Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Sunday that, should his plan go through, "It will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada."
At an hour-long press conference in Canada's capital city of Ottawa, Trudeau, backed by anti-gun advocates and the masked nodding federal ministers of Public Safety, Justice, Women and Gender Equality and Youth; and Emergency Preparedness, announced the new proposal. Trudeau, who narrowly won a reelection campaign last year to lead his minority coalition government, said the new regulations were needed seemingly to dash hopes that Canada's already tough firearms laws would ever be reformed.
"Last summer, during the campaign, some politicians said they would make assault-style weapons legal again," said Trudeau. "Not only did we stand up to them, but we promised to go even further to protect our communities. We proposed to invest to help provinces and territories put restrictions on handguns within their jurisdictions."
However, the new plan announced this week is much more authoritarian, moving to enact gun regulations on pistols and revolvers at the national level.
"We are introducing legislation to implement a national freeze on handgun ownership," summed up Trudeau.
The measure is designed to prevent individuals from legally bringing newly-acquired handguns into Canada and from buying, selling, and transferring handguns within the country. In short, if you are lucky enough to have one now, you can keep it – for now – but future generations will not have that same ability.
"What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer, or import handguns anywhere in Canada," said the Prime Minister with a smile. "In other words, we are capping the market for handguns."
There are some 1.1 million registered handguns in Canada, a figure that, according to government statistics, rose 71 percent between 2010 and 2020. Cut off from a large slice of the international handgun market due to rigid import and licensing red tape, manufacturers like Glock have had to make special variants for Canadian consumers.
Other facets of the legislation will require long gun magazines to be permanently altered so they "can never hold" more than five rounds and will ban the future sale and transfer of such magazines. Also, a new “red flag” gun seizure law and one that expands the ability to suspend and remove mandated firearms licenses for an expanded list of misdemeanor crimes are also part of the package. Some types of toy guns will also be banned.
Last year, Trudeau's cash-strapped government budget included $312 million in new funding to increase the federal government's firearms tracing capacity.
The Liberal Party in Canada, capturing just 32.6 percent of the votes in the 2021 election, controls 159 of 338 seats in the country's House of Commons.
Unlike its neighbor to the South, Canada has no Second Amendment or constitutional protections on the right to keep and bear arms. Trudeau even acknowledged that gun crime is low in the country, but said bluntly, "We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners use them safely, and in accordance with the law, but other than using firearms for sport shooting and hunting, there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives."
Banner image: S&W M&P M2.0 Compact on ice, somewhere south of Canada. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
