Gun Control

Popular devices known as “switches” are turning ordinary pistols into fully automatic weapons, making them deadlier and a growing threat to bystanders.

Caison Robinson, 14, had just met up with a younger neighbor on their quiet street after finishing his chores when a gunman in a white car rolled up and fired a torrent of bullets in an instant.

“Mom, I’ve been shot!” he recalled crying, as his mother bolted barefoot out of their house in northwest Las Vegas. “I didn’t think I was going to make it, for how much blood was under me,” Caison said.

The Las Vegas police say the shooting in May was carried out with a pistol rigged with a small and illegal device known as a switch. Switches can transform semiautomatic handguns, which typically require a trigger pull for each shot, into fully automatic machine guns that fire dozens of bullets with one tug.

The US Supreme Court has allowed restrictions against untraceable “ghost guns” to stand while an appeal by the White House is pending.

In July, a Texas court blocked a 2022 rule requiring self-assembled “ghost gun” kits to have serial numbers – legally making them a firearm.

Gun rights groups and gun owners had sued to stop the new rule.

The decision comes as the White House faces pressure to take more action on gun violence.

On a crisp Sunday afternoon in Royse City, Texas, 32-year-old Cesar Hurtado unzipped a hardshell case to reveal a custom-built AR-15-style rifle in his living room. Emblazoned on the side of the gun is the tagline “no war, no gods, no masters”.

Hurtado’s interest in firearms started with hunting, but after the 2019 Walmart shooting in El Paso that targeted Latinos, Hurtado felt he had to embrace firearms for his own protection. “For white gun owners, they feel they have a right to a gun,” Hurtado said, “but for Latino gun owners, it’s a matter of survival and safety.”

Headlines over “gun deaths” will always draw eyes. Some people will immediately click the link, then share it all over social media, just so they can say, “See! I told you guns are bad!”

There are usually problems with this, though.

For example, these reports rarely provide any context and they also tend to involve a fair bit of sensationalism in presenting all firearm-related fatalities as the same.

A murder charge that was laid against a Milton man accused of killing an armed intruder earlier this year has been dropped.

The Crown withdrew the second-degree murder charge laid against Ali Mian Monday, saying there is no reasonable prospect of a conviction.

Sasha Wiesen sleeps with a .40-caliber handgun in a safe by his bed. The commercial real-estate broker from Florida recently preordered a new type of firearm he hopes will make the safe unnecessary.

The new weapon is the Colorado startup Biofire’s 9mm Smart Gun, which can only be fired if it recognizes an authorized user with a fingerprint reader on the grip or a facial recognition camera on the back.

In May 2020, the federal government announced a ban on 1,500 types of what it called “assault-style” firearms. As part of this ban, it has promised to provide “fair compensation” to gun owners whose firearms it confiscates.

The ban’s aim is to keep Canadians safe. “Enough is enough,” said then-minister of public safety Bill Blair. “Banning these firearms will save Canadian lives.” But will this scheme actually make Canadians safer? And what will it cost? The government of New Zealand recently completed its own gun ban and buyback. It provides a good case study of the effects such a program can have.

MONTREAL – A Quebec-based anti-gun unit says 45 people have been arrested and 440 guns have been seized in raids targeting manufacturers of 3D-printed or “ghost” guns across eight provinces.

The squad, called the L’Équipe intégrée de lutte au trafic d’armes, told reporters today in Montreal that more than 20 police forces were involved in Canada-wide raids that took place Tuesday.

Time to arrest farmers and seize their Tractor & Combine Ghost Gun machines.

OTTAWA — The Liberals’ legislation to tighten gun restrictions started out as a bill largely focused on banning handguns.

Then, it expanded into a sweeping ban on hundreds of long guns so broadly seen as a direct attack on hunters and sport shooters that the Liberals simply had to walk that aspect back.

Now, in the version of C-21 they hope to pass before summer, the Liberals are promoting an additional showpiece: measures to crack down on the untraceable weapons known as “ghost guns.”

1st National Day Against Gun Violence to be marked in Canada

The federal government is proclaiming a National Day Against Gun Violence, to be held annually on the first Friday of June.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and representatives of the Toronto Raptors basketball team are set to discuss the plans Thursday at an event in Toronto.

With Bill C-21 passing the House of Commons and going to the Senate, Canada could soon see what Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino calls “the most significant gun control legislation in Canada in a generation.”

The legislation, known as “An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments,” proposes a series of amendments to the Canadian Criminal Code, Firearms Act, and other federal legislation in order to fulfill the Liberal government’s commitments on gun control.

So-called ghost guns get a lot of press. I’ve pointed out more times than I care to count how the impact they have on crime is overstated significantly, but they’re still getting that press.

And, to be fair, if you believe you can keep guns out of some people’s hands via laws, homemade firearms represent a threat because they allow people to bypass the system put in place to keep guns away from certain parties.

The federal Liberal government’s gun control legislation Bill C-21 passed the House of Commons on Thursday.

While the majority of MPs voted to see the bill pass into the Senate, two Liberal MPs who represent northern ridings sided with the Conservatives in voting against the legislation.

The bill, which passed nearly a year after it was first introduced, had an acrimonious journey through the House, and was significantly expanded from what was initially tabled in May 2022.