Canada is introducing a bill to ban the sale of handguns, less than a week after 19 children and two teachers were killed in a Texas school shooting.
“On the date this law comes into effect, the sale, transfer or importation of handguns in Canada will be no more,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters.
If passed, a “national freeze” on handgun ownership is expected to go into effect in the fall.
Canada already has much tougher gun ownership restrictions than the US, but murder at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texashas raised concerns about gun violence around the world.
The gun used in the attack, the AR-15 rifle, was banned from use or sale in Canada two years ago, along with about 1,500 other models of assault weapons.
Speaking alongside Mr. Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said a mandatory program to buy back and compensate owners of such firearms would soon be in place.
The new law, Bill C-21, proposes that people who engage in acts of domestic violence or criminal harassment, such as stalking, should have their gun licenses revoked.
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Stricter sentences will be made for gun traffickers and smugglers, and law enforcement will have access to tools like wiretapping to prevent gun crime.
The law would also require long gun magazines to be permanently changed so they could never hold more than five rounds.
High volume journals are prohibited from being sold or transferred.
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“Aside from using guns for sport shooting and hunting, there’s no reason anyone in Canada needs a gun in their daily life,” Trudeau said.
One in 200,000 gun deaths in Canada, compared with four in 100,000 in the US, by 2021
analysis by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
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According to Mr. Trudeau’s office, the number of handguns registered in Canada increased 71% to 1.1 million from 2010 to 2020.
Handguns were the most serious weapon present in the majority of violent gun-related crimes between 2009 and 2020, accounting for 59% of those crimes.
