possession of it by police who then determine that it is indeed modifiable (go to jail).
And therein lies the rub.
Trying to find out if one has a prohibited device in the form of a modifiable magazine requires one to break the law by seeing exactly how many cartridges it will hold or tinkering with it to see if it can hold more than the prescribed number of cartridges. So, to determine whether one is breaking the law (possession of a modifiable magazine), one must break the law (modify the magazine). Rest assured, under C-21, doing so will result in a jail sentence, unless one is a La Presse reporter from Quebec and has the blessing of gun control advocates. (5) (6)
Little substance
All in all, C-21 provides very little substance in the way of preventing crimes with firearms. It is overly bureaucratic and restrictive towards those who willingly follow the rules of Canada’s already stringent firearms law regime, while doing very little to deter those who flout those same rules to commit crimes.
In short, there is nothing in C-21 that would have prevented people like the Nova Scotia mass killer from being able to carry out his rampage, despite what the Trudeau Liberals and their supporters would have one believe. The firearms used in that tragedy were all illegally obtained.
Nothing in C-21 would prevent the same thing from happening again. In fact, all the laws needed to prevent that tragedy from occurring are already in place. What was needed to prevent it from occurring was enforcement of existing laws, not the creation of additional laws that make it doubly illegal to obtain illegal firearms and murder with those illegal firearms.
In the end, C-21 is simply a sop to those who know little about Canadian gun laws, designed for the appearance of a government getting tough on thugs with guns, while it merely turns the screws ever tighter on those who have always played by the rules.
www.sudbury.com
The 10-22 is a semi-automatic rimfire rifle introduced by Ruger in 1964. It comes from the factory with a 10-round magazine. However, the rifle is extremely popular with hunters and sport shooters on both sides of the border, and as a result is one of the most modified rifles in existence.
Consequently, there are after-market magazines with various 10+ rimfire cartridge capacities in existence. Canadian shooters have been using them without issue for decades.
Then, in 2007, Ruger rolled out a not-so-successful pistol version of the 10-22 rifle, called the Charger. The pistol was sold in the States, but not in Canada. Still, all 10+ capacity magazines for the 10-22 became prohibited devices as they were decreed to be pistol magazines made for the Charger, even though they were specifically manufactured for a rimfire rifle that had been in existence for more than 40 years prior to that U.S.-only introduction of the Charger pistol.
The absurdity of declaring something that has been in existence since the 1960s as having been specifically made for something that appeared in the 2000s is mind boggling. But that’s not the end of it, as legally Canadian owners of such magazines are liable to multi-year prison terms. (7)
Schrödinger’s magazine
Another central plank of Trudeau’s gun control policy is the Order-in-Council (OIC) of May 2020 in which some 1,500 types of semi-automatic long guns were declared to be prohibited firearms. It was at that time Trudeau stated, “You don’t need an AR-15 to take down a deer” — except when the government says so. Fast forward to December 2023 and Sidney Island off the BC coast, where it seems you do need an AR-15 to take down a deer. Not only AR-15s, but Americans with AR-15s, 30-round magazines, suppressors and helicopters to shoot 84 deer at a cost of $10, 000 per deer. (3)
In concert with Trudeau’s 2020 OIC, the government plans on instituting a magazine capacity cap of five rounds for all existing long guns and magazines, and for all action types, not just semi-automatics. This captures magazines that are both detachable from the firearm and those that are permanently fixed in place on the firearm. It is a particularly thorny issue.
The Trudeau government found it necessary to use semi-automatic rifles with 30-round magazines for small deer in coastal BC, but at the same time it wants to tell an elderly Inuit hunter out on the ice with his family that his old lever action rifle, chambered in a cartridge adequate for deer and caribou but unsuited to emergency use on polar bears, save for its magazine capacity, must handicap himself further and endanger their lives by having that magazine capacity reduced from seven or eight cartridges to five.
And all for the sake of satisfying gun control advocates in downtown Montreal. For despite Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s assurances that First Nations people such as this hypothetical Inuit hunter were adequately consulted and happy with his government’s gun control regime, including C21, what became evident during the various hearings was that this was, in fact, not the case. (2) (4)
The magazine capacity issue becomes even more complicated when one considers the sheer number of 10-shot Lee Enfield rifles in the possession of First Nations hunters and families. Of course, there is still the minor detail that as of at this time, there is no knowledge as to how all the various magazine capacity reductions can be done while leaving reliably functioning firearms that still retain some monetary value. And finally, there is the not so small matter of “Schrödinger’s magazine”.
Under the Firearms Act, it has always been illegal to be in possession of a magazine of capacity greater than the prescribed number of cartridges. Now, as C-21 comes into force, it will be illegal to possess a magazine that can be “modified” to beyond the prescribed capacity.
In real world terms, this means magazines that have been limited to the prescribed capacity by some mechanical means, such rivets or metal pins for example. The issue lies in the fact that for many magazines, it is not possible to determine whether it is modified or can be modified by simply looking at it. And the only way for an individual to determine as to whether the magazine is modifiable is to try and see if it can be modified, preferably before that individual is found to be in possession of it by police who then determine that it is indeed modifiable (go to jail).
And therein lies the rub.
Trying to find out if one has a prohibited device in the form of a modifiable magazine requires one to break the law by seeing exactly how many cartridges it will hold or tinkering with it to see if it can hold more than the prescribed number of cartridges. So, to determine whether one is breaking the law (possession of a modifiable magazine), one must break the law (modify the magazine). Rest assured, under C-21, doing so will result in a jail sentence, unless one is a La Presse reporter from Quebec and has the blessing of gun control advocates. (5) (6)
Little substance
All in all, C-21 provides very little substance in the way of preventing crimes with firearms. It is overly bureaucratic and restrictive towards those who willingly follow the rules of Canada’s already stringent firearms law regime, while doing very little to deter those who flout those same rules to commit crimes.
In short, there is nothing in C-21 that would have prevented people like the Nova Scotia mass killer from being able to carry out his rampage, despite what the Trudeau Liberals and their supporters would have one believe. The firearms used in that tragedy were all illegally obtained.
Nothing in C-21 would prevent the same thing from happening again. In fact, all the laws needed to prevent that tragedy from occurring are already in place. What was needed to prevent it from occurring was enforcement of existing laws, not the creation of additional laws that make it doubly illegal to obtain illegal firearms and murder with those illegal firearms.
In the end, C-21 is simply a sop to those who know little about Canadian gun laws, designed for the appearance of a government getting tough on thugs with guns, while it merely turns the screws ever tighter on those who have always played by the rules.
The Soapbox: Bill C-21 will hardly bother gun-toting criminals
Sudburian George Fritz weighs in on the effort to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but says the federal Liberals’ gun control bill is going to punish legal gun owners instead
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
Gun-control group fears Liberals have 'abandoned' efforts on assault-style firearms
A prominent gun-control group fears the Liberal government has abandoned its commitment to enact a comprehensive ban on assault-style firearms, citing "no tangible progress" on key steps to fulfil the pledge.In an open letter to Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, PolySeSouvient spokeswoman Nathalie Provost expresses concern that "we won't see these measures materialize in our lifetimes" as the clock ticks toward a federal election that must be held by October of next year.
A record of wasting public support and bungling various opportunities over the years would be a "devastating legacy" for the Liberals, wrote Provost, a survivor of the 1989 mass shooting at Montreal's École Polytechnique.
The group wants the government to follow through on plans to proceed with a buyback of banned assault-style firearms including the AR-15, prohibit others that fell through the legislative cracks and strengthen regulations on large-capacity magazines.
The office of Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a statement to The Canadian Press it is "continuing to put strong measures in place to tackle gun violence."
The letter from PolySeSouvient comes about a week after an assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald Trump using what has been described as an AR-15-style rifle.
Late last year, Parliament passed a government bill that cemented restrictions on handguns, increased penalties for firearm trafficking and aimed to curb homemade ghost guns.
The legislation also included a ban on assault-style firearms that fall under a new technical definition. However, the definition didn't apply to models that were already on the market when the bill passed.
PolySeSouvient cautioned that the potential public safety benefits of most of the key measures would depend on forthcoming regulations that will flesh out the details.
Conservative MPs and some gun owners have vehemently opposed the Liberal efforts to ban certain firearms as an attack on law-abiding citizens.
LeBlanc has said the government will re-establish the Canadian Firearms Advisory Committee to independently review the classification of existing models that fall under the new definition of a prohibited firearm in the bill.
He told senators in October the exercise would identify guns legitimately used for hunting, which would be excluded from the ban.
LeBlanc said the government would also implement a long-planned buyback of firearm models and variants, including the AR-15 and Ruger Mini-14, that were already banned through order-in-council in May 2020.
In addition, the government said it would enact regulations to ensure a comprehensive ban on large-capacity magazines.
PolySeSouvient says tens of thousands of assault-style guns prohibited in 2020 remain in the hands of their owners, while hundreds of arbitrarily exempted models remain legal and new ones continue to enter the market.
Despite federal promises and commitments, PolySeSouvient says, "there has been no tangible progress" on:
— revival of the advisory committee that will decide which current models should be prohibited;
— the planned buyback program;
— consultations on introduction of a pre-authorization process for new firearm models to ensure they are properly classified;
— or consultations on strengthening magazine regulations;
Given the delays, the letter says, "we are beginning to suspect that either the Liberal government is not competent enough to deliver on its nine years of promises to ban assault weapons, or that it has abandoned its commitment to do so because it fears further stoking the wrath of the gun lobby."
In its statement, LeBlanc's office said the government is committed to instituting a program that would provide current owners fair compensation for their assault-style firearms.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2024.
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
Forensic auditors to investigate Trudeau Liberals’ $756 million gun buyback
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s department has hired forensic auditors to assess risks of a costly and unpopular gun buyback scheme, per Blacklock’s Reporter.Staff would not comment to the publication on the anticipated millions in fraud and waste through the $756 million “national compensation program,” scheduled for 2025, nor provide copies of the bidding documents, including statements of work.
“The Department of Public Safety has a requirement to perform a fraud risk assessment of a national compensation program targeting businesses and individuals,” the department wrote in a notice to forensic auditors.
“Working with a team of dedicated stakeholders, the external firm is expected to undertake a systematic and thorough process to identify, evaluate and help address internal and external fraud vulnerabilities related to the national compensation program.”
“There are security requirements associated with this requirement.” Auditors would be hired in August with a risk assessment due in eight months, it said.
Despite the department refusing to disclose statements of work and other related billing documents, the contractors’ timeline coincides with the promised 2025 launch of LeBlanc’s federal buyback of prohibited firearms. A current amnesty period expires October 30, 2025.
Cabinet in 2020 enacted Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms that banned some 1,500 high-powered firearms. The Department of Public Safety has repeatedly postponed enforcement of the order due to stiff resistance and concerns over costs.
“If we take the estimate for example of 150,000 to 200,000 of these weapons that would be surrendered and for which compensation would be paid on an average price, and we’ve done some calculation on this of approximately $1,300 per firearm, the estimate is somewhere between $300 million and $400 million,” then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told reporters in 2020.
“But it really depends on knowing exactly how many of these firearms are currently possessed in Canada.”
The Parliamentary Budget Office in a 2021 report said costs could run as high as $756 million. “There remain too many outstanding questions,” said an analysts’ report.
Analysts noted a similar 2019 program in New Zealand cost twice its original estimate, a total $155 million to recover 61,322 firearms. The New Zealand experiment failed to determine “how effective the overall program was,” said Cost Estimate.
Minister LeBlanc in testimony last October 23 at the Senate National Security Committee acknowledged the buyback program was unpopular.
“Every time governments or parliament legislate in this area there is a very quick reaction from hunting groups and sports shooters, many of whom are in my constituency in rural New Brunswick,” said LeBlanc.
“People I know go hunting.”
Forensic auditors to investigate Trudeau Liberals’ $756 million gun buyback
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s department has hired forensic auditors to assess risks of a costly and unpopular gun buyback scheme.
