Canada had a test run of their buyback. Yeah, I know, it's not a buyback because they never owned the things in the first place, but when I use the word, we all know what it means, even if the word itself is nonsense.
Anyway, Canada. They banned a lot of guns, and they expect Canadians to just go along with it, send their guns to the government for a small bit of money, and call it a day.
And, in fairness, I thought they'd pull it off. Canadians tend to be more respectful of authority than we Americans are, after all, but I was wrong. They were just like we'd be.
And the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is here for it.
Via a press release:
Canadian gun owners just sent their government a message that may be lost on the country’s leftist Liberal politicians, but is crystal clear to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
According to the National Post, the federal government confirmed that only 25 firearms were turned in as part of a “test run” on the buyback which was aimed at collecting 200 banned guns, amounting to only about 12 percent of what they expected. Firearms which were surrendered, the report said, were destroyed. The same report noted how, since 2020, more than 2,500 makes and models of firearms have been banned because government bureaucrats decided they are “assault-style” guns “unfit for public use.”
“It looks like Canadian gun owners are having none of this buyback foolishness, at least for the time being,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Now Canadian officials are claiming the pilot program merely needs to be clarified, and that more instructions are necessary to ‘facilitate participation.’ They’re trying to put a happy face on a clearly sad effort to disarm the nation’s law-abiding gun owners.”
The report says an official with the Canadian Coalition of Firearm Rights considers the government’s buyback program to be “logistically impossible.”
“No matter how the Canadian government portrays this outrage,” Gottlieb observed, “it amounts to compensated confiscation. Citizens are required to turn in their banned firearms and get a check from the government, or they could face legal consequences. The Canadians call this a ‘buyback,’ but the government never owned those guns in the first place. The term creates a false impression that fundamental rights come from government, and can be rescinded essentially on a whim.
“Nonsense like this,” he stated, “underscores the importance of our Second Amendment here in the United States, and all of the right-to-bear-arms provisions in a majority of state constitutions. Truly free people should never be required to surrender their arms, no matter how much money the government offers in compensation, because it reduces a right to the level of a government regulated privilege. Fundamental rights, whether specifically delineated in a constitution or not, can never be for sale at any price. Our fellow gun owners north of the border obviously understand this by not participating in the test run. If the government in Ottawa doesn’t see what happened, they are deaf, dumb and blind.”
This reminds me of New York's attempt at confiscating so-called assault weapons. It went about as well as this one did. It seems that people who are inclined to buy AR-15s and other such rifles are the kind who are disinclined to give them to the government just because the government says they have to.
Weird, right?
Gottlieb is correct that the Canadian effort is just compensated confiscation, which is really no different than outright confiscation except that politicians can pretend they're not just stealing people's property. That's it. In the United States, such an attempt is really just a way to try to get around the takings clause of the Constitution, but at the end of the day, your lack of choice still means they're stealing your property.
Is a thief less of a thief if he steals all of your belongings but leaves a dollar on the floor to compensate you?
But this level of defiance is heartening to me. I don't know if it'll hold indefinitely, but knowing that Canadian gun owners are just as likely as we are to hoist the middle finger as a gesture of the level of respect they have for the authorities is a beautiful thing.
The problem is that the Canadian government still thinks this is the right thing to do, that they have a say in what guns are fit for private use and which ones aren't. This is the call all anti-gun governments get to sooner or later, then move beyond it.
Then, as we watch the aftermath, people will get locked up for memes or quips on X. Criticism of certain groups will be labeled "hate speech," and people will see prison time for it, only for those laws to work in one direction. They can criticize you, but you can't return the favor. Suicidal empathy will lead to the destruction of their society, and the people who have been citizens of Canada for years will find themselves second-class citizens in their own country.
And they'll have nothing with which to defend themselves because too many of them let the government decide what guns are appropriate for them and which aren't.
Those who are holding firm are also the ones who will be able to hold the line later on.
Good on them.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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