Canada has, or at least had, about as many guns per capita as the United States. People up that way love guns just as much as we do. However, they also had a lot more gun control than we do, it was just different.

For example, a friend of mine was able to buy a short-barreled AR once upon a time without any of the hassles we have, but there were a lot of different hoops he’d have to jump through for stuff I could buy over the counter.

It was weird.

Now, though, my friend can’t buy any more ARs. He’d have to turn them in were it not for that tragic boating accident.

You know how that goes.

Despite that, though, it seems the Liberals up that way want still more gun control for the Canadian people.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says the Liberal government will soon introduce new gun-control legislation.

Mendicino told the House of Commons public safety committee Tuesday the bill will be “very proactive,” though he did not provide specifics on timing or elements of the legislation.

The move could revive some federal measures that did not pass before last year’s general election and flesh out new proposals made during the subsequent campaign.

The Liberals have promised a mandatory buyback of banned guns they consider assault-style firearms.

They have also pledged to work with any province or territory that wants to ban handguns, earmarking at least $1 billion for the effort.

The Liberals have also said they will crack down on high-capacity firearm magazines and do more to combat gun smuggling.

The proposed buyback program would make it mandatory for owners of a wide variety of banned firearms, including the Ruger Mini-14 used in the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting, to either sell them back to the government or have them rendered inoperable at federal expense.

The proposal has won applause from gun-control advocates but the fierce disapproval of some firearm owners and Conservative MPs.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Yeah, at least part of that sounds like the kind of thing President Biden called for in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Namely the ban on so-called high-capacity magazines.

Frankly, all this is poorly timed by the Liberals, really.

I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that they tried to freeze bank accounts and donations to truckers who had the temerity to want their voices to be heard by the government. That was followed by a violent police crackdown that authorities claimed the protestors started, though there’s been a lack of video evidence showing any such thing.

Plenty of evidence showing them opening doors to private vehicles and pointing guns at folks and trampling Native elders with horses, though.

When a government that will do all that seeks to take additional steps in disarming a people, removing tools they could use to resist that government, people should be worried.

Of course, the Liberals have to actually pass this. If their overall approval rating is as low as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s, they’d probably do well to skip this and find something else to do.