Canada has banned a lot of firearms in recent years. Handguns are effectively banned in the country, as are modern sporting rifles. These are two of the most popular category of firearms, but they’re also exactly what you would ban if you wanted to pretend you weren’t interested in someone’s hunting weapons.
Sure, you can use both categories to hunt with, but most people don’t, which appeases plenty of those who see guns as hunting tools and little else.
But hey, at least anti-gunners in Canada should be content now, right?
Well, maybe. They’re not, though.
Prominent gun-control groups are urging MPs to legislatively enshrine a comprehensive ban on firearms the government outlawed using regulatory orders more than two years ago.
The Liberals banned some 1,500 models and variants of firearms, including the AR-15 and Ruger Mini-14, through an order-in-council in May 2020 on the grounds they have no place in hunting or sport shooting.
Appearing at the House of Commons public safety committee Tuesday, the group PolySeSouvient said a comprehensive ban on all such firearms, including some not covered in 2020, must be built into a bill MPs are studying.
The group wants this “evergreen” measure to be accompanied by new regulations that create a pre-authorization process for models coming onto the market.
The process would ensure that only those guns specifically deemed “non-restricted” or “restricted” and given a Firearm Reference Number by the RCMP would be legal, says PolySeSouvient.
The group includes students and graduates of Montreal’s École Polytechnique, where 14 women were gunned down in 1989 by a man armed with a Ruger Mini-14.
Nathalie Provost, who was shot four times during the spree, told the committee no ordinary citizen should be able to legally possess a firearm that allows them to end several lives in a few seconds, simply by pulling the trigger.
Of course, that includes just about every semi-automatic firearm, including those not covered by the previous ban.
Look, they got what they wanted. They just want more.
Because this is regulatory versus legislative, they know that “if” this doesn’t work, another prime minister can repeal it with a stroke of his pen. Yet that’s not likely to happen.
Further, they’re clearly not interested in just limiting it to the weapons currently banned. If so, this is just putting a legislative rubber stamp on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s previous ban.
No, they want a different definition, one they claim they want “experts” helping lawmakers to craft, which is a problem because you know good and well that none of those “experts” are going to be in favor of making it as narrow as possible.
As a result, such a definition won’t just cover the guns currently banned, but will likely include many, many more, weapons that aren’t modern sporting rifles but are, instead, actual hunting guns.
The truth is, no matter what they say, the anti-gunner position is always to restrict firearms to the point that they’re simply not a thing any longer.
While so-called fact-checkers will try and dispute any claim that anti-gunners want to eradicate gun ownership, we’ve seen this dance before. We know that they don’t just announce their desires. They nibble at the edges over and over again until little remains.
Oh, guns might still be around–either here or in Canada–but their utility for self-defense against either thugs or tyranny will be muted to the point of irrelevance. Any hope of maintaining the right to keep and bear arms–a right that exists for all people, whether their governments respect it or not–will be obliterated.
It’ll never be enough for them. They’ll keep on taking and taking, never accepting that they’ve done enough.
