The coronavirus pandemic in the US has been accompanied by soaring gun sales attributed to fears around social unrest and crime and, in some cases, people having more time for hunting.
But now ammunition has fallen into short supply.
Manufacturers say they are producing as much as they can but in many gun stores shelves are sparse and prices are concurrently rising.
In May 2020, Prime Minister Trudeau issued an Order-In-Council immediately outlawing more than 1,500 makes and models of “military-style assault weapons,” which would be confiscated in due course. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s recent estimate, it will cost between $47 million and $756 million to compensate or “buy back” now-banned firearms from legal owners. The wide range and higher estimate contrasts with estimates made in February by federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair who said compensation costs would be between $300 million and $400 million.
Growing up in a decidedly left-wing household, I was lectured on a regular basis about the dangers and evils of firearms and the horrible kinds of people who own them. This despite the fact that my father kept a .22 rifle hidden in the basement. Granted, a .22 does not pack the firepower of most other guns, but on rare occasions when he thought he could get away with it, my dad would take me out plinking with the admonition that I keep it on the sly, since my mother would have, shall we say, “registered her disapproval.” Very adamantly.
In response to sharp increases in violent crime, President Biden stressed again last week that his administration is focused on “stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violent crimes.” But critics warn that this “guns first” approach ignores a basic fact—about 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms.
Although firearms were used in about 74% of homicides in 2019, they comprise less than 9% of violent crimes in America.
The vast majority of violent offenses—including robberies, rapes and other sex crimes—almost always involve other weapons or no weapons at all.
A new study suggests otherwise.
Gun sales in the U.S. exploded last year, first when the Covid-19 pandemic reached our shores and again when the death of George Floyd set off a wave of protests and violence in cities. Some commentators maintain that these sales in fact fueled the violence—a theory that fits nicely with some advocates’ preexisting priorities. President Biden and his team have been especially eager to turn the conversation about the abrupt crime spike into a conversation about guns and gun dealers.
Here we go again. Ottawa’s budget watchdog is on the trail of another big taxpayer boondoggle in the making with the federal government’s latest gun policy.
OTTAWA — The parliamentary budget officer says it could cost the government $756 million to buy back guns now prohibited in the country, depending on how many there are in Canada and how the Liberals structure the program.
The high-end buyback figure is the budget officer’s estimate for how much it would cost for the government to buy back every gun that the industry estimates is owned across Canada.
An analysis has revealed that more than three-fifths of all U.S. counties are so-called “Second Amendment sanctuaries” after a number of states this year passed legislation declaring them as such.
The website, Sanctuary Counties, found on June 20 that there are now 1,930 counties that are “protected by Second Amendment Sanctuary legislation at either the state or county level,” representing 61 percent of all counties.
Gun rights and medical marijuana legal reform advocates are seeking to join forces in Minnesota, where they hope to petition the federal government to drop its severe classification of marijuana.
The coalition of strange political bedfellows has emerged because medical marijuana users are barred from holding firearms permits, as the federal government designates marijuana a schedule I illegal drug – on a par with heroin, LSD and ecstasy – unsafe and without medicinal benefit.
Forty-three people were shot, three of them fatally, over the weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
Breitbart News noted 32 people were shot Friday into Sunday morning alone in the Windy City, and those shooting victims included the three fatalities for the weekend.
Democrats who backed efforts to defund police departments and other criminal justice reforms that critics have blamed as most responsible for the huge spikes in crime around the country are using the rising tide of violence to justify new pushes for gun control.
A large majority of assailants behind mass shootings in the US have had untreated psychiatric disorders, primarily schizophrenia. Treating such patients in time could decrease the risk of violence, a new study suggests.
The major psychiatric analysis by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine studied US mass shootings spanning decades. Having identified 115 persons behind such crimes committed between 1982 and 2019, based on “the most comprehensive listing available,” the Mother Jones database, they mainly concentrated on the study of surviving assailants.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson will sign newly passed legislation that would ban state law enforcement agencies from enforcing new federal gun laws following proposed rulemaking from the Biden administration to regulate firearms with stabilizing braces.
According to Parson spokeswoman Kelli Jones, the Republican governor will sign the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” which says that it is the duty of courts and law enforcement agencies in Missouri to protect the Second Amendment rights of citizens to keep and bear arms. It also declares federal laws that infringe on that right null.
Viewers of Country Music Television, known as CMT, are slamming the company and promising to boycott its upcoming awards show after it urged viewers to “wear orange” for a gun control campaign.
Texas has joined a coalition of what is now 25 states urging the U.S. Supreme Court to repeal a New Jersey law banning the possession of firearms with magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, arguing the prohibition violates the Second Amendment and puts law-abiding citizens less able to defend themselves against dangerous criminals.
