OTTAWA – Most owners of what Canada calls “military-style assault weapons” will be required to turn over their weapons to the government’s buyback program under legislation enacted Monday, this would tighten the country’s already strict arms controls.
The Canadian government also immediately imposed new regulations banning the sale, import, or transfer of handguns.
“As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent further tragedies,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Monday. “We only need to look south of the border to know that if we don’t act firmly and quickly, the situation will only get worse and harder to deal with,” he said.
The proposed assault weapons law is the latest in a series of steps Trudeau has taken to limit firearms since 22 people were killed in rural Nova Scotia by a gunman in 2020. in the deadliest rampage in the country’s history. The legislation, which could apply to tens of thousands of firearms, is expected to pass.
The acquisition proposal comes amid another mass shooting in the United States that has ignited a frequently acrimonious debate about gun violence. Last week gunman using a military-style rifle killed 19 children and two teachers in the town of Uvalde, Tex. Just 10 days earlier, a teenage gunman was captivated by white supremacist ideology Shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, NYresulting in 10 deaths and 3 injuries, nearly all of them Black.
After 20 children and six adults were massacred in 2012 in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., there have been calls in the United States for stronger control of powerful weapons, but many Republicans affiliated with the gun lobby even refused to allow the vote. about any proposed legislation. American legislators have failed reinstate restrictions on military-style semi-automatic weapons expired in 2004.
Mr. Trudeau’s program echoes a Semi-automatic weapons ban and buyback program launched by New Zealand in 2019, after a lone gunman stormed two mosques, killing 51 people and wounding dozens more in Christchurch. Following a 1996 mass shooting in which a gunman killed 35 people in the town of Port Arthur, Australia, authorities there seized more than 650,000 semi-automatic rifles and numerous handguns after they were stolen. prohibited under the new law.
Marco Mendicino, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, said the acquisition would begin later this year.
Small Arms Survey, a non-profit organization based in Switzerland, estimated in 2017 that there are 12.7 million legal and illegal firearms in civilian hands in Canada, or 34.7 guns/100 guns. It is estimated that in the United States, there are more than 300 million guns in circulation, equivalent to 120.5 guns per 100 people.
Shortly after the deadly 2020 riots in Nova Scotia, Mr. Trudeau used a cabinet order to announce that it would ban more than 1,500 models of riflesincluding the AR-15, a popular military-style semi-automatic rifle. But in the end, it allowed the owner to keep their rifles, if they have a license – but can no longer use, exchange or sell them, unless authorized, to buyers outside of Canada.
The government has followed that up in 2021 with a package that includes proposed changes to gun laws. That bill, which expired before it passed Congress, frustrated groups calling for tighter gun control by making participation in the buyback program voluntary.
Automatic weapons have long been banned from civilians in Canada, and magazines about semi-automatic weapons are also restricted: no gun can fire more than five rounds without reloading.
The legislation enacted on Monday responds to Mr. Trudeau’s pledge last year to force owners of military-style rifles to turn them in for destruction. Mr. Trudeau’s proposal would allow for some exemptions, but those weapons would have to be modified by the government to make them permanently inoperable.
However, there is no legal definition of a “military-style offensive weapon”. Mr. Trudeau said the government would find a way to come up with a solution that gun manufacturers could not easily overcome.
Until then, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will continue to evaluate the weapons on a sample-by-sample basis to see if they are on an ever-expanding ban list introduced by Mr. Trudeau in 2020.
Most rifles and handguns in Canada, aside from automatic weapons and handguns, have been relatively loosely regulated. The Conservative government had previously closed the registry for such weapons established after a man killed 14 young women and wounded 13 others in 1989 in London. Ecole Polytechnique technical school in Montreal.
The registry’s database suffers from technical problems and it is not widely available in rural areas. Mr. Trudeau has ignored calls from gun control groups to extend it.
Compared to shotguns, there are relatively few legal handguns in Canada, and their use has long been much restricted. In addition to members of the police, border agents, military, and some private security personnel, handgun users may only use their weapons at firing ranges and firearms must be stored in a crate. locked container at their home.
Mr. Trudeau’s earlier legislative effort would have allowed provinces to ban all handguns within their borders, an idea that quickly led to concerns from gun control groups about the development of a system. patchwork across the country. On Monday, he acknowledged those criticisms.
“We decided to take a new route, addressing this issue at the national level,” he said.
While Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party did not win a majority of votes in the House of Commons, the left-wing New Democrats have long pushed for tighter gun control and are expected to support the new measure, allowing the party overcomes any potential opposition from the Conservative Party.
Handguns account for nearly 60 percent of gun-related crimes in Canada, according to a report published last week by Statistics Canada, the census agency. Gun violence-related death rates are much lower in Canada than in the United States.
The agency is pushing for more comprehensive collection of gun data. Although police have long assumed that most illegal weapons, especially handguns, are smuggled from the United States, not much is known about them. origin of guns used in crimeS.
The Nova Scotia shooter used two weapons that are now banned; both were smuggled from the United States.
Other measures in the bill amend several laws, including making it a crime to modify a rifle to increase its capacity; increased penalties for gun smuggling; and gives police the power to seize firearms from people the judge determines to pose a risk of injury to themselves or others.
