r/canadaguns • u/Thereal_Stormm006 • Apr 04 '26
News / Politics / Activism How Canada's largest gun control effort in decades is missing the mark
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg09dq4x5qo107
u/Weak-Coffee-8538 Apr 04 '26
The media never talks about this...
The 2020 mass shooter used illegal firearms and smuggled them from the states.
And then Trudeau banned a bunch of firearms. Trudeau and Blair knew this information but banned them all anyways. Their OIC bans wouldn't have stopped that psychopath.
The logic in that is wild.
No wonder it's failing. The original ban was built upon lies.
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u/BigRedGunNut Apr 04 '26
They also continually leave out the part where the 136000 firearms are just the registered ones and don't account for any of the 1 to 3 million unregistered firearms caught up in this. The firearms declared so far likely have a huge number of these, like the GSG16 (basically a kids toy).
They never report on the extreme underfunding given the previous comment.
They never point out the fact that many of these "assault style firearms" are single shot rifles or rimfire.
They never point out that until the mass shooting in Nova Scotia there had never been a murder in Canada with an AR15, despite give or take there are 80000 in Canada, and that the one time there was a murder, it was with an illegally smuggled AR as you pointed out.
They never mention that "Assault Style" means it is NOT an assault rifle. Anytime you need to qualify something with the word Style, it's not that thing.
They never speak about the more niche aspects of the OIC like banning flare launchers (37mm launchers). They're flare guns, where's the problem and why are we confiscating them. A hollow pipe with a pin in the bottom (mortar tubes). It's a hollow tube, the explosive rounds are already prohibited. Missle launchers. Another hollow tube, the missiles are already prohibited. All these items carry extensive value to the collector and not real threat to the public but people are loosing their money anyway.
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u/PM_me_ur_TT-33 Apr 04 '26
The ban in March of '25 hit collectors pretty hard and that was almost unnoticed. So many irreplaceable but totally obsolete wooden semi autos, and the same copy paste OIC "justification" from 2020. Makes you wonder if that increased the quiet backroom influencing, however.
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Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
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u/Darthwilhelm on Apr 04 '26
To give the BBC their due, their readership probably doesn't want to be reminded that it's been 37 years since 1989.
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u/Appropriate-Regret-6 Apr 04 '26
Oof. That was a gut check I didn't need this morning. Time to go take an Advil for my arthritis!
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u/Kooky-Hamster4071 Apr 04 '26
Yes it was horrendous, and... none of us had anything to do with it.
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u/FafnirRannsTwinedAxe Apr 04 '26
Hell i wasnt even born yet
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u/Kooky-Hamster4071 Apr 04 '26
And yet, all of us are taking the blame for something we didn't do.
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u/SandySpectre Apr 04 '26
And here I thought collective punishment was a human rights violation…..
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Apr 04 '26
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u/grathontolarsdatarod Apr 04 '26
Obvious I'm in this sub for the guns.
And I believe firearms are both a safe, and event essential part of society.
But the property rights aspect of this whole thing really has me spun.
It won't, and hasn't stopped at firearms. But this is where it started.
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Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
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u/Provic Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
For what it's worth, this is actually a recurring myth and I have no idea where it comes from:
fucking QUEBEC (just like the notwithstanding clause s 33 was inserted to appease those fuckers)
The NWC was proposed by Peter Lougheed from Alberta to mirror the similar idea in the existing Alberta Bill of Rights, and likely advocated for further by Roy McMurthy (Ontario) and Roy Romanow (Saskatchewan) during private meetings with Jean Chrétien. René Lévesque from Quebec was intentionally excluded from the negotiations that dealt with the NWC and amendment provisions, and ended up not agreeing to the resulting compromise proposal -- it's unclear how much of that was substantive disagreement over the contents, how much was due to his party being separatist, and how much was simply saltiness from having been snubbed. You can look it up if you like.
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u/Ilikechainsaws09 Apr 04 '26
Just like us paying for treaties we had nothing to do with a few hundred years ago, yet here we are.
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u/IntrepidKitchen5322 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Yeah overly restrictive gun control in Canada has always been an ideological crusade rather than anything grounded in facts and evidence. If legal gun owners were so dangerous, you'd see A LOT of magazines getting unpinned and all those safe queens being brought out into the open to cause mayhem but yet these LPC fantasies don't exist in reality. The absolute failure of the gun buyback is proof that there's a lot of prohibited firearms out there that do nothing but collect dust in the hands of responsible gun owners.
Hell, even looking at gang gun violence we're honestly not that bad considering we border the u.s.
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u/erryonestolemyname Apr 04 '26
Ignoring that a large amount of our current gun laws came into effect because of polytech
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u/InitialAd4125 Apr 04 '26
At least we aren't forced to pay for this one but it kind of goes to show that even news that's considered "great" by people is in reality biased and further points to maybe not having government news media at least set up in the way it currently is. Like maybe just maybe let any citzen write opeds and post them so you aren't as absurdly biased. But nope they'll continue down there path of feeding us pro state pro status quo propaganda.
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u/JAFOguy Apr 04 '26
To be fair, thirty-seven years is more than two decades, so they are technically correct. And technically correct is the best kind of correct.
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u/JAmToas_t Apr 04 '26
They fail to mention that all the guns banned in 2020, the ones deemed too dangerous to be in public hands, have in fact remained in public hands for 6 years without incident.
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u/CutsLikeABuffalo333 brandon mb Apr 04 '26
This is such a simple and good point. The thing that kills me the most is if the Libs put the energy, effort, capital and resources towards curbing guns entering the country illegally, we would probably see the decrease in gun crime that is desired
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u/Longjumping_Rain_483 Apr 04 '26
Biased article like always 👍
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Apr 04 '26
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u/Longjumping_Rain_483 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
I went back to the article, I didn't realize there was much more at the bottom to be honest. When reading it off my phone I couldn't view most of it, so I thought it stopped off at the tumbler ridge part near the middle. Thanks for calling me out though, i never would've realized my mistake.
But back to the article, I don't like how they used the person from Poly throughout most of the article, with them stating they hate that the government won't ban more, and the gun lobby only got a sentence or two, just speaking on the supreme Court, and nothing else
Also this part here, there was so much more in the recording, but they phrased it as him just speaking on this
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"Without a comprehensive ban on assault weapons, there is no ban… and the money will be wasted," said Rathjen, a spokesperson for gun control advocacy group PolySeSouvient."
"Even Canada's own minister of public safety, Gary Anandasangaree, was caught criticising his government's plan in an audio clip leaked to the Toronto Star.
"Don't ask me to explain the logic to you on this," he told a Toronto man in a secretly recorded conversation late last year, when pressed on programme's value when most gun crimes in Canada are committed with illegal weapons.
Anandasangaree later said his comments were "misguided", and that he believes in the programme's importance.
So why is Canada struggling with a measure that saw success in places like Australia - where 650,000 firearms were bought back and destroyed after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, according to figures by the Australian government - and New Zealand, which collected around 56,000 firearms after the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019?"
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u/CiabattaFun Apr 04 '26
Literally says in reference to the gun buyback at the beginning of the article, “although a win for public safety”…. It’s not a win, it has zero impact on public safety. This is why there is no support for the program. The government has almost had a DECADE to do a study where stricter gun controls reducing violence and they have done ZERO. A billion dollar project and ZERO studies to support its efficacy?…. Wonder why? Even the national association of Police Chiefs, you know the guys responsible for dealing with gun violence, have said ON RECORD these new laws will have no impact on gun crime.
These new laws are not based on facts, only feelings. “Assault style” doesn’t even have a definition beyond “aesthetics”. It doesnt matter what a firearm looks like, it’s how it operates that should matter. “Style” is inherently subjective beyond any reasonable defence.
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u/IGnuGnat Apr 04 '26
Actually my understanding is that gun violence went up after the firearm prohibitiions started
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Apr 04 '26
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u/Late_Winner6859 Apr 04 '26
It literally is, when this statement is presented as a fact, ignoring how controversial it actuallyis
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u/Wiseoldman14 Apr 04 '26
I thought it would be worse but from a quick skim; they mention “The government had set aside money to buy back a total of 136,000 guns” but fail to mention that there are millions of these firearms in circulation so if all were to comply, many would be without compensation. They also say many gun owners are “distrustful” of the process when I believe a more accurate statement is that most gun owners outright oppose this. They talk about mass shootings being linked to shortcomings in mental health but fail to mention shortcomings in policing and enforcement (looking at you RCMP). Another commenter mentioned they said more than 2 decades ago in reference to the poly shooting, when a more accurate timeline is nearly 4 decades ago. They reference a poll from 2020 which asked Canadians about “military style assault weapons” (made up term). I do think the article is good and I dont expect them to blast the liberals but considering this is a massive waste of taxpayer money, government resources, and targets law abiding citizens… id have liked them to go a bit harder.
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Apr 04 '26
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Apr 04 '26
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u/FafnirRannsTwinedAxe Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Yup, youre right. I commented and realized i never actually finished reading the article.
But still, i would argue theres bias all through it.
With the one stat it referred to, its from 2024?? What about literally the last like 80 years of homocide in canada, how do legal gun owners stack up the gangsters?
And still, not touching garys remarks on tape about how the whole progran wont work, its just for quebec votes, he would personally fairly compensate the person recording for his guns even though the rest of us wont be fairly compensated. Etc.
Theres a whole lot more the cbc could have included
"More than two decades" and "almost 40 years ago" are both technically true statements with drastically different meanings conveyed. The wording says it all to me
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u/OkBurner777 Apr 04 '26
Liberals - my guns are not illegal, they’re undocumented and seeking asylum
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u/rastamasta45 Apr 04 '26
This might actually get Carney’s attention because he’s fucking obsessed with the uk, and now they’re calling it a failure.
I cannot comprehend how the worst and most expensive Trudy vanity project is the one they’re insisting to keep. Holy hell just drop it already.
At this point it’s not about saving face but just moving on to fixing the damn county and not setting more money on fire. Also god damn with the constant division, like really, you want to criminalize 800,000 Canadians?
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u/gspotcowboy Apr 04 '26
IMO Carney kept it on the books because he wanted to buy votes in Quebec. He's not an idiot, he knows this is going to be the LGR 2.0 in terms of cost and outcome.
I honestly think he's going to kick it down the road for someone else to deal with, even if he gets his majority, because he'll no longer have to pander to the French.
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Apr 04 '26
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u/Wiseoldman14 Apr 04 '26
Also Australia’s gun buy back was funded by increasing the tax levy. They should do a poll on how many Canadians want their taxes raised so the government can take guns from law abiding, licensed gun owners. 👍🏻
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u/IGnuGnat Apr 04 '26
"Without a comprehensive ban on assault weapons, there is no ban… and the money will be wasted," said Rathjen, a spokesperson for gun control advocacy group PolySeSouvient.
This is a very odd lie.
Assault weapons have been illegal and prohibited for civilians in Canada for generations now. The only people who were grandfathered in are probably very very old and a threat to nobody
Canada's plan is for gun owners is to be reimbursed by the government when they turn in their weapons, similar to measures in Australia and New Zealand.
Everyone knows there is no money for guns, or nothing anywhere close to market value for the vast majority of people who hand in firearms. This has widely been exposed to be a lie.
Polling suggests most Canadians believe gun laws in their country are just right or not strict enough, and 82% in 2020 said they support a ban on military-style assault weapons.
What an oddly uninformed thing for most Canadians to believe, given that assault weapons have been illegal and prohibited for many generations. What kind of strange alien propaganda would lead people to believe this? It is oddly completely and utterly disconnected from the reality of firearms in Canada. Military assault weapons are full auto. There are no full auto assault weapons available, in Canada, for civilians. Who are these uninformed people, who keep saying the same uninformed things over and over? Very strange misinformation. Completely and utterly disconnected from the reality.
The Canadian government has said it intends to go ahead fully with the buy-back scheme despite criticism around their policy
It is not possible to buy back something, which was never yours to begin with.
As for Rathjen, time is running out to implement what she calls a "comprehensive ban" that would bar ownership of all assault-style rifles, in particular the SKS semi-automatic.
"assault style" this has no technical meaning. It means "black and scary"
"It's just unbelievable that the government has invested so much in this controversial and difficult file, so much money, so much political capital, and yet they're heading for failure,"
When you punish peaceful, gentle citizens for the crimes of violent criminals, you create a disrespect for the law.
When the most law abiding of all citizens develops a disrespect for the law, who is left to respect the law?
These laws result in a society who respects the outlaw.
These laws are by definition bad laws.
Canadians actually have a lengthy history of peaceful, gentle non-compliance with bad firearms laws. They spent billions in the 90s trying to get firearms owners to register their firearms. Nobody complied
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u/gspotcowboy Apr 04 '26
What an oddly uninformed thing for most Canadians to believe
The way it's worded is misleading (surprise surprise). "Most" Canadians believing in gun control being right or not strict enough could be 51%. They don't break that down between "just right" and "not enough", so for all we know 49% of Canadians are okay with current gun control and 2% want more. We don't know with the info that is given, but most folks skimming this article will assume it's a high percentage, especially when followed with
82% in 2020 said they support a ban on military-style assault weapons.
When was the first poll mentioned taken? Recently? The second poll is obviously a separate one as they've indicated as such, and it was more than likely taken immediately after the worst mass murder in recent history. How was the question asked?
This is why everyone, everywhere, should be checking sources for everything they read, regardless of where or who articles come from.
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u/IGnuGnat Apr 04 '26
Absolutely.
You might remember there were headlines a few years back, I don't remember exactly when probably 5-8 years ago. They said something like: "A child is injured by a firearm in Ontario every day" or "A child is injured by a firearm in Canada every day" and it was all over the news for around a week or so. There were a bunch of doctors all talking about how dangerous firearms were and so on and so forth. It was based on a Sick Kids study
So I dug into the study. They counted every single pellet gun, every single airsoft pellet accident, even toy guns like Nerf guns if a kid somehow managed to take one in the eye and needed to get checked out as a "firearm injury", so when you dug into the stats of course the vast majority of "firearm injuries" was from airsoft. Naturally, none of the doctors or journalists mentioned that detail
"think of the children" worst kind of propaganda and it was every where in the news feed at the time
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u/swpz01 Apr 04 '26
In the meantime, we have full tactical teams patrolling Toronto streets as if it's some kind of dystopian nightmare.
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u/Greenxgrotto Apr 04 '26
No one ever likes to mention how the shooting in Nova Scotia was committed with a police officers rifle and smuggled weapons from the US. This gun ban would not have stopped it from happening.
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u/Joels-workshop Apr 04 '26
The Mountie he killed wasn't carbine trained and didn't have one in her patrol car. He took her handgun after killing her.
They didn't even submit her handgun for forensic testing.
Correct though that his firearms were smuggled in from the States. He also had his GF and family buy him ammo but the charges were dropped.
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u/Armed_Accountant Whoever wants to touch my guns has to touch me first. Apr 04 '26
Because it wasn't? He picked up a deceased officers handgun but no evidence it was used in any further killings.
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u/Automatic-Height4246 Apr 04 '26
What fascism look like.
The ones who say they hate it are enforcing it
Illegal guns are used for 2020 mass shooting attacks and majority of crimes, banning legal guns that are sold as sport and hunting gears wont change anything except they want to control us more and more
Hitler bans guns “in the name of safety”
When the population is weak, dictators like it When victims are less armed, criminals and mass shooters would like it.
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u/Krasdf Apr 04 '26
O well at least it only cost tax payers about 745 million LMAO.
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u/Joels-workshop Apr 04 '26
745 Million so far!
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u/Krasdf Apr 04 '26
Dang we could have been able to afford another 375 million donation to the TALIBAN lmao
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u/Joels-workshop Apr 04 '26
This BBC article was better than most but it is so frustrating to see another article not even provide an estimate at the total number of firearms that were banned.
They note that the GC put aside money to pay for 136,000 firearms but not that this is nowhere close to the number of firearms banned so maybe one reason people are rejecting this is that it is "confiscation without compensation".
They also seem to conveniently leave out all the times that Carney told everyone the program was "voluntary". Now they are surprised that people didn't participate?
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u/cjfraiz Apr 04 '26
I love it when the Liberals lose, it makes me happier than ever that they are losing on this one as well. I can only wish and hope we can get back to being allowed to safely use our tools for competitive applications and fun times at the gun range. 3 gun with a .22 or even a .9mm is just not the same.
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u/Xaxxus Apr 04 '26
Even if this gun buyback is scrapped, the liberals haven’t lost.
We still can’t use any of the guns banned since 2020.
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u/cjfraiz Apr 04 '26
If the buyback is scrapped the there is a precedent to return to why they were banned in the first place. It is a positive sign of possible things to come. I tend to look at the positives in this situation.
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u/DanTheKendoMan Apr 05 '26
I wonder where those 82% Canadians are that were polled, in support of the "military assault style firearms", whatever those are.
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u/NBAfans7 Apr 05 '26
Asking licensed firearm owners to turn in firearms won't solve Canadas growing gun crime (+120% between 2013-2022 - StatCan) The government has their priorities all wrong.
The government should be funding more into border security and allocating funds to municipal police services.
Why?
Current data coming straight from police chiefs indicate over 90% of firearms used in gun crimes in different regions (Peel, Toronto etc) come from the USA.
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u/Joels-workshop Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
It’s always frustrating when the Portapique shootings are cited as justification for these bans.
The firearms used in that shooting were not legally owned. They were smuggled from the United States, and one was reportedly obtained through a personal connection. The shooter did not hold a PAL or RPAL and was clearly a criminal.
There is also documented reporting that the RCMP Commissioner was under pressure to disclose the types of firearms used, in part because that information was tied to pending gun control legislation.
As reported by CTV News:
“Handwritten notes from Campbell… say Lucki told those present she had promised the federal Public Safety Department and the Prime Minister’s Office that information on the guns used by the shooter would be released because it was ‘tied to pending gun control legislation.’”
At that point, you might as well point to any gang-related shooting as justification for the same program—those incidents also overwhelmingly involve illegal firearms.
The reality is that this program would not have prevented the 2020 shootings. Instead, the government used the tragedy as justification to advance these bans, despite the fact that the measures would not have addressed what actually occurred.
Guarantee when the Tumbler Ridge firearms are released, there will be calls for more bans that don't address the root cause.
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u/Remarkable_Vanilla34 Apr 04 '26
"It's just unbelievable that the government has invested so much in this controversial and difficult file, so much money, so much political capital, and yet they're heading for failure," she said.
Lol Heidi is mad lol, she isn't wrong though.