The debate over self-defence law in Canada has been thrust back into the spotlight following an incident in Vaughn, Ontario. York Regional Police have decided not to charge a homeowner who shot and wounded one of three armed and masked suspects who had allegedly forced their way into the man’s home. Ontario Premier Doug Ford even weighed in on the case, offering “congratulations” to the homeowner and adding that, “I’m glad you shot the guy.”
CALGARY — Public Safety Canada announced on Thursday that more than 47,000 prohibited firearms have been declared across Canada after two months of the federal government’s gun grab program for individuals — a number critics say represents a minuscule fraction of affected firearms.
The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear a challenge against the Liberal government’s ban on around 2,500 types of what it calls “assault-style” firearms.
On March 19, the top court granted leave to hear an appeal challenging the federal ban on firearms that Ottawa classifies as suitable only for military use, rather than for hunting or sport shooting.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said a homeowner in Vaughan should have shot the men who invaded his home a few more times. Ford was reacting to the latest home invasion story in the GTA during a news conference on Wednesday morning.
In Alberta, firearms were never just policy. They were tools. On farms, ranches, and in rural communities, they were part of daily life: pest control, livestock protection, and hunting for food. That agrarian foundation shaped a culture of responsibility and familiarity. In much of eastern, urban Canada, firearms are viewed through a different lens — crime prevention, public safety risk, metropolitan policing. That cultural divide sits beneath today’s conflict.
The federal Liberals’ gun buyback scheme just keeps getting more and more expensive and more and more useless by the week.
Late last year, the feds conducted a trial run of their confiscation program, more than five years after they first announced it. For six weeks on Cape Breton, regional police accepted banned guns that were being turned in by their owners in return for compensation.
“Red flag” orders were billed as a faster, simpler way to keep Canadian communities safe by temporarily removing legal firearms from the hands of those who might do themselves — or others — harm. They were part of a suite of gun control measures introduced in the wake of 2020’s Portapique, N.S., mass shooting, the deadliest in the country’s history.
But more than two years after the orders finally became federal law, it’s unclear if they are working as designed — because no one appears to be keeping track of when, where or how often they are being implemented.
Six years ago, an Order-in-Council (OIC) banned more than 2,500 models of what Ottawa calls “assault-style” firearms. That OIC included common hunting and sporting rifles that were owned, stored, and used legally.
In January 2026, Mark Carney’s Liberal government finally launched its long-promised “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program.”
Quebec Public Safety Minister Ian Lafrenière says the province’s firearms registry cannot be used by Ottawa to identify gun owners who are affected by the federal gun ban, nor will firearms be confiscated from Quebecers.
Lafrenière made the comments in a Feb. 26 social media post, saying he has heard the concerns about the federal gun buyback program from residents of the province.
What’s going on in the Canadian gun world these days? Same as always—more legal wrangling back-and-forth between shooters and the government. But there have been some relatively major recent developments with the federal government’s so-called buyback. The feds are steaming full speed ahead, or trying to, while an increasingly large number of partners are telling the government, “We’re not helping.”
I’m not making this one up. Minnesota’s Democrats, called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party because we are weird here, have proposed a law to make owning an AR-15, the most popular rifle in America, selling 3-4 million copies a year, a felony with a sentence of up to five years.
Attempting to rape somebody in the presence of a child is, in Minnesota statutes, a lessor crime than owning one if this law passes.
The Nunavut government says it will not be using police resources on the federal gun buyback program, and solutions proposed by Ottawa do not apply to the territory.
More than 2,500 types of so-called “assault-style” weapons have been illegal in Canada since 2020. The federal government has an amnesty order in place for the guns and is offering to buy them back from businesses and individual owners.
When Defense Distributed first unveiled its Liberator model, it was kind of a special moment in the world of the Second Amendment. It was suddenly clear that you couldn’t stop the signal, and that gun control’s last hopes of stopping people from getting guns were over.
Yes, that’s a good thing.
The RCMP Communications team emailed CSSA last week to “clarify” the RCMP’s role in the Liberal government’s Firearms Confiscation Compensation Scheme.
That clarification confirmed everything we said about them in our commentary, “Ottawa Flips the Switch on Gun Confiscations, Hands Control to the RCMP.”
(Incognito)
The deadly mass shooting at a school in British Columbia came as Canadian authorities face significant obstacles in rolling out a nationwide firearms buyback that is mired in practical and logistical complications.
Canada already has far stronger gun laws than the United States, and mass shootings are extremely rare. The government brought forward major reforms and bans on assault-style weapons after the country suffered its worst-ever shooting attack in 2020, when a man impersonating a police officer killed 22 people in northern Nova Scotia.
