Recurring Canadaguns Politics and Debate Thread

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[u/-rifle-is-fine-]

"Stir the pot" opinion:

I think Mark Carney wants to drop the wasteful confiscation he inherited but doesn't know how the Liberal Party as a whole digs out of this one and says no to Provost without pissing off Quebec.

What solutions would you offer him?

[u/FunkyFrunkle → u/-rifle-is-fine-]

It all depends on what he wants to achieve.

If he’s looking to drop it and doesn’t necessarily care about preserving the gun control message or saving face, he could drop it now. There were also lots of opportunities to kibosh the whole thing under the guise of bringing the political temperature down out west. Most provinces are against it and so are a bunch of police forces.

He could admit that this whole thing is too expensive and too logistically demanding and scrap it on the grounds of pragmatism.

However, if he’s looking to preserve the gun control message for the Liberal party and not leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth, none of those options were good.

The problem with all previous “off ramps” as people like to call them is that none of them could have been taken without more or less destroying any possibility of the government ever using gun control as a platform in the future because they basically blew their shot when they went all-in on these expansive bans. Everyone supported the long gun registry until the figures were exposed and then all of a sudden nobody supported it. It was too toxic to touch and nobody has ever mentioned the idea of a registry again.

The same thing would happen if they scrapped the confiscations on cost, logistics or provincial opposition. The idea of gun bans would be too toxic to touch for years and when you have gun control as a core platform of your party, any outcome that hurts the agenda is unacceptable. You can’t get any more “gun control” than outright bans.

The nice thing about taking an L in court is that you can blame the Trudeau government for being too hasty, you can blame the “gun lobby” for taking this to court all while preserving gun control as a political platform. So really, the best “option” they have is to hope this falls apart in court.

If the Supreme Court rules against the government but gives them a 12 month window to create legislation, they could simply choose to stall legislation until the grace period ends and they have to comply with the ruling. This is, of course, if they really are looking to wash their hands of this.

So the governments best play if they’re looking to scale this back is to let this white-knuckle ride play out and hope the court ruling cleans up the messiest part for you. However, the conclusions of the Supreme Court are out of the governments hands entirely so only time will tell what happens.