Never ones to let a good tragedy go to waste, the Trudeau Liberals have chosen this week to drop legislation cracking down on law abiding firearms owners..It's no coincidence this legislation happens to be presented just after the horrific school massacre in Texas last week. Legislation takes time to draft and prepare. The Liberal firearm bill has been sitting ready and waiting for a mass firearm incident to happen so they can take advantage of the public sentiment of the time..If crime due to legally owned handguns in Canada really was an immediate and pressing problem, shouldn’t the Liberals have put this legislation forward long ago? The Liberals waited until it was politically expedient before going after handguns. The political future of the Trudeau government is a higher priority than public safety..The handgun measures in Bill C-21 are a solution seeking a problem. Shootings are rising in urban areas across Canada and citizens are concerned about it. According to Canadian police chiefs, 86% of the guns seized that had been used in crimes had been smuggled in from the USA. In many of the other cases, the guns were stolen. Crimes committed by licensed, registered handgun owners in Canada are statistically insignificant, yet this is who the Trudeau government is targeting. It is political virtue signaling on a grand scale and it will make nobody any safer..The majority of fatalities caused by legally owned firearms have been suicides. If we want to try to reduce suicides, I am all for it. Let’s spend more money on mental health supports and treatment. Banning handguns won’t do any better than banning ropes would. If somebody really wants to do themselves in, they unfortunately will find a way. The tool they use to carry out the task is irrelevant. .Canada is drafting legislation in response to American culture wars that we aren’t experiencing up here. We don’t have a rash of mass or school shootings based on the easy acquisition of legal firearms. Most of our shootings are gang related and they never use legal firearms..In looking at American efforts to quell gun violence through firearm restrictions, we can see a prime example of its failure in Chicago. Chicago implemented a gun ban and has some of if not the most restrictive firearm policies in the USA. The shootings in Chicago have only risen with a shocking 3.561 of them in 2021 contributing to 797 homicides..Criminals don’t care about firearm restrictions. Why is this so hard for so many to understand?.Some apologists for Chicago’s gun control failure try to lay the blame on guns coming in from neighboring states. They demonstrate the futility of local controls. Most of Canada’s illegal guns come from the USA and our border is 8,900 kilometers long. Smugglers have even been using drones to fly handguns over the border. How will banning legal handgun ownership stop this?.Canada has nearly a million legally-owned handguns. At least for now. We are actually one of the most highly armed civilian populations on earth. Our handguns are highly regulated and our culture is much different than our Southern cousins. They just don’t present a problem up here..During the announcement of the new regulations, the Trudeau lineup made the claim this ban would make women safer. Legally owned handguns have not traditionally been a weapon of choice in the harm or murder of women. Indeed, a woman who owns a legal handgun is likely safer than many others. If we want to make women safer, we should be locking up our violent criminals..As I wrote recently, in less than a year in Alberta, three young women were murdered by repeat, violent offenders. One of the offenders shot a 23-year-old Calgarian mother. He had a long criminal history and was banned from possessing guns. Another mother of five was killed in a car collision as a gangster with no less than six attempted murders under his belt was chasing down a car and shooting at it. He had been banned from owning guns as well. The third didn’t use a gun to commit his horrific crime against a mother and child, but he had a long history of violent offenses..No gun laws would have prevented the murders. Keeping those known violent criminals in jail would have, though..Let’s not pretend for a second Trudeau is intent on stopping with just banning the legal sale of handguns. He is ideologically driven and desperate for a legacy he can claim after his lackluster term as prime minister. Trudeau will move on to full handgun bans and will likely turn his eye towards long guns as well. The outcome isn’t important to him. Only the impression he hopes to make..If we want to fight violent crimes, it will take a complicated, difficult and multi-faceted approach. Unfortunately, we have a simplistic, one-dimensional prime minister who prefers surfing over heavy lifting. He would rather appear to be doing something than have to do all the work to accomplish something..If we want to save lives in Canada, we should be tackling the growing opioid addiction crisis. It is killing thousands of Canadians every year and the illicit trade of the drugs is what fuels the violent gangs. Again, though, that's too tough a nut for our current prime minister to try to crack..Gun smugglers and gangsters are smiling today as the Canadian government sets its sights on law abiding citizens while barely touching the illegal gun trade..Canada will become a little less free, and no safer.
