Gun Control

Remember last May when the Trudeau Liberals used the Nova Scotia mass killing as an excuse to ban 1,500 models of “military-style” rifles and shotguns owned by law-abiding Canadians? (That number has since crept up to 9,500 models and perhaps 400,000 individual guns.)

The justification given for this largest firearms confiscation in Canadian history was public safety. Somehow taking long guns away from hunters, farmers and skeet shooters was going to encourage drug dealers and gang members to stop using handguns to kill one another.

OTTAWA – The Trudeau government has awarded a contract to IBM Canada to support the development, design and implementation of a buyback program for recently prohibited firearms.

The contract is worth almost $1.2 million, according to an award notice posted on a federal information portal.

The Liberals outlawed a wide range of firearms in early May, saying the guns were designed for the battlefield, not hunting or sport shooting.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on Thursday raided a popular gun component manufacturer under suspicion that the organization was selling firearms without mandating background checks.

Polymer80, one of the nation’s leading sellers of unserialized gun components and DIY firearm kits, was suspected of illegally distributing and manufacturing guns and failing to conduct background checks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Department of Environment intends to purchase 20 semi-automatic AR-10 rifles, despite the inclusion of the weapons in a recently released ban introduced by the federal government.

Environment Minister Pauline Frost said the federal government has a specific exemption for peace officers, such as conservation officers, and the employees equipped with the weapons will be trained.

H/T Mauser

The RCMP union says the Liberal government’s firearm ban targeted at legal firearm owners, does not address the “more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms.”

The National Police Federation (NPF), a union that represents 20,000 RCMP members, issued a statement (pdf) on Monday to express their concern over the rising number of illegal guns and shootings in Canada. It says the firearm bans by the liberal government have in fact diverted “extremely important personnel, resources, and funding” away from addressing the root causes of gun violence—illegal guns trafficked across the Canada-U.S. border and criminals using the firearms to commit crimes eventually.