I don’t know how many people in Canada have AR-15 or similar rifles, but there is a fair number. Following the shooting in Nova Scotia, where the killer reportedly smuggled the guns in from the United States–in other words, he obtained the guns illegally–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unilaterally issued a ban on the weapons.

And people wonder why I refuse to even entertain discussions on repealing the Second Amendment.

Anyway, Trudeau did it. Part of his plan called for an eventual “buyback” of these weapons. Now, the government is taking bids from private enterprises to design the program.

The federal government is turning to the private sector to design and possibly help run a massive buyback of newly prohibited firearms.

Public Safety Canada has invited 15 consulting firms to come up with a “range of options and approaches” for the planned program to compensate gun owners.

The Liberals outlawed a wide range of firearms in early May, saying the guns were designed for the battlefield, not hunting or sport shooting.

The ban covers some 1,500 models and variants of what the government considers assault-style weapons, meaning they can no longer be legally used, sold or imported.

In announcing the ban, the government proposed a program that would allow current owners to receive compensation for turning in the designated firearms or keep them through an exemption process yet to be worked out.

Sport shooters, firearm rights advocates and some Conservative MPs have questioned the value of the measures in fighting crime.

Is it wrong that my first reaction was, “So now he finds the limits of government?”

No, seriously, the government is good at screwing up so much stuff that we need to keep it far more limited than it currently is. That’s especially true in a nation like Canada with a socialized healthcare system and draconian limits on free speech…oh, and that’s willing to ban an entire class of firearm because of what one criminal did with it.

Yet it’s when trying to design a process for the “buyback”–which is in quotes because the government isn’t buying back a damn thing. They were never theirs in the first place, so how can they buy it back?–that Trudeau recognizes that the government may not be able to find it’s own ass with two hands, a compass, GPS, a map, and someone giving them explicit directions? NOW he figures it out?

The irony is palpable.

At the end of the day, though, the gun rights advocates in Canada are right. It won’t actually do a damn thing to stop crime. It damn sure wouldn’t have stopped the Nova Scotia shooter. After all, he couldn’t legally own a firearm in Canada, so he smuggled them into the country–a crime in and of itself–before committing his atrocity with it. Does anyone really think that there’s any law that could be passed that would have stopped this from happening? Is anyone that deluded?

Then again, Trudeau seems to think he can stop it with a stroke of the pen, so I guess I have my answer.