Trudeau's inane defense of gun control mirrors US activists

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never been a fan of guns, but he didn’t really do much about them until he got caught up in his brownface scandal. Then he vowed to push gun control and the media gave him a pass.

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And he’s at least done what he said he’d do.

However, in a recent press conference, Trudeau tried to defend the idea of gun control with some pretty inane talking points that sound an awful lot like what we hear from American anti-Second Amendment activists.

“There are a few different ways that criminals get their hands on guns in this country. One is guns crossing the border, and that’s why we stepped up significantly on interdicting guns at the border. Like I said, last year we stopped double the amount of guns that we had the previous year and we’re continuing to invest further.

And, it should be noted, that smuggling guns across the border has been illegal for years. In fact, it’s illegal on both sides of the border.

Criminals, however, will keep doing it because there’s no way you can search every car on every road leading into Canada. Hell, I seem to remember there being a store where one door is in the US and the other is on the other side of the border. Throw a few guns in a backpack, walk into the store through one door, out the other door, and the guns are successfully smuggled.

“The second way is when people buy guns legally on the market and then sell them to criminals. That’s going to be more difficult because we brought in a ban on assault weapons. It’s now illegal to buy, sell or use assault weapons in this country. And we brought in a freeze on handguns. It’s no longer possible to purchase handguns in this country.

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Yes, that happens. However, if Canadian numbers are anything like ours, they account for a tiny fraction of the firearms used illegally. Even fewer of them are “assault weapons,” either, though I’ll grand handguns are a big seller with this crowd.

However, while Trudeau brings this up second, it’s a distraction. This isn’t what criminals do, for the most part. Finding someone to make a straw buy, as we call it here–I have no idea if it’s called the same thing up that way–requires someone stupid enough to think the purchase won’t blow back on them if the gun is recovered and traced.

Further, a freeze on handguns doesn’t mean jack when there are already tens of thousands of them already in private hands.

“The third way to get guns in this country is by stealing guns from either gun shops or legal gun owners. And we’re also bringing in stronger measures to strengthen the rules and the conditions of storage. The vast majority of gun owners in this country follow safe storage rules. But we need to make sure that everyone does and we are strengthening those rules as well.

So you’re blaming the victims for their guns being stolen.

Remember, folks, victim-blaming is bad…unless it’s the victim of a gun theft.

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Perhaps more importantly, though, mandatory storage rules–they’re not safe storage laws since they can endanger people–don’t actually stop criminals from accessing the guns. It delays them. Gun locks aren’t sufficient up in Canada, but many of the containers that are just aren’t that difficult to get into.

And those are the three ways Trudeau says people can get guns and what gun control measures he’s pushing to prevent that, yet all are woefully insufficient to actually stop criminals from getting guns.

Which brings us to the last part of his comments.

“There’s no one easy answer to solve the challenges faced by gun violence in this country. But I can tell you one thing, Conservatives are wrong when they say that the way to solve gun violence is to do less gun control.”

Except, they’re not.

You see, all of these measures fail to actually stop criminals from getting guns. What they do is prevent law-abiding citizens from getting guns and then pray that the restrictions eventually trickle down to the criminals.

Missing from this discussion, as per usual, is any mention of actually punishing criminals, of trying to help prevent people from becoming criminals, or really much of anything focused on the bad guys themselves.

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What Conservatives are basically saying, in contrast, is that law-abiding Canadians should be free to access firearms so as to defend themselves from the criminals who are going to get guns no matter what you do.

Trudeau just pushes gun control but fails to actually counter any of that. That’s because Trudeau is a walking haircut with really not much else going on.

So, he outlines what we already know, gives a few measures that won’t actually solve the problem, and then just declares the other side wrong.

Sounds like something Joe Biden or Shannon Watts might do, really.

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