According to the Blacklock’s Reporter, Alberta Chief Firearms Officer Teri Bryant questioned the “cost to the taxpayer and impact on property rights” in a Public Safety committee meeting about Bill C-21, a federal bill banning new handgun sales in Canada.. Handgun with ammunition .“Bill C-21 continues to undermine confidence in our firearms control system while contributing nothing to reducing the violent misuse of firearms,” said Bryant. .“Bill C-21 is based on a fundamentally flawed premise. Prohibiting specific types of firearms is not an effective way of improving public safety.”.“It will waste millions of taxpayer dollars that could have been used on more effective approaches such as [the] enforcement of firearms prohibition orders, reinforcing the border, or combatting the drug trade and gang activity.”.READ MORE Canadians skeptical of Trudeau’s gun grab reducing crime.Bill C-21, An Act To Amend Certain Acts, codifies cabinet orders issued in 2021 that banned legal handgun imports and new domestic sales and transfers. Some 1.1 million legally registered handguns are owned by 276,000 Canadians, by the department of Public Safety estimate..“They are the allies, not the enemies, of public safety. I urge you to recommend the withdrawal of Bill C-21 in its entirety,” said Bryant. .“The goal of this bill is demonstratively not about public safety but an attempt to destroy long-established communities of law-abiding firearms owners across the country by targeting their property. What’s important is not what kind of a gun someone has. It’s whether they are allowed to have a gun at all.”.Cabinet prompted a public outcry last November when it proposed sweeping amendments to Bill C-21 to further ban any “rifle or shotgun that is capable of discharging centre fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner.” The amendments were withdrawn after Conservative, New Democrat, and Bloc Quebecois MPs blocked the bill’s passage in committee.. Handgun and Ammo .“It is not our intention to impact those who are hunting and using firearms for hunting and we acknowledge and regret the consultations we undertook were not sufficient and that there were gaps and problems in the amendments. That’s why we retracted them,” Government House Leader Mark Holland told reporters on February 3. .“Nobody is going after hunters,” said Holland. .“Nobody wants to see hunting end in this country. Where that position, which is an immovable object, comes up against our concern about keeping our communities safe is the line we draw between those two worlds and that is not an easy line to draw. But we are committed to not affecting hunting.”
