Trudeau wants Municipalities’ help Grabbing Guns

During the Liberal federal government’s throne speech which demarcated the resuming of parliament after the month long prorogation legal firearms owners were not given much to take confidence in. 

The OIC “assault style” rife ban was not walked back, and a new proposal was made within the throne speech for the government to grant municipalities the ability to restrict or ban handguns at their own discretion. 

Governor General Julie Payette during the throne speech said, “The Government will also continue implementing firearms policy commitments, including: Giving municipalities the ability to further restrict or ban handguns.”

Municipalities being granted the power to decided on new restrictions and bans on handguns effectively hands the political responsibility for bans onto local government, while giving Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberals the go ahead to enforce firearms legislation it did not directly have to take political responsibility for.

Charles Zach, Executive Director of the National Firearms Association (NFA), expressed to The National Telegraph (TNT) his deep dissatisfaction with the throne speech and its implications for firearms owners.

Zach said:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has reiterated in the Throne Speech that innocent Canadian firearms owners will continue to be unjustly persecuted, demonized and scapegoated by the Liberal government for the dastardly misdeeds of violent criminals. Enough is enough. He has breached the public trust over and over again and we declare that he is morally unfit to govern in a freedom loving country like Canada.

Zach added that there is no time to lose in getting Trudeau out of office for the sake of gun rights and a no confidence vote in his opinion cannot come soon enough.

Zach wouldn’t be alone, much of Canada’s gun lobby were already incensed with the OIC gun ban not only due to the lack of normal legislative process and discussion of the policy, but also the continued push by the Liberals for further restrictions and bans on firearms owners’ property.

On the issue of simply handing over the ability to restrict and ban handguns over to municipalities, Rod Giltaca, Executive Director for the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR), said, “The idea of involving municipalities in issues where the federal government holds jurisdiction is absurd. What’s next, is Mississauga going to hold a referendum on capital punishment?”

Giltaca gets at the issue of having small localities passing major legislation which could very easily start an in-group out-group mentality where the majority is deciding on taking the property of the minority, in spite of the potential lack of awareness of safety statistics when it comes to legal firearms owners. 

Giltaca proposed serious questions that may need to be answered if the Liberals go forward with giving municipalities the power to restrict the use of or ban handguns:

Nobody knows how this is going to work and I doubt the Liberals do either. Are municipalities going to force people to move if they own guns? Are those people going to have to simply store them elsewhere where they can be just as easily stolen?

A common criticism of all the recent Liberal legislation on firearms, as well as past legislation is the government seemingly stricter stance against legal firearms owners than criminals who hold illegal firearms. 

Giltaca summed up this criticism stating that:

If the feds [and municipalities] do their job, for which they are paid to do, and stop people from stealing innocent Canadians property, this problem solves itself. Laws that punish law-abiding citizens for the acts of criminals is not only lazy and dishonest, but a violation of the social contract. This need to stop immediately for all our sakes.

The firearms community and lobby groups see the various gun control laws coming the federal government as little more than an undermining of legal firearms owners property rights to placate the general public’s concerns around gun crime which originates almost entirely from criminals with illegally obtained firearms.

Municipalities being allowed the ability to restrict and ban handguns further complicates the logistics on how legislation on firearms actually works, whether or not firearms are a municipal, provincial, or federal issue.