Trudeau Uses Gang Violence to Push Gun Bans

Friday the 13th was a scary day for many Canadians, but not for the reason one may expect. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the stage making law-abiding Canadians fear being branded as criminals once again.

In his latest slap in the face to millions of legal firearm owners Trudeau blamed them for the rise in gun crime across the country, suggesting that if premiers would simply act faster in allowing their municipalities to ban handguns their problems would disappear.

Trudeau made these comments in responding to questions regarding the killing of a 12 year old boy in North York last week. The boy was struck by a stray bullet, while walking home with his mom, after a shooting broke out. During his press conference on Parliament Hill Trudeau said, “Obviously our hearts go out to families and victims of gun violence across the country, and particularly in Toronto, where we’ve seen too many tragedies like this”.

While defending his government’s action, or lack thereof, he pointed to his efforts to ban the sale, import and purchase of roughly 1,500 “military-style” assault weapons earlier this year. Again legislation which only affects legal firearm owners. 

Not a word was mentioned of the 250$ million dollars promised to municipalities during the 2019 election to help fight gun crime, of which not a single dollar has been dolled out. As usual the Prime Minister took no responsibility, instead blaming premiers.

Trudeau went on to say: 

We made a commitment to move forward on giving municipalities the capacity to ban handguns as well, and that one, because it’s not necessarily something that all provincial governments are agreeing with, is something that we continue to work on.

Premiers around the country have voiced opposition to the thought that a handgun ban would be a solution. While Saskatchewan has gone the farthest by banning cities from participating in this handgun ban, Ontario and Alberta”s premiers have also made their opposition clear. Doug Ford stated this plan by the Liberal government was “not the solution”.

Although in more rural areas we often see rifles, shotguns and other licensed firearms used in domestic assault, as well as confrontations with the police, handguns used in gang crime tend to be smuggled in illegally or stolen.

Toronto police traced 80% of handguns used in crimes back to the U.S, last year.

For decades researchers have been alerting us to the fact that they need more data. “It’s been a problem for 30 years,” said Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control.

“The information is quite fragmented. Jurisdictions like Toronto collect and trace and track crime guns, but a lot of others don’t,” said Cukier. A national database for tracking and tracing illegal guns would allow police to target smugglers rather than relying on lucky border stops.

U.S. law enforcement has implemented such a system successfully in the past and has traced a large number of crime guns back to illegal sales. This information would aid police in curbing gun violence and stopping the flow of illegal guns. 

Bill Blair, currently Trudeau’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, should know better from his first hand experience as Toronto’s Chief of Police from 2005-2015. As Chief of Police Blair presided over one of the biggest crackdowns on gun violence in Toronto’s history. Creating a squad to combat gang violence, Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), and significantly increasing street checks.

Despite how successful these policies may have been, these days with Black Lives Matter pushing the “defund the police” movement, no politician, including Blair, wants to speak out in support of such policies for fear of being branded a racist. 

The policies have been tarred with allegations of disproportional targeting of minorities, and therefore racism, but the success speaks for itself. By 2014 Toronto’s gun crime dropped to its lowest recorded level since the collection of data started back in 2004. Today it’s at its highest. 

After TAVIS was disbanded, and street checks were abandoned, shootings increased by 178% between 2014 and 2019, from 177 a year to 492. These shootings disproportionately affect minorities, yet on this front the usual race critics are quiet.

“We invite the prime minister to explain how targeting legal firearms owners will help take illegal firearms off our streets and protect our communities from criminals,” says Stephen Warner, a spokesperson for Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones.

Five months ago Blair announced he and Trudeau would be bringing in new legislation on storage, ammunition limits, and magazine capacity as well as tackling gun trafficking and smuggling “at the first opportunity”.

Trudeau said in his announcement last Friday that this legislation would be coming “soon”.

Rod Giltaca CEO and Executive Director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) told The National Telegraph how he has not seen Trudeau actually take gang violence seriously yet and hasn’t done anything while the problem worsens.

Giltaca said:

Canadians have been played by the Liberals. Five years ago, Ralph Goodale and Bill Blair promised 327.6 million dollars to fight guns and gangs. Canadians need to know that aside from some funding for the RCMP and CBSA, none of that funding has made its way to the cities. Five years of virtue signalling and gun bans, but no action on gangs. Gangs perpetrate the majority of firearm-related crime in Canada and Blair won’t lift a finger to stop it. This is all about politics for them, not people.

It seems that it is a pattern for the Liberals to promise money to fight gang violence that never actually comes to fruition.

This is absolutely ridiculous, not only is Trudeau not taking gang violence seriously but his constant pursuit of gun control and the disarming of law abiding citizens is tantamount to the enabling of crime. Trudeau wants less innocent Canadians to have the ability to defend themselves while allowing gang crime to skyrocket in Canada’s major cities.